Like a lot of us trying to stay sane during the pandemic, I take daily walks. And I’ve noticed that while more people are on the sidewalks getting their exercise, the people in cars seem to have forgotten how to drive.

Early this month, a car started to go through a crosswalk when I was still in it. I hit the car harder than it hit me, since I smacked its hood with both hands, Ratso Rizzo style, to stop it. “I’m WALKIN’ here!” was the least salty thing I shouted through the window.

I had seen the car slowing down for the stop sign at the corner, which was by a park, and was sure that the driver had seen me. It was a clear morning, and I was wearing a colorful scarf that would be hard to miss in a snowstorm. Apparently, the driver thought that it was enough to stop at the sign — he didn’t have to look and see if anything was in his path. He did not open his window to apologize and looked surprised that I was upset.

The driver was a youngish man, with an ’80s pompadour (kind of like Steve’s in the Netflix series “Stranger Things”) and round, Warby Parker-style tortoise shell glasses. I almost got run down by someone who looked like he had cheated off my math test in high school.

I didn’t spot a cellphone in his lap, so maybe he was just ordinarily oblivious, not cellphone-oblivious. I couldn’t get a plate number — not that it would have mattered. I wasn’t hurt, so the police wouldn’t have cared.

But I cared. I was mystified that people can’t even trust using a crosswalk at a stop sign by a park. What if it had been a little kid in the crosswalk? And I wondered — are people driving worse because of the pandemic?

They are.

Citywide, traffic crash fatalities have gone up during the pandemic, despite the lower number of cars on the road. Between April 1 and Nov. 30, Chicago saw 98 traffic fatalities, compared with 68 for the same period in 2019, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Dangerous driving behavior is also being seen nationally. The National Safety Council, an advocacy group, found that in the first nine months of the year, the number of miles driven is down 14.5%, while fatalities are up 5%. The death rate per miles driven is up 23%. Usually, when more people aren’t driving in a recession, fewer people die, said Council statistics manager Ken Kolosh. “It’s really unique,” Kolosh said.

What’s going on? One issue seems to be lack of congestion, which leads to excessive speeds, said Gary Hallgren, president of Arity, a driving analytics company and subsidiary of Allstate.

Other factors could be more alcohol and drug use, distractions and stress, safety advocates say.

Traffic is also spread out more throughout the day, instead of just at rush hour, because of people having different schedules. The Active Transportation Alliance found that 40% of the city’s pedestrian fatalities happened in the afternoon. “You’d think it would be at night,” said advocacy director Alex Perez. “It could be more people speeding and not paying attention.”

The Alliance recommends that everyone pay more attention, regardless of the time of day. The Alliance also wants more traffic-calming devices, the kind that can be put up cheaply and easily, using paint and plastic bollards to create “pedestrian islands” and curb bump-outs on wide streets where cars tend to go faster, Perez said.

Everyone is tired and stressed — lots of people are out of work or have seen cuts to income, or have been sick, or have lost loved ones to the virus. Riding in a car seems like a time of relative freedom, when you can listen to music and be in your own little world. Car commercials actually play on this theme — showing harried moms escaping from their squabbling families by going out to sit in their cars.

But it’s not your own little world. When you’re driving your car, you’re propelling a 2-ton weapon into a public space, and you can cause death or disabling injury to yourself and/or someone else in the blink of an eye. I know there’s a pandemic and we’ve all just had it. But please be careful, and if you can’t pay attention, don’t drive.

Emergency departments have enough to deal with right now.