Louisiana highway deaths dropped 10.5% last year. That’s the word from The Louisiana Highway Safety Commission (LHSC). Spokesperson Greg Fischer says the decline represents a positive shift after the surge of deadly crashes during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We don’t want to be too optimistic because we still had 811 deaths due to car crashes on our roads in Louisiana in 2023.”
Pedestrian deaths dropped by 20% in 2023. bicycle deaths also dropped from 44 to 35. And crashes involving a driver with a blood-alcohol level of .08 or higher decreased to 195, representing a 13.3% drop from 2022. But, as reported by Sean Richardson with the Louisiana Radio Network, Fischer says motorcycle deaths did rise. “We lost 98 people on a motorcycle. That was up from 90 the previous year. We changed the way that we recorded this data recently to include three-wheeled motorcycles, autocycles, mopeds and ebikes.”
Fischer also says the seatbelt usage rate was the highest ever recorded in Louisiana at over 88%. That’s a 3% increase from the previous year. “Everyone was wearing their seatbelt more. You know, that’s truck drivers, SUV drivers, car drivers. So, across the board we saw an improvement of people wearing a seatbelt.”
According to the National Safety Council (NSC), the rate of death on the roads in 2020 spiked 24%, the highest rate in 96 years, That was despite miles driven dropping 13%. As for why traffic deaths increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite far fewer cars on the roads during the same period, preliminary research by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), of the people who continued to drive, “some engaged in riskier behavior, including failure to wear seat belts, and driving under the influence.”
Psychologists have waded into the debate, looking for more answers into the ‘why’ of the COVID-19 traffic deaths surge. University of Utah cognitive neuroscientist David Strayer, PhD, called the surge phenomenon the “four horsemen of death.” Strayer pointed to speed, impairment, distraction, and fatigue, the “human foibles behind more than 90% of vehicle crashes.”
In the very same feature article posted June 1, 2022 [By Stephanie Pappas, Vol. 53 No. 4] on the American Psychological Association website, the author also cites Seattle University clinical psychologist Kira Mauseth, PhD, who explains, “People’s brains are not perceiving information and processing emotion in the way that they did prior to the pandemic.” Mauseth, who specializes in disaster behavioral health concluded, “People might be a little bit more impulsive, they’re a little bit less regulated, they might not be considering consequences.”
