Delaware’s roads growing more dangerous

Fatalities on Delaware roads and highways shot through the roof in 2014 compared to the previous year. The 125 highway fatalities total in 2014 was a 24 percent increase over the 101 recorded on Delaware’s highways in 2013.

The fatalities are bad enough, but statistics from the state’s Office of Highway Safety indicate that the number of impaired drivers involved in fatal accidents in 2014 was up to 59 compared to 47 the year before.

Alison Kirk, spokesperson for the highway safety office, said speeding on secondary roads and aggressive driving figure into the 2014 increases, along with the greater numbers of impaired drivers involved in fatal accidents.

The final numbers for 2014 also show an increase in pedestrian fatalities, from 26 in 2013 to 27 in 2014. Bicycle fatalities also increased, from 2 in 2013 to 3 in 2014.

The only bright spot in the 2014 final numbers - if you can call it that - was a significant decrease in the number of motorcycle fatalities. Those numbers decreased from 20 in 2013 to 15 in 2014.

There’s no question that the most dangerous thing most of us do every day is getting behind the wheel of an automobile and driving 50, 60 and 70 miles an hour in the midst of other drivers doing the same thing in the same and opposite direction. It’s impossible to be too careful.

We also have a lot of intersections where people get stuck in traffic and grow increasingly impatient as they wait to cross or pull out into traffic. It’s then that bad decisions are made, leading to serious and sometimes fatal crashes.

Based on these numbers, Delaware obviously needs to increase its efforts to reduce the amount of drunk driving. Maybe more checkpoints, maybe more awareness campaigns, maybe more educational programs in our schools, maybe more careful screening of who we allow to have driver’s licenses.

Bottom line: Delaware’s roads are becoming more dangerous, and we all need to be more careful so we don’t end up in next year’s statistics.