Record Levels of Pedestrian Deaths in

U.S. as Reckless Driving Surges

 (NYT)

Reckless driving! Isn't that strange? It has seemed to me for some time, based just on anecdotes like this, that Americans have been acting oddly for the last year or so. 

I made the connection in my mind with the last half of COVID. I have wondered if so-called "long COVID" has worked some change in our hard-wiring. Twenty-four percent of the entire U.S. population has had the virus. I dare say almost everyone in the country knows someone who has had it. 921,000 Americans have died from it. That's only 1.2% of the population but it seems to me that a lot of us living know someone who has died of it.

I tie a lot of odd behavior together in my mind and attribute it to COVID. These pedestrian deaths I would have linked to COVID in my mind even if the Times hadn't: "Fatalities are climbing to record levels two years into the pandemic. Authorities cite drivers’ anxiety levels, larger vehicles and fraying social norms." I know the meanings of all of those words but I don't understand how anxious drivers, big cars and whatever informs "fraying social norms" are tied to COVID. Another thing I, and many others now, link to COVID, the dramatic increase in homicides. Again, I don't know why that would follow. I link other things: In Miami, groups of Latin teenage boys take to their bicycles and ride on the major north-south artery blocking traffic. When a young mother in a utility vehicle draws even with them and yells, "Get off the road!" one of the boys replies, "Fuck you!"; LeBron James' frayed social norms in injuring Isaiah Stewart with a reckless backhand slap/punch; Aaron Rodgers' bizarre rants, his toe-wave video. Just uncharacteristic things. I am almost certainly wrong about LBJ and Rodgers but nonetheless COVID was the first thing that came to my mind.

From the Times article above:

... For reasons that psychologists and transit safety experts are just beginning to explain, drivers also seemed to get angrier.

“We’re so saturated with fears about the virus and what it’s going to do. People feel that they get a pass on other threats.”-Dr. David Spiegel, Stanford Medical School.

I can understand increased anger, increased fear. I don't know what Spiegel means however by "other threats". Running into and killing a pedestrian is not a threat, it's behavior. Nobody thinks they get a pass on killing another person.

Other writers however do not make a link of pedestrian deaths to COVID, so I don't know, man, I don't know.