US secondhand/thrift store market

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Americans, when faced with economic uncertainty, simultaneously develop an inexplicable urge to both purchase other people's old trousers and, apparently, walk directly into traffic. The thrift store market and pedestrian fatalities moved together between 2012 and 2022 with the kind of synchronisation usually reserved for pairs of swans or very committed dance partners. One wonders if the universe is trying to tell us something, though what exactly remains stubbornly unclear.

The culprit is almost certainly not that secondhand shopping makes you reckless on crosswalks. Rather, both trends seem to be riding the coattails of broader economic recovery and population growth after 2008. As incomes stabilised and people ventured outdoors more frequently—hunting for bargains in thrift stores, yes, but also just existing in public spaces where cars happen to be—both metrics climbed. The pedestrian fatalities jumped from 4,743 deaths in 2012 to 6,721 by 2022; meanwhile, the thrift store market nearly doubled in value, which is to say that 130 million Americans became increasingly interested in dead people's cardigans at precisely the moment when they were spending more time on pavements.

This is what happens when you zoom out far enough to see that two entirely separate human behaviours can waltz together for a decade without actually knowing each other. It should humble us, this correlation, the way it reveals how eager we are to find meaning in coincidence. The thrift market and traffic fatalities didn't speak to each other once.