Chattanooga police are asking area drivers to slow down in response to an uptick in traffic fatalities.
Seven people have died in vehicle collisions in Chattanooga this year, compared to two by this time last year and six deaths in the first two months of 2020.
The police department invited the media to a Tuesday morning news conference to highlight the spike in fatalities in the city and to ask drivers to ease up on their gas pedals.
"Over the last year or so, we have noticed an upward trend," spokesperson Jeremy Eames said at the Police Services Center on Amnicola Highway. "There are a number of reasons ... why traffic crashes happen and why they increase, but our fatal crashes are very often impacted by speed and by the aggressiveness of drivers on our roadways."
Smart City, part of The Enterprise Center's Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative, has compiled data to predict hot spots for traffic accidents and has developed initiatives to advance more options for accessible public transit. Every traffic fatality this year can be attributed in some way to speeding, according to Smart City's findings.
"We've got to have people slow down," said Lt. Daniel Jones, who oversees the department's traffic division.
"As we have continual meetings with Lt. Jones and his team, we started to really analyze the data over the course of the pandemic," said Tyson Morris, the city's chief information officer. "And the statistics were very alarming."
According to Eames, who didn't release more information on the case because it is under investigation, the most recent traffic fatality happened this past weekend. Before that, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office reported a traffic fatality in a Feb. 4 crash on Hixson Pike that left one person dead and three injured.
"In 2020, we did have one crash that had multiple fatalities in it, but essentially right now, those fatalities that we are working this year have all been single-vehicle [crashes], or just one person that was killed," Jones said, further stating that while speeding has increased overall in Chattanooga, there are certain roadways such as Lee and Amnicola highways where people tend to speed more often while driving.
"During the pandemic, we didn't have a lot of traffic out there, with everybody basically staying at home sheltering," Jones said. "During that time, a lot of folks were driving, and when they were driving, there wasn't anybody out there, so that volume of traffic allowed you to think that, 'Well, I can go a little bit faster.' Well, unfortunately, now the volume [of drivers has] picked back up since the pandemic. Those folks that are out there driving currently ... are still staying at the same speeds that they were whenever they were driving during the pandemic."
The city's statistics on traffic fatalities include pedestrians who have been struck and killed by vehicles. Chattanooga is working with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to pinpoint which areas are more dangerous to pedestrians, according to Morris and Kevin Comstock, director of Smart City.
"We have a meeting to go over these incidents, every single one of them, and looking at [how] we fix this." Comstock said. "Sometimes, it was better lighting, sometimes it's a slightly shortened crosswalk. There's different methodologies that we can utilize."
Jones added the police department will be giving out more speeding citations to drivers.
"It's unacceptable," he said. "Why? It's because your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, they are the ones that are out there on the roadways that are driving. And I don't want to have to go to your parents, to your loved one, to have that conversation saying [their] loved one passed away because either they or someone else was speeding."
Contact La Shawn Pagán at lpagan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow her on Twitter @LaShawnPagan.