You have to go back to 1944 to find nearly as few traffic fatalities through July as what Nebraska has recorded this year.
In '44, when tires and gasoline were rationed and the state had only 481,000 registered vehicles, Nebraska recorded 96 traffic deaths through July.
As of Sunday, Nebraska, which now has more than 2.2 million registered vehicles, had 95 traffic deaths.
That's good news for law enforcement officials, but it's bittersweet.
"It’s very welcomed," said Maj. Russ Stanczyk of the Nebraska State Patrol. Still, he said, "We have 93 fatalities," referring to the count as of Friday. "That’s 93 too many. We try to explain to our troopers that … each of these 93 people has a name, a family and a story.
"We want that list to be zero. We're not going to be happy until it's a fatality-free year."
Stanczyk said improvements in "the four E's" — engineering of roads and vehicles; education; emergency services; and enforcement — have helped bring down the number of traffic fatalities.
Such improvements have driven down traffic deaths nationwide. Last year, 32,788 traffic fatalities were recorded across the country, according to preliminary figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That's down nearly 25 percent from the 43,510 recorded in 2005.
Nebraska's numbers fell nearly 33 percent during that same period, dropping from 276 in 2005 to 186 last year.
Iowa's numbers also fell during the period, by about 13 percent: Iowa recorded 450 traffic deaths in 2005 and 390 last year. As of Friday, Iowa had recorded 176 traffic deaths in 2011, down from 192 through the end of July 2010.
The two biggest contributors to Nebraska's drop in traffic fatalities have been an increase in seat belt use and a reduction in alcohol-related crashes, said Fred Zwonechek, head of the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety. Since 1993, when the state's seat belt law was reinstated, seat belt use has risen from 54 percent to the 84 percent observed in 2010. Alcohol-related crashes in the state have dropped from 2,617 in 1990 to 1,687 last year.
"We continue to see improvement in both those categories," Zwonechek said. "Those are critical for us."
Last year Nebraska reached a milestone with fewer than 1 death per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, an achievement met long before the 2015 target date. Through July 2010 the state recorded 114 fatalities, so fatality numbers this year are lower than those of that record-setting year.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com
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