From October 2003 to September 2004, when troops began returning in large numbers from Iraq, 132 GIs died in vehicle accidents, a 28 percent increase from the previous year. Two-thirds of them were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Since then, crashes have claimed the lives of another 80 soldiers in seven months, up 23 percent over the same period a year earlier, and 80 percent were veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan.

And the figures don’t include GIs who recently left the service or soldiers who have been deactivated from the Army Reserve or National Guard.

Army brass fear that a safe return from a combat zone has left many soldiers feeling invincible. So they drive too fast, sometimes under the influence of alcohol, and lose control of their cars, trucks, motorcycles and ATVs.

Robert Tripp, whose son Robert Jr. died in a crash in Lake Jackson, Texas, just three days after he returned from Iraq, said, "He thought that nothing could hurt him now."

And Staff Sgt. Gregory Dickerson, a veteran of Iraq, said, "The war changes you." And going fast is "like a drug – the newest crack out there."

Vincent Withers, 27 and a veteran of Iraq, is the subject of one tragic example related by USA Today.

"Behind the wheel of a borrowed Pontiac Trans Am last June, police say, he told a passenger at a stop light just outside Fort Bragg: ‘Let's see what this thing can do before we hit the top of the hill.’

The Trans Am reached 90 mph before Withers swerved to avoid another car, hit the median and launched the Trans Am into an oncoming car, police say. Withers and the driver of the other car, a father of two, were killed," said the paper.

The surge in traffic fatalities among soldiers has prompted the Army to take action. Brig. Gen. Joseph Smith, commander of the Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker in Alabama, has enlisted epidemiologists to study the link between traffic fatalities and the war.

Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who works with the Army, confirmed that soldiers often return home with a feeling of invincibility. He said their attitude frequently is: "I’m 20 years old. I’ve lived through firefights. Nothing can touch me."

The Readiness Center has created a computer program that identifies travel risks for soldiers, an advanced driver course for GIs and a safe-driving ad campaign.

To warn soldiers of the dangers they face on the road, the Army erected billboards outside the entrance to Fort Hood in Texas. On the billboard, lights flash red or amber if a soldier has died in a vehicle accident and green if there have been no fatalities in 30 days.

The green lights haven’t flashed since January.

But its not as if the soldiers don’t know what they’re doing. "The war changes you," said Staff Sgt. Gregory Dickerson, 31, a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division – a division set to go back to Iraq later this year. "Every day I was in Iraq, I had a chance of dying – 365 days. Now, when I make it home ... you want to live."

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