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Oregon Rural Roads in Top 20 Most Dangerous, According to Study

Traffic jam in Newport, on Highway 101

(Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota) - Just in time for the summer travel rush around the nation, and to the Oregon coast, the national Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS) at the University of Minnesota released a list of the states where Americans are more likely to die in a traffic crash on a rural road.

Oregon’s rural roads placed number 16 in the number of fatalities.

Roads to and from the Oregon coast were in 2005 ranked among the most congested in the nation, with Highway 26 getting a special spotlight in one study.

For most people, riding in a motor vehicle is one of the most dangerous things they ever do, and this is particularly true when traveling on rural roads. While U.S. Census figures show that about two out of ten (21 percent) Americans live in rural areas, the U.S. Department of Transportation has found that about six out of ten (57 percent) highway deaths happen on roads that it considers rural.

“Millions of Americans will be driving this holiday weekend, and they would be wise to carefully consider these findings before they do,” said CERS Director Lee Munnich, Jr., of the University of Minnesota ’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. “ America ’s rural byways seem so tranquil and safe, but the reality is that they can be as lethal as they are lovely.”

Of all the routes to the coast, Highway 6, between Tillamook and Portland, is among the most winding

The states with the highest proportion of their total traffic fatalities occurring on rural roads are:

1) Maine (92%)
2) North Dakota (90%)
3) South Dakota (89%)
4) Iowa (88%)
4) Vermont (88%)
5) Montana (86%)
6) Wyoming (84%)
7) South Carolina (83%)
8) Mississippi (82%)
9) Arkansas (81%)
10) West Virginia (80%)
11) Kansas (78%)
12) Nebraska (77%)
13) Idaho (75%)
13) New Hampshire (75%)
13) Kentucky (75%)
14) Oklahoma (73%)
15) Minnesota (72%)
15) Missouri (72%)
16) Oregon (72%)
17) Alaska (71%)
18) Wisconsin (68%)
18) North Carolina (68%)
19) Utah (66%)
19) Louisiana (66%)
20) Alabama (65%)

Tiny streets of Manzanita

According to UM, Oregon’s rural roads saw 351 fatal crashes in 2005, out of a total of 488 crashes throughout the state. The study says that means 72 percent of the state’s car fatalities that year happened in roads outside a city.

The number is actually four percent lower than the 2004 statistics.

Many of the state’s rural roads are along the coast or near it, including the enormous and very winding Highway 101, which stretches from border to border, and runs along the coastline - all but a thirty-mile stretch from Pacific City to Bay City.

The state-by-state rural fatalities data reflects deaths on rural roads in 2005 and was compiled by CERS researchers using information from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Rural roads are identified as those located outside of areas with a population of 5,000 or more. The entire list is available at www.ruralsafety.umn.edu.

Traveling America ’s roads is particularly dangerous this time of year. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the top two days of the year for motor vehicle fatalities over the years 1986-2002 have been July 3 and July 4.

Twisting highway near Florence

There are many reasons for America ’s high rate of rural crash deaths. Head-on collisions and driving off the road crashes — both of which are disproportionately deadly — are common on the two-lane, undivided highways prevalent in rural areas. Rural roads, with lighter traffic and pleasant scenery, can easily lull drivers into a false sense of security. An over-relaxed comfort level can lead to motorists driving at unsafe speeds, distracted, fatigued, unbelted or impaired, all of which increase the likelihood of a crash. Additionally, emergency response time to a rural crash and hospital transport can be lengthy and thus jeopardize survival rate. Crash victims are five to seven times more likely to die from their injuries unless they arrive at a trauma center in the first half-hour following the crash.

“All states need to improve rural highway safety, but the issue is particularly pressing in these states,” said Munnich. “Fortunately, there’s much that can be done to prevent future deaths.”

CERS works to raise awareness of the problem of rural road fatalities, and advocate policy changes impacting road design and driver behavior. For instance, CERS advocates state adoption of primary seat belt laws, which allow law enforcement officers to pull people over for not using their seat belts. States that enact primary seat belt laws have increased their seat belt usage rates dramatically, by an average of 14 percent, which in turn reduces the number of injuries and deaths.

“This is a public health issue we must take much more seriously,” said Munnich. “In 2005, 23,549 Americans died on rural roadways. We are right to focus significant attention and resources on preventing things like AIDS, SARS, e coli poisoning, and skin cancer, but we can’t forget that this public health problem is even more deadly.”

The Center for Excellence in Rural Safety provides citizen-centered research, training, and outreach to enhance rural safety and to meet the needs of rural transportation practitioners and policymakers. The U.S. Congress created the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety in July 2005 as part of a broader, multiyear, multimillion-dollar directive establishing four national centers for surface transportation excellence in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) transportation funding legislation.

In 2005, the American Highway Users Alliance named the roads to the Oregon coast as the most congested in the nation, based on expected travel delays resulting from traffic bottlenecks.

Highways 18 and 22 to the Oregon coast were named two of the state’s most dangerous, by travel book company Moon Books.

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