US traffic fatalities

We have now confirmed that as the world generates more data—an activity that mostly involves uploading photos of meals and arguing with strangers—more Americans die in traffic. The correlation covers only eight years, which is barely enough time to form a habit, let alone a cosmic law, but the trend line is steep enough to make you want to put your phone in the glove compartment. It is the kind of statistic that feels true even before you check the math, which is exactly when you should check the math.

Both lines bend sharply in 2020, and both bends point back to the same cause. Global data creation ballooned as an entire workforce moved online, while US traffic fatalities — remarkably — rose even as miles driven fell, because empty roads produced faster, riskier driving. One metric measured everyone who stayed home; the other measured what happened when the people who didn't took the whole highway to themselves.

Eight data points is a whisper, not a speech, but this particular whisper is loud enough to hear. The data explosion and the traffic fatality crisis are both consequences of a world that moves faster than its safety systems were designed to handle. We are drowning in information and crashing on highways, and the connection between the two is not causation but chronology. The zettabytes keep piling up.