Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Empty U.S. Roads Should Be Safer. They’re Not.

The coronavirus shutdowns reduced traffic, but faster driving led to an uptick in fatality rates.

June 3, 2020 at 10:30 AM EDT

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

It’s just an act.
Photographer: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images North America

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Almost three months into the coronavirus crisis finds U.S. highways with just a fraction of their pre-pandemic traffic. It would be natural to assume that should make driving safer, at least until the country is fully opened. But if anything, the roads may have gotten more dangerous.

As Bloomberg News recently reported, the National Safety Council has found that fatalities per mile driven were up 14% in March from a year earlier1:

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