Deaths on U.S. roadways have seen an , despite seeing due to the . This latest spike in traffic fatalities has prompted the Department of Transportation, under the direction of former U.S. presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, to implement a new “” in an effort to curb traffic deaths.

The will be funded in part by the recently passed by the Biden administration, and it’s arranged around five major points, which Buttigieg “safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and post-crash care.” The goal of the NRSS, per Mayor Pete, is ultimately to eliminate deaths on U.S. roadways altogether. As in .

That’s an ambitious goal that lacks a timeline, but the NRSS’s is just a first step in the right direction. The figures from the DOT, which I’ve emphasized, indeed show a rise in traffic deaths that we should worry about:

The rate of roadway fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled has not substantially improved over the last ten years, and increased significantly in 2020. An estimated , of which an estimated . In the first an estimated , up 18.4 percent over 2020. That is the largest number of projected fatalities for January through June since 2006. , with millions more injured – sometimes permanently – each year. Traffic crashes are a in America, and disproportionately impact people who are Black, American Indian, and live in rural communities.

For reference, Buttigieg that Canada saw roughly half the number of traffic deaths last year, while Europe (it’s unclear if he meant the EU) saw roughly one quarter that amount. Zooming in, Buttigieg also said that Hoboken, New Jersey actually had zero traffic deaths for three years straight. So, even in a country as big as the U.S., it’s worth addressing what Mayor Pete this “national crisis.” Take a closer look at the numbers from 2020:

You can click for a look at the NRSS brief to go though the “Safer” and the “Post-Crash Care” sections of the plan. I’ll just touch on some of highlights.

Among those are plans to slow speeders down by “re-engineering roads to slow down vehicles rather than relying primarily on enforcement to manage speeding. Promote speed safety cameras as a proven safety countermeasure.”

There’s plans to begin prioritizing better-lit streets “so that lighting becomes a key design factor in roadway upgrades. Involve transit providers in Complete Streets implementation activities to support safe walking, biking, and rolling to stops.” Because pedestrians are dying in alarming numbers, also.

The NRSS will require automakers to include new information on stickers about crash safety systems, both for drivers and pedestrians. The NRSS will set new requirements for carmakers to include “Automatic Emergency Braking” and “Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking” technologies on new passenger vehicles and heavy trucks.

Buttigieg did specifically but mostly to say they are not the answer to lowering traffic deaths — not by far. If anything, the technologies that are actually going to help us are mostly from the ADAS systems that work to help drivers avoid accidents, not drive the cars for them.

Again, even if the NRSS feels like it’s too broad to help, there are always things we can do to help. At one point during his , Buttigieg mentioned three simple rules that everyone can easily follow, saying drivers “need to put down their phones, need to take their foot off the gas. And, of course, driver sober.”

So often, it’s easy to abstract away these announcements. It’s tempting to tell ourselves that the stats and figures behind the plans are far away, but they’re kind of not. Look at the traffic deaths by state to get an idea of the breakdown of those abstract, impersonal figures. And please don’t be one of them.