--- title: The Death Toll of a Mass Shooting Doesn’t End at the Scene description: New research suggests that on the day after the deadliest mass shootings, fatal car crashes rise across the country, write Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, and Anupam B. Jena. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/08/09/the-death-toll-of-a-mass-shooting-does-not-end-at-the-scene/ author: Vishal R. Patel article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-08-09T10:00:04.846Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-09T10:00:08.754Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Death Toll of a Mass Shooting Doesn’t End at the Scene og:description: New research suggests that on the day after the deadliest mass shootings, fatal car crashes rise across the country, write Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, and Anupam B. Jena. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/08/09/the-death-toll-of-a-mass-shooting-does-not-end-at-the-scene/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6916769056a2e39/6a74b3c60d7118630de4e809/pulse-shooting.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: pulse-shooting.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Death Toll of a Mass Shooting Doesn’t End at the Scene twitter:description: New research suggests that on the day after the deadliest mass shootings, fatal car crashes rise across the country, write Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham, and Anupam B. Jena. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6916769056a2e39/6a74b3c60d7118630de4e809/pulse-shooting.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  IDEAS Time ideas # The Death Toll of a Mass Shooting Doesn’t End at the Scene > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Vishal R. Patel](https://time.com/author/vishal-r-patel/), [Christopher M. Worsham](https://time.com/author/7198766/) and [Anupam Jena](https://time.com/author/anupam-b-jena/) Aug 9, 2026 10:00 AM UTC  Police stand behind a crime scene tape near the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on in Orlando, Fla. on June 12, 2016. Police stand behind a crime scene tape near the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on in Orlando, Fla. on June 12, 2016. Mandel Ngan—AFP via Getty Images by [Vishal R. Patel](https://time.com/author/vishal-r-patel/), [Christopher M. Worsham](https://time.com/author/7198766/) and [Anupam Jena](https://time.com/author/anupam-b-jena/) Aug 9, 2026 10:00 AM UTC When a mass shooting tears through an American community, we count the dead. That number—[26 at Sandy Hook Elementary](https://time.com/3449676/the-story-behind-the-iconic-photograph-from-sandy-hook/), [49 at Pulse nightclub](https://time.com/7293713/pulse-nightclub-shooting-what-comes-next/), [58 in Las Vegas](https://time.com/5119396/las-vegas-tribute-grammys/)—becomes the headline, the official measure of the scope of the horror. But anyone who has watched the alerts pile up on their phone, felt their stomach drop, and struggled to focus for the rest of the day knows the damage doesn’t stop at the victims. It ripples outward across the country, affecting in one way or another millions of Americans who were nowhere near the scene. Intuitively, we can all sense the broader harm, but it is remarkably hard to measure. Nearly [two-thirds of Americans](https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2024/2024-stress-in-america-full-report.pdf) say mass shootings are a significant source of stress in their lives. Researchers have found that after these events, [antidepressant use rises](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2000804117) among teenagers living near a school shooting. Gun purchases made in response to events have been shown, grimly, to lead to still [more accidental gun deaths](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aan8179). In a recent study published in [_JAMA Psychiatry_](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2851368), we set out to measure another channel through which a mass shooting’s harm could quietly spread: deaths on the road. At first glance, it might seem like mass shootings and car crashes have little to do with each other. But decades of research show that stress and distraction make drivers more dangerous, and driving is one of the riskiest things most Americans do every day. In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, [fatal crashes rose](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0956797612447804) in part because travelers traded planes for cars—but there was also evidence of an increase in crashes per mile driven, an increase believed to be linked to the fear and stress that spread nationwide. We wondered whether the country’s deadliest shootings might leave a similar mark. To find out, we used a federal database that logs every fatal crash on U.S. roads combined with FBI data on mass shootings over a 15-year period. We compared the number of traffic deaths in the days just before each shooting with the number the day after the shooting. Why the day after? Because that’s when the nation pays the most attention. As part of our study, we analyzed Google search traffic data, which showed that the day after a mass shooting is when Google searches for “shooting” peak, and when media coverage floods the news and social media. If a shooting were going to affect how the country drives, the day after is when we’d expect to see it. Because the timing of a mass shooting is essentially random with respect to the nation’s driving habits, what’s called a “[natural experiment](https://time.com/article/2026/08/03/clinical-trials-aren-t-the-only-way-to-know-if-flu-shots-work/)” takes place. This lets the calendar stand in for a controlled experiment. The days surrounding each shooting form built-in comparison groups, so any jump on the day after stands out against the typical daily patterns in road deaths. The result was sobering. On the day after the 10 mass shootings with the most fatalities, traffic deaths rose by an average of 14.3%, about 20 additional deaths nationwide. Put another way, the extra deaths on the road equaled roughly 75% of the number of people killed in the shootings themselves. Any surprising result invites an obvious question: Could it be a coincidence? To find out, we repeated the analysis 10,000 times, substituting fake, random dates for the dates of mass shootings. A spike as large as the one we observed arose only once in 10,000 iterations, making it clear that our findings were highly unlikely to have occurred by chance. The increase held across nearly every kind of driver, region, and weather condition, and it persisted even in states far from the shooting, which argues against local explanations like road closures or emergency response. And when we examined active-shooter incidents with no fatalities—events that drew much less public attention—we observed no rise in traffic deaths. Our study, however, cannot tell us exactly why this happens, and it cannot trace any single crash to any single driver’s state of mind. Grief, anxiety, a phone lighting up with notifications, or distraction behind the wheel could all play a role; some mix is likely at work, and we cannot fully untangle them. But the larger lesson here does not hinge on the mechanism. The toll of a mass shooting is bigger than the number in the headline, and much of it remains invisible until we go looking for it in unexpected places. That is the hard part of studying a national tragedy. The stress and distraction that a shooting spreads across the whole country cannot be seen the way we can see a wound. But we can see its footprints in the form of antidepressant prescriptions filled, in accidental gun deaths, and, as we now show, in lives lost on the road. Each study captures only a sliver of the whole, which may be larger yet. Of course, none of this diminishes the core tragedy of a mass shooting. But it should change how we picture its scale. When we count only those killed at the scene, we undercount, and what we choose to count shapes what we choose to do about it. Seeing the fuller toll and how quickly these tragedies move through a highly interconnected country might help us respond more thoughtfully, whether in the media, on Capitol Hill, or in our homes and communities. [TIME Ideas](https://www.time.com/ideas) hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. 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