Total Highway Deaths Fall 3% in 2010

By Daniel P. Bearth, Staff Writer

This story appears in the April 11 print edition of Transport Topics.

The total number of people killed in traffic accidents in the United States in 2010 declined 3% from a year earlier, despite the fact that Americans drove about 20.5 billion more miles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported.

According to NHTSA’s analysis, 32,788 people died in traffic accidents last year, compared with 33,808 in 2009. Fatalities have dropped 25% since 2005, and they are down by 36% from a peak of 51,093 in 1979.

Factoring in the number of miles traveled, the fatality rate was 1.09 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2010, compared with 1.13 per 100 million miles in 2009. The rate is the lowest since the government began collecting data in 1949.

Although NHTSA’s report, based on a statistical projection of traffic fatalities in 2010, does not identify the number of fatalities in accidents involving large trucks, safety experts last week expressed optimism that the overall trend of safety improvements will continue.

“The truth is, in the United States, we have safe roadways, safe vehicles and safe drivers,” said Ralph Craft, an analyst with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Office of Analysis, Research and Technology.

“Clearly, the recession had a lot to do with it,” Craft said of the drop in overall traffic fatalities. “There were fewer trucks on the road.”

The fatality rate for truck-involved crashes hit a historic low of 1.87 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2008. Truck-miles data have yet to be released for 2009 or 2010.

Dan Murray, vice president of research for the American Transportation Research Institute, said he wasn’t surprised that the number of fatalities had gone down, but he warned that it would “get harder” to reduce the number as vehicle-miles-traveled go up.

“We’ve chopped off the low-hanging fruit,” Murray said. “We’ve increased seat-belt use. We’ve reduced driving under the influence. We’ve made technology and system changes. The easy things, we’ve accomplished.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the drop in fatalities “proves that we can make a difference,” and he pledged “to continue doing everything possible to make cars safer, increase seat-belt use, put a stop to drunk driving and distracted driving and encourage drivers to put safety first.”

Thomas Bray, a transportation safety expert at J.J. Keller & Associates, Neenah, Wis., said the economic downturn forced many trucking companies to keep older equipment in use — and yet they still managed to improve safety based on NHTSA’s projections.

“That, to me, is impressive,” Bray said.

LaHood said Americans drove about 3 trillion miles in 2010, the most since 2007 and the third-most ever.

“More driving means more wear and tear on the nation’s roads and bridges,” he said. “This new data further demonstrates why we need to repair the roads and bridges that are the lifeblood of our economy.”

NHTSA officials said the largest drop in fatalities in 2010 occurred in the Pacific Northwest states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, where the number dropped by 12%. Arizona, California and Hawaii had the next-steepest decline at nearly 11%.

Fatalities actually increased in New England, the Upper Midwest and in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, although the most fatalities (6,375) occurred in the southeastern states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee.

NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said the overall decrease in fatalities “is a good sign, but we are always working to save lives.”

NHTSA has promoted public-service campaigns to curb drunken driving and increase seat-belt use as well as encouraged the development and use of crash-prevention technology, such as electronic stability control and forward-collision and lane-departure warning systems.

DOT recently launched a campaign to discourage drivers from using cellphones and other portable electronic devices while driving.

The Federal Highway Administration said it has encouraged states to use a paving technique called “Safety Edge” in which the edge of new asphalt roadways is shaped to reduce the risk of drivers’ running off the road. The agency also promotes the use of rumble strips and cable median barriers to separate traffic and reduce the incidence of crossover head-on collisions.

“There are a lot of avenues that contribute to the [lower fatality] numbers,” said Joseph Walesewicz, president of Sabertooth Enterprise Inc., a transportation consulting firm in Stevens Point, Wis. “We have customers reducing tractor speeds” and reducing the number of deliveries made in the time allotted.

He also said fleets were using FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program data to put pressure on drivers to improve performance, and trucks are equipped with more safety technology to help drivers avoid crashes.

“The whole idea is for everyone to work together,” Walesewicz said.