Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported an estimated 10 percent increase in traffic fatalities for the first six months of 2016. NHTSA’s report was based on a statistical projection using data gathered, some of it in real time, from all 50 states. The increase is part of a trend. NHTSA reports that the second quarter of 2016 is “the seventh consecutive quarter with increases in fatalities as compared to corresponding quarters in previous years.” NHTSA said it was too early to identify a cause for the most recent uptick, but that hasn’t prevented safety advocates from working toward a solution. Before we get to potential solutions, let’s consider what happened last year. A decade of improvement was significantly eroded in 2015. NHTSA’s October report was presaged by the overview of 2015 crash data that it published in August. Last year, traffic fatalities nationwide increased by 7.2 percent. That is the largest percentage increase in nearly 50 years, since the 8.1 percent increase from 1965 to 1966. To put that in perspective, NHTSA noted that the 2015 increase reduced a “decade-long downward trend [in traffic deaths] of almost 25 percent . . . by almost one-third.” In North Carolina, 95 more people were killed in 2015 traffic crashes than in 2014 crashes, an increase of 7.4 percent. 2015 fatalities. NHTSA reported that in 2015 all categories of occupant and nonoccupant fatalities increased from the previous year. Passenger vehicle occupant fatalities increased by 6.6 percent. Motorcyclist fatalities increased [...]
Faculty Coordinators
