Fewer people died on Louisiana highways last year, compared to 2021. The reason why may surprise you.
"More people went back to their jobs in 2022, after the coronavirus pandemic," said Louisiana Highway Safety Commission spokesman Greg Fischer. "And so traffic slowed down on the interstates. More people: we have slower traffic."
The LSU Center for Analytics and Research and in Transportation Safety looked at the data and saw a significant drop in highway deaths.
"There was actually a 23.7 percent decrease in the number of people killed on the interstates," said Fischer.
He also said stepped up patrols and DWI enforcement helped, too.
"For every thousand hours of patrol, we had four fewer fatalities," Fischer said. "For every standard field sobriety test conducted, we saw three fewer fatalities."
LSP
