A 12% rise in U.S. traffic fatalities in the first nine months of 2021 over the same period in 2020 has federal officials sounding the alarm and state officials in the region poring over crash data for causes and solutions after new federal estimates were released this month.
A Times Free Press review of crash data for Southeast Tennessee showed the pattern most pronounced in Bradley County, where the number of traffic fatalities grew from 11 in 2020 to 19 in 2021. The problem stems from increasingly heavy traffic and a continuing need for interstate improvements, according to Sheriff Steve Lawson.
“The rising volume of daily traffic coming to and from Bradley County and the increase of new infrastructure has greatly contributed to traffic crashes in our county,” Lawson said Friday by email.
The sheriff said county officers who work in local schools will join forces with the department’s traffic team to boost education and safety awareness across the community. But Lawson’s office can’t fix Bradley’s stretch of Interstate 75, which has the same two lanes in each direction it had when the interstate system was taking shape in the 1960s.
Heavy traffic on Tennessee interstates “is becoming an issue and needs attention, as our population is quickly outgrowing our roadways,” Lawson said.
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Federal officials said a comparison of the first nine months of 2020 and 2021 shows a record-breaking trend and need for infrastructure improvements.
Traffic fatalities
Statewide increase from 2020 to 2021:Tennessee: 1,217 to 1,321.Georgia: 1,700 to 1,824Source: Each state
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its early estimate of traffic fatalities for the first nine months of 2021 projecting that an estimated 31,720 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes from January through September 2021, an increase of approximately 12% from the 28,325 fatalities projected for the first nine months of 2020.
(READ MORE: Tennessee sees more traffic fatalities this year despite fewer commuters on the road)
Compared to 2020, the administration projects that during the first nine months of 2021, fatalities increased in 38 states, remained flat in two states and decreased in 10 states and the District of Columbia.
Although the federal report focused on the first nine months of the year for 2020 and 2021, the Times Free Press gathered data from Tennessee and Georgia comparing all of 2020 to all of 2021. Tennessee saw an 8.5% increase in traffic fatalities, compared to 7.3% in Georgia.
Tennessee
The upward trend in fatalities in Tennessee was already raising eyebrows a year ago when officials noted a 7% increase in deaths while travel was down about 13% with many motorists staying home during the pandemic.
The overall increase is troubling, Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Bobby Clevenger said.
He and other Chattanooga area troopers noted during the pandemic that despite fewer cars being on the road, motorists were driving faster than ever, Clevenger said Friday in a telephone interview.
“During the pandemic, we had a decrease in the traffic when the lockdown was at the highest point, but what we saw was people seem to speed up because of less traffic,” Clevenger said.
“Then as traffic started getting back up to normal capacity, it seemed like people still drove the same speeds,” he said. He said a recent trooper campaign a few months back of taking photos of observed speeds on radar to put on social media showed they might be developing a habit.
“I was amazed how many triple digits troopers were sending in to me,” Clevenger said.
(READ MORE: Pandemic set off deadly rise in speeding that hasn’t stopped)
Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Travis Plotzer said Friday in a telephone interview that people often drive at speeds that exceed road designs, and an empty road can make them more careless. Plotzer said crash causes should be studied thoroughly as officials formulate solutions.
In Bradley County, traffic fatalities increased steadily from seven in 2019 to 19 in 2021, state records show.
The Bradley County Sheriff’s Office investigated five of the county’s 19 fatal crashes in 2021. State troopers or Cleveland police investigated the others, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Alana Shell.
Lawson intends to assign school resource officers to work closely with the department’s traffic team during the summer and “will also be utilizing overtime funds from the Tennessee Highway Safety Office to monitor and correct traffic matters in our area,” Shell said, noting the office regularly distributes state safety signs and banners to remind drivers to obey traffic laws and focus on defensive driving habits.
She said the federal government’s new National Roadway Safety Strategy has implemented a new Safe System Approach that addresses roadway safety and aims to reduce serious injuries and deaths on the nation’s highways, roads and streets.
On the other side of the Cumberland Plateau, Coffee County traffic fatalities also jumped significantly, from five in 2020 to 15 in 2021.
Meigs County, while its number of deaths is in the single digits, had an increase overall from two in 2019 to four in 2020, including a school bus crash in October 2020 that killed the 53-year-old driver and a 7-year-old student. The county saw three deaths in 2021.
Georgia
Among the counties in North Georgia, Whitfield County’s traffic deaths have seen the most pronounced increase, from 13 in 2019 to 19 in 2020 and 31 in 2021.
“Unfortunately, we’re seeing an increase in traffic fatalities across the state,” Georgia Department of Transportation spokesperson Joe Schulman said. “These numbers are a sad but important reminder that whenever we are driving we need to be focused on what’s around us and do everything we can to keep not only those in our car safe, but everyone else on the road, as well.”
(READ MORE: Georgia bill spurs debate over higher fines for distracted driving)
Like Tennessee officials, Georgia officials point to driver behavior.
“We know that distracted driving is a factor in many wrecks,” Schulman said. “In Georgia, it’s against the law to have your cellphone in your hand, but people are still focusing more on their phone than on the road.”
Georgia has a battle plan.
“We have a statewide campaign, ‘Drive Alert, Arrive Alive’ that is geared toward making drivers aware of how important it is to not drive distracted,” Schulman said.
“When we think about road safety, there are three aspects to it: the roadway, the vehicle and the driver. At GDOT we are always working to make the roads and intersections safer. Drivers, of course, should keep their vehicles in good condition. As for drivers themselves, we ask that they focus on the road when they’re behind the wheel, put their phone down and make sure everyone in the vehicle is buckled up,” he said.
Alabama
Federal data for Alabama goes only through 2019, and numbers for the Chattanooga region’s DeKalb and Jackson counties show fatalities varied by no more than a handful of deaths since 2015, remaining relatively flat over the pre-pandemic, five-year period.
Federal data in the report released Tuesday shows a statewide increase of more than 10%.
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Traffic fatalities for 2022 in DeKalb County increased by one this week with a death Thursday of a Groveoak, Alabama, man who died in a single-car accident on a county road south of Geraldine when his vehicle overturned into a creek, according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.
A federal solution?
“We have to change a culture that accepts as inevitable the loss of tens of thousands of people in traffic crashes,” National Highway Transportation Safety Administration deputy administrator Steven Cliff said in the federal release. “This will require a transformational and collaborative approach to safety on our nation’s roads.”
The new National Roadway Safety Strategy announced last month means the federal department of transportation will adopt the “Safe System Approach,” which acknowledges both human mistakes and human vulnerability and designs a redundant system to protect everyone by preventing crashes and ensuring that if they do occur they do not result in serious injury or death, according to federal officials.
The strategy uses a five-pronged model to address safety: safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and post-crash care, the statement from U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said.
According to Buttigieg, key actions of the federal strategy include:
– Work with states and local road owners to build and maintain safer roadways.
– Leverage technology to improve the safety of motor vehicles on roadways.
– Invest in road safety, including a new $6 billion Safe Streets and Roads for All program.
“No longer can we as a society accept traffic deaths as routine. Every life lost is a tragedy, and we all can, should and must do more to change the culture,” Cliff said.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.