County roads are deadliest in the state

By Ethan Smith

Leader Staff

The writing was on the wall last summer, and statistics released for 2006 confirm the bad news — Lake County had the deadliest roads in the state last year.

Overall, District 6 of the Montana Highway Patrol — which includes Flathead, Lake, Sanders and Lincoln counties — led the state with 65 total vehicle fatalities last year, almost double the next highest district, and more than a third of those were in Lake County.

Lake and Gallatin counties both had 22 fatalities, second highest in the state, while Flathead County had 30. However, when analyzed on a per-capita basis, Lake County’s death toll is substantially higher than the other two counties, which have almost triple the population, according to Census Bureau data.

Overall, District 6 has a population of 141,000 people, while Lake County only accounts for about 31,000 of that — a fraction of the residents in Kalispell and Bozeman, the two largest cities in Flathead and Gallatin counties.

The county’s vehicle fatality rate spiked last August and September, when nine people were killed in a 25-day period that started Aug. 28, and at least seven of those fatalities involved alcohol. According to local MHP troopers, it was the highest death toll for one month in Lake County, since crash data was recorded starting in 1935.

Prior to 2006, the worst year for the district was in 2003, when 59 people were killed, but that number was matched by October of last year.

The state and county crash data comes via an annual report put out by MHP. According to that data, District 6 has led the state in vehicle fatalities for the past three years, reflecting continued population growth in Flathead County and the fact that Hwy. 93 traverses both counties.

With its long stretches of open road, Hwy. 93 continues to be one of the deadliest in the state, trooper Jim Sanderson said.

“When we look at a map of all our vehicle crashes, we see a majority of crashes in urban areas, but when you analyze the crashes that were fatalities, most of them are in rural areas,” he said. “That’s attributable to a higher rate of speed.”

While speed is a primary factor, impaired driving is right up there for vehicle fatalities, especially in Lake County. Locally, alcohol and/or drugs were a factor in more than half of the county’s 22 fatalities last year.

“If you look at all the crashes last year, you’d have to attribute alot of it [the high rate of fatalities] to driving while impaired,” Sanderson said.

The 22 fatalities last year were caused by 16 accidents, meaning that at least six other people died in an accident caused by one person. Of the nine deaths in last year’s 25-day period, four of them were passengers or drivers of other vehicles who were killed by someone under the influence of alcohol.

While the 22 vehicle-related deaths in Lake County last year contributed to the record trend in the district, it did not surpass the county death toll of 23 set in 2003.

For the district as a whole, 28 MHP troopers made 17,248 traffic stops, issued 13,433 tickets, and gave 21,453 warnings.

Statewide, there were 263 fatalities in 226 crashes, up by 1.05 percent from 2005. On average, there were 61 crashes a day, or one every 24 minutes.

Fatal crashes are most likely to occur between midnight and 1 a.m. and noon and 2 p.m., on Saturday more than any other day of the week, and in July compared to other months, according to the data.

The Fourth of July is typically the deadliest holiday, followed by Labor Day, while New Year’s has the lowest fatality rate of all major holidays, according to data from 2002-2006.