Traffic fatalities in Arkansas in 2013 fell to an estimated 490, the lowest in more than 50 years, according to a preliminary count released Wednesday by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
The total represents a 12.5 percent decline in deaths on state roadways from 2012, when 560 people died in traffic crashes.
The Arkansas State Police’s preliminary death tally put the number at 474, but the Highway Department said it rounded the figure up to 490 to account for any year-end discrepancies.
The last time the number of annual traffic deaths was that low was in 1961, when the state recorded 458. That year, Arkansas motorists drove 7.5 billion vehicle miles and the number of fatalities per 100 million miles traveled was 6.1. Last year, state motorists drove an estimated 33.9 billion vehicle miles, or more than four times as many as they did 52 years ago. The preliminary fatality rate for 2013 is 1.45, which is four times less than the 1961 fatality rate.
There likely is no one factor for the plunge in the Arkansas traffic fatalities, state highway officials said Wednesday at a meeting of the Arkansas Highway Commission. The numbers were released during an overview of the state’s use of federal highway safety money.
It probably is some combination of safer vehicles, better driver behavior and better-designed roads, they said.
“Better facilities, better equipment and better behavior,” said Randy Ort, a department spokesman.
Scott Bennett, the Highway Department director, said all of the elements of the state highway safety plan released last year are working “to save as many lives as we can.
“What it tells me from an our overall standpoint, our safety program is working,” he said. “It’s just not infrastructure. It’s working on the human element. It’s legislation. It’s health, the statewide trauma system. Law enforcement. First responders.”
In the years leading up to 2013, the state adopted a law making failure to wear a seat belt a primary offense and developed a statewide trauma system.
But state highway officials said they couldn’t help but notice the decrease in fatalities also coincided with an initiative to install cable-median barriers on much of the interstate system in Arkansas.
The reduction last year “is significant,” said Lori Tudor, the department’s chief engineer for planning. “The biggest infrastructure change we made in the last two years was cable-median barriers. I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to say they were a factor.”
Since December 2012, the department has installed nearly 300 miles of cable-median barriers, Bennett said.
Last year, agency officials announced they were going to install more than 400 miles of cable barriers on interstate medians over the next three years as part of a new initiative to reduce fatalities from head-on collisions and other crashes in which vehicles leave the roadway. Such crashes account for 67 percent of all traffic fatalities, according to the department.
The high-tension designs feature steel wires attached to lightweight posts that “deflect laterally to absorb energy and reduce the impact on vehicle occupants,” according to the Federal Highway Administration, which describes the cable barriers as a cost-effective way to reduce head-on collisions.
Most states that have installed cable-median barriers report a decrease in cross-median crash fatalities of 90 percent or more, according to the agency.
Dramatic results have been found on at least two sections of interstates with the cable-median barriers.
In the three years before a cable-median barrier was installed on a section of Interstate 40 between Biscoe and Brinkley, 11 people died in 95 crashes, according to a department analysis. In the three years after, the section recorded 108 crashes with no fatalities.
On Interstate 55, between U.S. 64 and James Mill Road, a cable-median barrier reduced fatalities from two in the three years leading to the project to none in the three years after it was in place. Serious injury crashes declined from seven to two over the same time frame, according to the department analysis.
Reducing roadway departure crashes is the first of seven areas for highway safety in the 2013 Arkansas Strategic Highway Safety Plan. Its primary goal is reducing the annual number of roadway fatalities in the state to 400 or less by 2017. Until last year, the death toll on Arkansas highways exceeded 500 annually.
Later this month, the department, along with the Arkansas State Police, the Arkansas Department of Health and statewide contractor organization Associated General Contractors, are scheduled to announce an outreach campaign focusing on the aim of the safety plan, “Toward Zero Deaths,” and work-zone safety.
The Highway Department also is developing a statewide effort to maintain minimum levels of reflectivity for road signs and markings, which also will help reduce roadway-departure crashes.
Funding for that initiative will come from federal safety money due the department, which Bennett said has about $145 million available to spend through 2016.
Other safety projects are developed through planning studies.
On Wednesday, the commission approved an improvement project on various parts of Arkansas 5 between Benton and Hot Springs Village after a crash analysis found that a large number of crashes stemmed from roadway departures. The analysis also found that resurfacing, shoulder-widening and reconstructing some curves would make the route safer.
A crash analysis conducted for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010 found 148 crashes along the 17.56-mile route. Of those, 102, or 68 percent, were roadway-departure crashes in curves. The vast majority of the roadway-departure crashes were single-vehicle crashes. Of the total number of crashes, 24 resulted in fatalities or severe injuries.
Crash rates on three of the five segments studied were more than double the statewide crash rate of 0.98 crash per million vehicle miles traveled on rural, two-lane, undivided highways with no control of access, according to the study.
Shoulder-widening, for instance, provides additional recovery areas and a pull-off area for motorists experiencing problems. The shoulders also would accommodate bicyclists, according to the planning study. Six-foot shoulders on the route and resurfacing existing lanes would cost $12.4 million. Eight-foot shoulders and resurfacing would cost about $14.5 million.
The proposed improvements would be eligible for federal safety money the department has available.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/16/2014