Death toll on Delaware roads on rise

• Delaware is on pace to hit 128 traffic deaths in 2014%2C the highest since 2006.
• Twelve multi-fatality wrecks caused 25 deaths.
• The likelihood of crashes increases during the holidays.
• Impairment played a role in 45 percent of road deaths this year.

With two weeks to go in the year, traffic deaths on Delaware roads are up 23 percent over the same period in 2013, according to state data.

Through Wednesday, police had reported 108 fatal crashes resulting in 121 lives lost on Delaware roads, including seven in the last week. Considering crash trends, the state is on pace to hit 128 deaths in 2014, according to the Delaware Office of Highway Safety.

"We have had an abnormally high number of multi-fatality crashes – multiple fatalities in a single crash," said Jana Simpler, director of the state Office of Highway Safety.

Twelve crashes this year involved more than one death, including the tour bus rollover on Sept. 21 that killed three passengers, according to preliminary figures.

That is twice the average of six multi-fatality crashes a year in Delaware over the last five years, said engineer Adam Weiser, director of traffic safety programs for the state Department of Transportation.

A particularly deadly three weeks in the spring recorded five double fatals, including the deaths of a Milford principal and her 10-year-old daughter near Frederica on April 11; a pair of motorcyclists broadsided near Georgetown on April 27; and a couple killed in early May after their SUV went airborne and struck the girders of a bridge along Del. 273 near Christiana.

"That was an alarming trend. What's going on here? But when you look at it, they're different types of crashes," Weiser said. "That makes it harder for us to try to address, unfortunately."

Many of the double fatals were "road departure" or "run off the road" crashes, meaning a vehicle left its travel lane. They are a particularly deadly breed of crash, including rollovers and cases where a vehicle runs off the road and strikes an object such as another car, utility pole or tree.

Delaware recorded a 50-year low of 101 traffic deaths last year. The state averaged 112 deaths a year for the previous five-year period (2008-12).

Through 2014, pedestrian fatalities were trending down until this month. Six pedestrians have died since Dec. 3, including the 37-year-old man crushed beneath a train car at a railroad crossing in Wyoming on Sunday.

Motorcycle deaths are down 25 percent to 15. Bicyclist deaths are unchanged from 2013 with two fatalities.

Speeding, reckless driving, pedestrian error, or driver inattention and fatigue caused most of the fatal collisions. Forty-three percent of those killed were not wearing seat belts – a higher rate than 2013.

"The speeding issue remains a concern for us," Simpler said. "As a result, we've enhanced our mobilizations to include more speed enforcement in the coming year," as well as educational outreach and print, video and digital ads.

Alcohol impairment played a role in at least 45 percent of road deaths this year, but that doesn't account for 20 cases in which police are still investigating.

The likelihood of crashes increases on weekends and during the holiday season. Police have scheduled special patrols and checkpoints targeting impaired drivers through Jan. 1. Grants from Simpler's office will cover additional costs for police overtime at 30 agencies across the state.

A drunken motorist driving the wrong way on I-95 in Philadelphia killed himself and 23-year-old Michael Ingram II of Newark in a head-on crash on Thanksgiving Day in 2010.

Ingram had played baseball for Delaware State University. He was hoping to attend law school and become a sports agent, his father, Mike Ingram, said.

"My son was actually doing the right thing. He was the designated driver for his crew," Ingram said.

"The day we went to the hospital, he just looked like he was sleeping."

Ingram said he grows anxious each year as the holidays and the anniversary of his son's death approach. Reading about others killed in car wrecks is difficult, especially when the victims are young like Michael. Ingram knows the pain and frustration those families face.

"I've wanted to hate this guy who killed my son," Ingram said. "In the past, I was looking to see if he's a bad dude, but as far as I can tell, he was a good guy who just did a terrible thing."

In Delaware, officers have made more than 3,840 arrests for DUI so this year, said Alison Kirk, spokeswoman for the Delaware Office of Highway Safety.

While 96 percent of U.S. drivers believe it's unacceptable for someone to drive when they've had too much to drink, 1 in 8 motorists admitted to driving under the influence, and 1 in 10 said they'd done so more than once in the past year, according to research by AAA.

"Driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do, yet we can become complacent to the serious hazards around us like impaired, aggressive, distracted or drowsy drivers," Jim Lardear of AAA Mid-Atlantic said.

Sean P. Lugg, traffic safety resource prosecutor with the Attorney General's Office, said the state is working to reduce impaired driving and other "enhanced recklessness" on the road such as speed, aggressive driving or inattentiveness.

"It's so controllable by the individual," Lugg said. I can't stress enough that if people would just take that little bit of time and think about what they're doing before they get behind the wheel, I think it would surely reduce the number of fatals we see on an annual basis."

Lugg encourages motorists to call and report aggressive or reckless drivers that they see on the highways, in an an effort to make the roads safer for all and prevent future traffic deaths.

Crash witnesses also hold potentially key information for cops who can't "canvass" a roadway in the manner they would canvass a neighborhood in other crime investigations, Lugg said.

"Those callers are an incredible piece of evidence – to know what that person was doing before the fatal result," Lugg said.

"These are very public crimes, in the sense that it's happening on an open roadway with lots of potential witnesses, and it's just so important that people who observe things pertaining to that crash do take that step."

DelDOT engineers are evaluating possible changes to improve safety at high-crash locations such as the intersection of Paper Mill and Possum Park roads, where 23- and 22-year-old sisters Ashlyn and Devyn Sisson of Pike Creek died in a March 21 wreck.

Along a dangerous stretch of Kirkwood Highway/Del. 2, engineers are looking to add more crosswalks and other pedestrian-friendly improvements, Weiser said. DelDOT also plans to install more rumble strips along select arteries.

Contact Melissa Nann Burke at (302) 324-2329, mburke@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @nannburke.

DELAWARE TRAFFIC DEATHS

Source: Delaware Office of Highway Safety