The results of a new ValuePenguin study show that from 2012 to 2021, trends have worsened.
Over the last decade, road safety has declined in areas where people’s lives are at stake, and that doesn’t just involve the drivers and passengers of the vehicles involved in crashes. Both fatal crashes and fatal hit-and-runs have been on the rise from 2012 through 2021 according to the results of a new ValuePenguin study.
In fact, deadly hit-and-runs have risen far faster than the pace of deadly crashes in general.
The study found that from 2012 to 2021, fatal hit-and-run crashes surged substantially. In 2021, the year in which the most recent data is available, there were 2,783 deadly crashes that involved hit-and-runs in the United States. This was a massive 89.4 percent increase over the figure in 2012, which had been 1,469. Within the same 10-year period, the number of fatal crashes of any form was 27.4 percent. Clearly road safety declined notably faster for pedestrians than for drivers and vehicle passengers.
California was the state in which there were the highest proportion of deadly crashes that involved hit-and-runs in that span of a decade. In that state, 10.1 percent of deadly crashes were hit-and runs. Nevada’s statistic was 8.5 percent, and New Mexico’s was 7.8 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, where there was the lowest percentage of hit-and-runs among deadly crashes were Wyoming at 1.1 percent, Maine at 1.3 percent, and New Hampshire at 1.4 percent.
Deadly road safety issues were found to be most likely to increase at night, as were hit-and-runs.
From 2012 to 2021, 9.5 percent of fatal nighttime crashes involved a hit-and-run. During the daytime, that figure was substantially lower at 2.7 percent. Throughout that span of time, 77.3 percent of all fatal hit-and-run crashes occurred during the nighttime hours.
The majority of deadly hit-and-run crashes that occurred in that decade involved pedestrians as opposed to occupants of another vehicle. In fact, over 6 out of every 10 fatal hit-and-run crashes involved pedestrians. The specific figure was 62.8 percent of fatal hit-and-runs involved a pedestrian. Moreover, the number of fatal pedestrian deaths rose by 53.7 percent during that time span. This illustrates how important it is for pedestrians to be just as aware of road safety as drivers.
