U.S roads are designed in a fundamentally unsafe way (stroads in particular). In particular, the design speed of these roads are generally too high for their intended use, leading to high-speed collisions. However, on account of the inefficiency inherent in car-oriented infrastructure, these roads were often congested to the point of reducing the speed to less unsafe levels. The pandemic reduced the amount of vehicles on the road, leading to the vehicles left on the road being able to hit the unsafe design speeds again, leading to the worrying trend that we are seeing.