The Department of Transportation said highway deaths fell 10% for the first 10 months of 2008 and said it expects fatalities to be at an all-time low when the full year totals are calculated.
In a Thursday announcement, DOT said that "early estimates show that 31,110 people died on the nation’s roads," from January through October, down from 34,502 in the same period in 2007.
The fatality rate, calculated by dividing the number of fatalities by estimates of the number of miles traveled, was 1.28 per 100 million miles for the first nine months of the year, down from 1.37 per 100 million miles traveled in 2007. The agency said it had yet to calculate mileage estimates for October.
“For the second year in a row we are seeing historic lows in deaths on our nation’s roads,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said. “While we are encouraged by these declines, our work is not nearly complete in making our safe transportation network even safer.”
The figures did not specify truck deaths, but in 2007 4,808 deaths were attributed to truck crashes, or about 12% of the total number of highway fatalities.
