Highway deaths in Louisiana dropped in 2023. According to the National Safety Council, there was a ten percent drop in people dying in car wrecks in the Pelican State.
Mark Lambert with the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission says a lot of the credit needs to go to drivers, who are taking steps to drive safer.
"The public is really, you know, kind of said they've had enough of this," said Lambert.
He says as a result, people are making the decision not to drive intoxicated, and there have been fewer drunk driving related fatalities.
"That's where we're seeing a lot of the decreases," he said.
After a brief increase in highway fatalities towards the end of the pandemic, Lambert says law enforcement agencies are increasingly returning to strategies that helped save lives.
"Our law enforcement partners are getting back to their regular routines of doing patrols," said Lambert, like the "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" and "Click It or Ticket" campaigns. He says we're now seeing those results.
The National Safety Council says only 12 states saw decreases in car accident deaths.
Nationwide, fatal crashes are almost 14-percent higher than before the pandemic.
More than 44,000 people died in crashes in 2023.
