Road Fatalities: US Road Fatalities were the Grim Reaper rampant during 2021. NHTSA’s Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January-June) of 2021, showed the largest six-month increase ever recorded in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System’s history. An estimated 20,160 people in the US died in motor vehicle crashes in the first half of 2021, up 18.4% over 2020. That’s the largest number of projected fatalities in that time period since 2006. The fatality rate for the first half of 2021 increased to 1.34 fatalities per 100 million VMT, up from the projected rate of 1.28 fatalities per 100 million VMT in the first half of 2020.
“This is a crisis. More than 20,000 people died on U.S. roads in the first six months of 2021, leaving countless loved ones behind. We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America,” said United States Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Continue reading
Significant 2021 Automotive Stories and Trends
We have stopped digging our environmental graveyard. Now we need to fix many things.
AutoInformed notes here, wryly, that its vision is mostly clear on the significance of long past occurrences. Nonetheless, we still attempt to bring insight into events of the time. When we get it right, on view is a richer perspective that observes the past as partial influence of the chaos of the present with glimpses through the darkness and shadows obscuring tomorrow.
With that in mind, here’s our take on the last annum of automobility, from autonomous vehicles to global warming, to driving death disasters, to trade and tariffs and, alas, to the rise of American fascism. We do this with a humble awareness that AutoInformed conducts its education in public. We begin with our comments on significant recent automotive stories as we enter another year of plagues – Covid, political, social or otherwise. Continue reading →