With the initial rise in COVID-19 cases in the spring of 2020, the US went from having 281 billion miles driven in April of 2019 to 168 billion miles driven in April of 2020. The April 2020 number was the lowest recorded billion miles driven monthly in quite some time according to the Federal Highway Administration. Naturally, this makes sense as employees across the United States were either furloughed, let go, or required to work from home to stop the spread of COVID-19.
While analyzing the FHA reports, you can see that since February 2020, the recent miles driven report reveals that 2020 had the lowest miles driven across the board in the last 4 years due to COVID-19. In fact, you can see a full analysis and chart of these reportings on the website of one of our pain management doctors, Dr. Harold Kraft, MD here.
What’s most interesting about these findings is that miles driven have been on an upward and steady climb since May, though still roughly 20-30 billion less than past years. However, numbers took an 11% decrease again from October to November, showing a plummet in people driving across the nation. In fact, less people drove in November 2020 than in the previous 5 months of 2020.
What does this mean? Simply, there are less people driving across the country at the end of 2020, and it looks the total number of people driving is decreasing yet again. Less people on the road could potentially mean less accidents which could also mean less personal injury and medical lien cases. Though, with the high levels of stress out there, accident cases could also remain the same, as people are less focused while driving. So, only time will tell how this decrease in driving will affect the world of personal injury.
It will be interesting to see how this affects us moving forward into the next couple of years. With an increase of people permanently working from home, will the miles driven monthly stay down, perhaps decreasing the pollution in the country? Only time will tell.
Whatever the case, if you are one of the people still out there on the road daily, stay safe! The pandemic is changing our way of life, clearly by the strong decrease in drivers, but the vaccine is coming out slowly, so there is an end in sight. Until then, stay safe! And if you do find yourself injured in an accident over this time, know that doctors are still accepting medical liens. You can find a doctor who works on a lien basis on our list of qualified medical professionals here!
