High gas prices could be making it safer to drive.
One study says there could be fewer than 37,000 traffic deaths for the first time since 1961.
The Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan studied traffic deaths from April of 2007 to this past April. In the first 10 months, the monthly declines averaged 4.2 percent compared to the previous year. Then, when gas prices spiked, fatalities dropped 22.1 percent in March and 17.9 percent in April of this year.
Experts who study those trends say people are reducing their non-essential driving, which is often leisure driving during riskier night and weekend hours. Teenage and elderly drivers, who are also more accident-prone, may also be cutting back more than other drivers because of high gas prices.
