Gas is currently at its cheapest since 2009, and Americans couldn’t be happier. The 2014 holiday season saw 98.6 million—the most people ever—traveling, and 89.5 million of those people did so with a road trip. Not coincidentally, gas was also at its lowest for the holiday season since 2009, and since then it’s dropped even lower. As of this writing, gas sits at a national average of $2.05, and according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “the average U.S. household is expected to spend about $550 less on gasoline in 2015 compared with 2014, as annual motor fuel expenditures are on track to fall to their lowest level in 11 years.” $550! So, what are we going to do with all these savings, aside from blow it on fast food and online shopping? Not to be a downer here, but the answer is die violent deaths due to our own recklessness. In an NPR interview with South Dakota State University sociologist Guangqing Chi, the relationship between gas prices and road fatalities in the United States was shown to be inversely linked: the lower the price of gas, the higher the amount of traffic fatalities. Quantifying this suggests, per Chi, “A $2 drop in gasoline price can translate to about 9,000 road fatalities per year in the U.S.” To put this in context, in 2010, there were about 5,419,000 crashes, 30,296 of which were fatal, for a total of 32,999 fatalities. That’s a 27% increase! 27% is a lot, and I know you know this because of all of the online shopping you’ve been blowing your extra gas money on. So why does cheap gas correlate to an increase in deaths? You’re probably smugly saying to yourself that of course there are more road deaths with everyone and their elderly, blind mother and/or sociopathic teenage brother on the road thanks to the sweet deal afforded to us by OPEC. I walk pretty much everywhere I go, but gas prices like this make me want to reinstitute the ol’ Sunday drive. Clearly, we can surmise that a great amount of any increase in traffic fatalities can be attributed at least partially to the simple fact that more people are on the road. But according to Chi, that’s not the only factor. He says that not only are people driving more, they’re driving differently. He uses himself as an example:

In the past, when the gasoline price is not that high, I go to office. I go home. I go shopping. I go home. I pick up my kid from day care. Then I go home. But now, with the gasoline price so high, I try to do all the things together—just do it in one trip.

He’d also drive in a way that maximized gas efficiency: accelerating slowly, maintaining a steady speed, etc. Of course, this sort of driving is not just efficient—it’s safer. As with so many things in this world, people aren’t concerned with safety for safety’s sake. This is why we have fines for speeding, running red lights, and jaywalking. I’m a fairly highly educated, paranoid person, and I used to habitually not wear my seatbelt. It wasn’t until I received a $129 fine that I started to wear it every time I’m in a car, even though I was well-aware of how insanely dangerous it was for me to be in a car unrestrained. To start taking my safety seriously, I had to be hit where it hurt the most: my cold, cheap little heart. Which is where I keep my money. Seatbelts are obvious as a safety measure. Outside of a reckless driving charge, though, there aren’t really laws to keep you from gunning your engine once the light turns green. This means that this more subtle form of safe driving, the type that grows out of thriftiness, has to be self-regulated. Only you know how much it’s hurting your gas budget from week to week, because police aren’t giving tickets for leaving your car running while you run back into the house to grab the sandwich that you forgot on the counter. When gas is cheap, it’s easy to think about the money you save by shutting your car off while waiting in the bank drive-through line. When it’s under $2 a gallon, it may suddenly seem reasonable to engage in some light street racing. OK, street racing is a little extreme. For you. (Since you’re reading about gas prices and safety, I’m guessing you’re probably not a huge risk-taker.)  But you know who doesn’t think it’s dumb to try to keep the stranger in the next lane from passing you? Teenagers. Teenagers are already disproportionately more likely to die in a car accident than the rest of the population, so much so that it’s the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 16 and 19. Teenagers don’t have jobs anymore, so not only are teenagers more likely to be affected by gas prices and therefore driving much more, they also do stupid stuff like casually race strangers or practice brake torquing.* Not surprisingly, Chi finds that the risk for teenagers and people in their twenties goes up sharply when gas prices fall. Even if you’re not a young person whose brain isn’t fully developed (and yet we’re still allowing you to drive a tiny metal box at 70 mph! What are we thinking?!), if you’re not rich, the risk is higher for you, too. Poor people are also increasingly on the road more with falling gas prices, and they’ll also be paying a lot less attention to how far in advance of a stop light they’re braking, just like everybody else. The risk for rich people is much more likely to stay the same because they’ve never had to worry about saving a few bucks by using cruise control. Outside of monetizing your driving style, how can you be safer on the road? First, stay home and hide from this world of chaos. Second, pretend that a cop is behind you at all times. That paranoid feeling that you’ve just been called to the principal’s office is very effective at making you drive as if you’re taking your learner’s permit test.  Third, drive recklessly in front of a cop so they give you a ticket.** The ensuing despair at having to pay a fine for your bad behavior has worked well for me in the past (see above), and I’m much safer for it. For real, though, no matter how much money you’re saving at the pump these days, pretend that gas is $5 a gallon. Cheap driving and safe driving are one and the same. You can read more safe/cheap driving tips at fueleconomy.gov. Or just wait! As of yesterday, gas prices have stopped falling, and rumors of a future spike in oil prices abound. In the meantime, when you have gas money to burn, don’t drive it like you stole it. Drive it like you’re a very responsible poor person with a fully-matured brain.   *Full disclosure: I once practiced brake torqueing because my husband and I were trying to think of something to do for a date that didn't involve spending money, and that's what we came up with. So this sort of goes against my argument that brake torqueing is for the frivolous. Or that only teenagers do it. Our brains were definitely fully matured at the time of said brake torqueing. **Do not drive recklessly. I was making a dumb joke to prove a point. This is an article on safe driving, for God’s sake.