The Reckless Driver Narrative: 2022 in Review

(Source: Samuele Errico Piccarini/Unsplash.)

Many on the team are sharing their favorite articles of the year, but I want to take a moment to point out the progress we made this year countering the Reckless Driver™ narrative that safety officials were pushing at the end of 2021.

During the pandemic, driving went way down, but driving-related fatalities went way up. That is so counterintuitive to every prevailing theory of traffic safety that something had to be wrong. At Strong Towns, we know what that something is (the prevailing theory is wrong) but for those deeply embedded in the business of moving a high volume of motor vehicles at speed, the idea that our transportation system is dangerous by design is too challenging to be taken seriously. There just had to be a different explanation.

Enter the Reckless Driver™, the avatar of evil on our roadways and the perfect scapegoat. Emboldened by a broad breakdown of social norms and expectations, the Reckless Driver™ is speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, driving distracted and impaired, and being a menace to society. It is the Reckless Driver™ who is causing the increase in traffic fatalities on our otherwise safe streets, or so the story goes.

And what a seductive story it was. We’ve all experienced reckless driving in our lives, been the victim of someone driving dangerously or aggressively around us. It’s not hard to visualize the Reckless Driver™, someone aggressive and selfish, now licensed by whatever brand of politics and culture one fears, to drive without care for those around them. As one safety official was quoted last December in the L.A. Times:

[Reckless driving] is a symptom and a sign of the overall lack of consideration we’re showing for other citizens, whether it be wearing masks, or not getting vaccinated, or how we drive. It’s very aggressive. It’s very selfish.

If someone official tells Americans that the problem is the Reckless Driver™, few will have any difficulty believing it. We’re all primed for that story.

Yet, as we have long pointed out, by the official definition, we are all reckless drivers. Ponder your own behavior. Who reading this article, when noticing a police cruiser parked on the side of the road, doesn’t immediately look down at their speedometer to check whether they are compliant with the law? Reckless driving behavior—exceeding the posted speed limit, being not 100% alert, having some distraction—is ubiquitous. We’re all one random incident away from being in the wrong place at the wrong time and becoming the statistical Reckless Driver™. 

As I wrote in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, the cost of a mistake should not be that high. We must have a transportation system where the price for common errors is paid in fender benders and shattered headlights, not human lives and suffering. That’s a different transportation system, one with a different set of underlying values. The Reckless Driver™ narrative stifles serious introspection and prevents us from getting to a better approach.

So, my top articles of the year are the story arc that got us to a major New York Times article published last month, one that modestly genuflects to the Reckless Driver™ meme but then pushed way beyond to the insights and reforms that need to happen. This is what winning looks like. These insights from the article come right out of Strong Towns talking points from the earliest days of the pandemic: 

On empty pandemic roads, it was easy to see exactly what kind of transportation infrastructure the U.S. had built: wide roads, even in city centers, that seemed to invite speeding. By the end of 2020 in New York, traffic fatalities on those roads had surged from prepandemic times.

“We have a system that allows this incredible abuse, if the conditions are ripe for it,” Mr. Freemark said.

And that’s precisely what the conditions were during the pandemic. There was little congestion holding back reckless drivers. Many cities also curtailed enforcement, closed DMV offices and offered reprieves for drivers who had unpaid tickets, expired drivers’ licenses and out-of-state tags.

The pandemic made more apparent how much American infrastructure contributes to dangerous conditions, in ways that can’t be easily explained by other factors.

1. “Driving Went Down. Fatalities Went Up. Here's Why.”

Americans drove less during the early months of pandemic, yet traffic fatalities increased—and have yet to go back down. And the “official” explanations for it are completely wrong.

2. “The Reckless Driver! TM Narrative.”

After no major media would talk to us about the “reckless driver” phenomenon—even reporters and publications we had a relationship with—we turned to our friends at Epsilon Theory, a financial analysis site specializing in how narratives shape society and markets. It was the perfect place to share these insights.

3. “The Reckless Driver Narrative Is Reckless. Stop Spreading It.”

If we want safe and productive streets, we have to focus on the deadly design of our public spaces and not be distracted by the scapegoating narrative of the “reckless driver.”

Next month, we launch the National Crash Analysis Studio to demonstrate a replicable model local communities can adopt to learn from crashes in their community, and then use those insights to improve their street design and safety practices. The top-down narrative can deliver us safety messages to supposed reckless drivers all they want; it won’t matter because strong towns across North America will be working to build safe and productive streets.

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