Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (a mouthful) released their estimates for traffic fatalities in 2022. According to their data, there were 9,560 deaths by motor vehicle crash in the first quarter of 2022 alone (quick math, that’s more than 105 people every day!). Speeding, distracted driving, and driving under the influence all contribute to this astounding number of motor vehicle fatalities. Pete “High High Hopes” Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, recently called it “a national crisis of fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that modern advances would make driving safer; with new airbag technology, seatbelts, and safety features that make everyday sedans look like NASA spaceships. But around 2015, with the rise of smartphones, distracted driving led to an increase in traffic fatalities, and the trend has only continued with the ongoing pandemic. As many Americans feel frustrated or unhappy with the current state of affairs, their driving ability is obviously affected.
Of course, not all communities are affected equally by this trend. Poorer neighborhoods almost always have high speed or high traffic roads running through them, and this isn’t by accident. Yet another method of segregating communities by race or class leading to disproportionate death for the poor.
“We have systematically put these arterial roadways in areas where people had less political power to fight back.”
-Rebecca Sanders, founder of Safe Streets Research & Consulting
To learn more about the practice of highway construction as a means of racial and economic segregation, I highly recommend Deborah N. Archer’s “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes”.
Side Items
Everyone’s favorite trap queen pleaded (pled?) guilty to drug charges and is facing a lengthy prison bid. Fetty Wap (legally Willie Junior Maxwell II) was charged with conspiring to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine, a charge that carries a mandatory MINIMUM of five years in prison. Wap was arrested last year by FBI agents at Rolling Loud music festival as he was about to perform onstage
New York and Florida are holding primaries today, as numerous candidates jostle for the opportunity to challenge Ron DeSantis for the governorship of Florida. DeSantis is projected to win the eventual election, and some people consider him a sneaky dark horse choice for the presidency in 2024
In the final game of Matchweek 3, Liverpool were defeated by rivals Manchester United yesterday, 2-1. The Red Devils were able to find and exploit gaps in the defensive line time and again, while Liverpool never seemed to find any rhythm in the game. Fortunately, it’s still early in the season, but it’s an inauspicious start to a long campaign