St. Louis has seen an excess of traffic deaths in recent months, and experts say it's a trend that has continued to worsen over the last few years.
As the number of drivers on the road decreased during the pandemic, the city saw an uptick in dangerous driving behavior including speeding. But as the number of drivers returned to pre-pandemic levels, those unsafe driving habits stayed high.
Corporal Dallas Thompson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol joined KMOX to talk about some of the trends in dangerous driving. He said at the beiginning of the pandemic, it was especially bad.
"We started seeing high, outrageous, high speeds on our roadways," Corporal Thompson said. "We were stopping cars at 110, 115, everyday on the speeds that, you know, that magnitude just increases the type of crash that someone's going to be involved in."
He said that trends of speeding are unfortunately still high.
"Traveling is pretty well back to pre pandemic numbers," he said. "And we're still having troopers reporting, they're stopping cars in the mid 90s, upper 90s, low one hundreds daily."
He said the troopers have started a data-driven campaign called "Show Me Zero," which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities. The program has identified which corridors have high numbers of traffic crashes and focusing on special enforcement projects for those areas.
He said for those who are driving safely, there are ways to protect yourself from reckless motorists.
"If you see those aggressive drivers or distracted drivers, put some space between you and them, a little bit of time and distance so that you have some time to react if they do mess up and are involved in a crash," he said.
Hear more from Corporal Thompson on driving behaviors and how to stay safe on the roads:
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