Even before we saw the statistics to bear it out, responsible drivers knew that something ugly was happening on the roads. An editorial writer was pondering those statistics over the lunch hour on Tuesday, driving north on Interstate 35W from the Crosstown Highway toward downtown Minneapolis.

The posted speed limit there is 55 mph; our writer had set his cruise control to 59; and other cars were blasting past as though this were a stretch of unregulated Autobahn. Some drivers were driving not merely fast but aggressively. It's common lately to see cars and trucks maneuvering through traffic as if playing a video game, sliding across multiple lanes of highway or zooming up behind a slower car and then abruptly passing on the right.

A Toyota Corolla, a Ford pickup, a Jeep, a Camry, a Lexus, a Subaru Outback, an Audi coupe: Disregard for the posted speed limit knows no make or model.

It's a development seen all across the country. Experts attribute some of the behavior to the pandemic. The threat posed by COVID-19 can make people feel immune from prosecution for lesser, relatively mundane threats like traffic violations. Two problems with that point of view: The increase in speed is costing lives, as surely as the pandemic is; and speeders are decidedly not immune from prosecution.

That's a truth the Minnesota State Patrol hopes to hammer home in coming days, as it operates a stepped-up enforcement program on a stretch of Interstate 94 between downtown Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center. The enforcement effort, involving planes and helicopters as well as patrol cars, is also aimed at helping stem the "absolutely unacceptable levels of violent crime," said Col. Matt Langer, chief of the State Patrol.

The targeted stretch of I-94 was the scene of two shootings earlier this month. The shootings, neither of them fatal, occurred just an hour apart and were apparently unrelated. But they are shocking, and they make the enforcement effort all the more welcome. We hope the patrol follows up with similar efforts in other areas.

The need is acute. Last year, Minnesota traffic fatalities reached their highest level since 2007. Speeding contributed to the deaths of 162 people in our state. Nationwide, traffic deaths per capita rose more than 17% from the summer of 2019 to summer 2021. And pedestrian deaths have surged all across the country.

Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, called the national figures for 2021 "a crisis. We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America."

Does any of this matter at all to the driver of the VW Jetta that roared past our writer, doing at least 70? Or the GMC Denali, or the Honda Civic?

Some of the accounts of dramatic speeding during the pandemic have been breathtaking: 122 mph in Edina, 104 in Euclid, 122 near Luverne. Officers suspected that the lighter traffic during the pandemic presented some would-be speeders with a sense of opportunity.

It may also be that two years of COVID restrictions have rendered us ill-tempered — like the Minnesota shopper described in a New York Times article who threw a tantrum because a store didn't have the imported cheese he wanted to buy.

Who knows? Maybe the Nissan Versa that blew past on the approach to downtown was rushing to get a good deal on some Camembert.

But it's more likely that something has gone wrong with the social contract. Dr. David Spiegel, director of Stanford Medical School's Center on Stress and Health, told the New York Times that a "social disengagement" has taken hold during the pandemic. "There's the feeling that the rules are suspended and all bets are off," he said.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the rules are not suspended — least of all the rules of physics. Speed kills. A car that hits a pedestrian at 30 mph is more likely to kill than a car going 20. A driver who enjoys the thrill of pushing a car to its limit is more likely to die than a driver who is concentrating on getting home safely. Not that the second driver is safe from the first.

The Walter Mitty in us sometimes wishes he were an undercover trooper who could activate lights and siren and pull over the reckless drivers that put everyone else in danger. Better, though, to let the State Patrol do it, and cheer its troopers on.