Traffic Deaths In NJ Were Up In 2021, New Estimates Show

NEW JERSEY — Traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high nationally in 2021, increasing in almost every state, including New Jersey.

While traffic accidents had temporarily decreased in many states during the months of COVID lockdowns in 2020, the dangerous driving habits developed that year made the nation's highways more deadly in 2021 than in several previous years, the federal government has said.

And this week, federal highway safety officials released updated estimates on those highway crash deaths.

The 2021 traffic fatality estimates show roads are becoming more deadly across the country.

That projected increase came on top of a record 38,824 traffic fatalities in 2020, at the time the highest number of fatalities since 2007.

The area with the highest projected increase in traffic fatalities in 2021 — 19 percent, almost double the national average — is the five-state region of Alaska,Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

In comparison, the five-state region in the nation’s midsection — Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska — is estimated to see a 3 percent increase in fatalities.

In New Jersey, traffic deaths from 2020 to 2021 increased 584 to 709, a change of 21.4 percent.

In the region that includes New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and , highway traffic deaths in 2021 are projected to increase by 12 percent over 2020.

Highway safety experts have wondered if dangerous driving during the pandemic — including driving at speeds exceeding 200 mph on highways absent the normal traffic loads of people commuting to and from work and going about their lives — was a blip or a long-term pattern.

The highway safety agency said the increased fatality rate per 100 million miles continued in the first quarter of 2021 but decreased in the second, third and fourth quarters.

Still, roads were only moderately safer by that measure.

Motorists drove about 11.2 percent more miles in 2021 than in 2020, or 325.2 billion miles more, as workers returned to the office and businesses reopened. The fatality rate per 100 million miles driven remained almost unchanged, though, down to an estimated 1.33 fatalities in 2021 from 1.34 fatalities per million miles the year prior.

Some other estimates from the report:

• Fatalities in multi-vehicle crashes were up 16 percent.
• Fatalities on urban roads were up 16 percent.
• Fatalities among drivers 65 and older were up 14 percent.
• Pedestrian fatalities were up 13 percent.
• Fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck were up 13 percent.
• Daytime fatalities were up 11 percent.
• Motorcyclist fatalities were up 9 percent.
• Bicyclist fatalities were up 5 percent.
• Fatalities in speeding-related crashes were up 5 percent.
• Fatalities in police-reported, alcohol-involved crashes were up 5 percent.