Summit and Wasatch Counties saw a 7-percent drop in automobile fatalities in 2018. And U-S 40 was the deadliest highway in the two-county reporting area.
The Utah Department of Transportation recently published its 2018 fatal crash statistics. 14 - people died in automobile deaths last year – 12 of them in Wasatch County. One was a pedestrian who died on SR 189. Eleven others were killed resulting from automotive crashes on U-S 40.
Summit County recorded two deaths on Interstate 80, both east of Coalville. There were no bicycle or motorcycle deaths last year in the two counties. In 2017, two died in motorcycle accidents. UDOT publishes details every year showing the causes related to fatal crashes but they rely on police reports to compile that data. According to those reports, two deaths were caused by drowsy drivers, two by excessive speed, and two by aggressive driving. UDOT’s data shows zero fatalities caused by driving under the influence. But, in October, a commercial dump truck driver slammed into a pick-up truck on US 40 killing all six occupants in the truck. THE DRIVER WHO CRASHED INTO THE TRUCK WAS CITED FOR DUI.
UDOT Safety Programs Engineer, Jeff Lewis explained why the fatality report didn’t include the DUI crash data.
“The data we sent you, showing for example, the zero alcohol related crashes, that is what our data shows. The news story came out and it became apparent from the news story that that crash was alcohol related. We don’t show that in the data officially so we’re sifting through that and those results are pending.”
Lewis says the police report left the cause of the crash blank, so UDOT didn’t publish it with the year-end statistics.
UDOT Director of Traffic and Safety, Robert Miles said crash data can show multiple contributing factors. However, he said it’s hard for law enforcement to prove that distracted driving causes accidents.“If people are reading their phone, or looking at their phone or manipulating their phone, and they bump into somebody in front of them. By the time the officer gets there they don’t know they were reading an article on their phone or they were trying to send a text or whatever it may be or reaching down to pick up their keys that may have dropped. They can’t tell that. All they can tell is what the damage has done, and they can listen to the history of what the drivers tell them. When it comes time to account for distracted driving, the numbers that show up in the record are notoriously underreported. We also know from a study called the Naturalistic Driving Study that about 70 percent of the crashes out there have some form of distraction associated with them.”
https://crashmapping.utah.gov/ is a publicly-accessible website that shows all crashes on Utah roads from 2015 through the end of 2018. Despite the state’s efforts for zero auto fatalities, there were 264 fatalities on Utah’s roads last year compared with 273 in 2017.
