This week, we’re taking a look at just how bad of an issue traffic fatalities are in South Carolina.
According to a recent study from Forbes earlier this year, South Carolina ranked number one across the nation for speeding-based traffic fatalities.
South Carolina Highway Patrol Community Relations Officer Joel Hovis says traffic fatalities like these are an unfortunately common occurrence on South Carolina roads.
“It’s not unusual to respond to a collision every day; that’s pretty much one of the jobs that we do is we work traffic collisions, and some of those are fatalities,” Hovis said. “It might not happen every day, but you know if you’ve got 365 days in the year and you have approximately one thousand fatalities, you can do the math.”
He explained that speeding is one of the “four killers”, which are the most common causes of traffic fatalities, including distracted driving, seatbelt usage, and driving under the influence.
Of those, Hovis said speeding accounts for roughly 73 percent of all traffic collisions in the US according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association.
The Forbes study looked at traffic fatalities in each state in 2020. In total, South Carolina saw 1064 fatalities that year, or roughly three per day.
Of those, 494, or 46%, were speeding-related fatalities, which was the highest percentage among all states. This was an increase in 11% from the previous year.
"South Carolina, however, tops this list, with close to half of all accidents in the state resulting from excessive speed," the study reads. "The state has almost twice as many fatalities attributed to this cause than Florida, which boasts the lowest number of these types of crashes nationwide."
