Public safety officials were concerned in the beginning of the pandemic about reckless driving. Statistics show that’s still the case here in late July.
From June 22 through July 19, 15 people died in speed-related motor vehicle crashes, more than double each of the past two years. There’s also been an increase of eight year-over-year with 42 people dying on Minnesota roads during that span, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety reporting the results of its annual, statewide enhanced enforcement campaign.
“Overall crashes are down,” Mike Hanson, director of the Office of Traffic Safety at DPS, said. “Overall speed-related crashes are down. But severe and fatal crashes with speed as the contributing factor cited by law enforcement is up significantly.”
There were also four recorded incidents of people driving over 130 miles per hour.
The increase comes with consistently fewer cars on the roads. At the height of the stay at home order in mid-April, Minnesota highway traffic dipped as much as 60 percent below normal.
Fewer cars on the road opened up lane space, leading to an increase in citations for driving in excess of 100 miles per hour.
“The combination of that and that huge misperception that was out there that law enforcement is no longer working traffic, which couldn't be any further from the truth, really led to a lot of bad decisions being made on the road. Those are resulting in either very significant citations and drivers’ license revocations, or serious and fatal crashes.”
Hanson says even with the state opening up more, traffic volume is down about 10 percent of normal, but the bad and dangerous habits have continued.
“If you talk to any officer, any deputy, any trooper out there, they will tell you we cannot enforce our way out of this problem,” Hanson said. “It is too widespread and too endemic to what’s going on on our roads. What we need is a culture change in the way we look at the driving task. It’s not a competition. It’s not how fast we can get from point A to point B. It’s how safe we can get to point A to point B.