Georgia on pace for 1,200 roadway deaths

I expected more traffic accidents and deaths would be the results of Georgia's decisions to raise speed limits, and to ticket people in the left lane if someone behind them wanted to go faster, even if the person ticketed were going at or over the speed limit.

By April Hunt on Wednesday, May 20th, 2015

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The state is on pace to see 1,200 people lose their lives on Georgia roads this year, Commissioner Russell McMurry said in news reports. If that happens, it would be a reversal after nine years of declines.

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As recently as January, PolitiFact Georgia confirmed that road fatalities appeared to be declining again in Georgia.

But by April, when five Georgia Southern nursing students died in a pileup crash outside Savannah, scores of single-car crashes had sent the trend line in the other direction.

As of Tuesday morning, 465 people had been killed in vehicle crashes in Georgia, state DOT data show. That’s 69 more deaths, or 17 percent more, than during the same period in 2014.

That keeps Georgia with an average of 100 deaths a month, which would result in a year-end total of 1,200 deaths for the first time since 2011.

It would also be the first year-to-year increase in nine years, as this chart shows:

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But to compare apples to apples, it’s worth calculating the rates of death as well.

That is, would the current pace create the first year deaths don’t decline relative to the number of cars on the road, too?

Yes, according to data from the state Department of Revenue.

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