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July 15, 2024 - Governor Jeff Landry has proclaimed July 15-19, 2024, as Rural Road Safety Awareness Week, and he calls on all road users to promote safe driving habits.
The proclamation states that 530 fatal crashes in Louisiana occurred on rural roads in 2022, more than 62% of all fatal crashes. Even though rural crashes make up less than 40% of all crashes in the state, they tend to be more deadly said Lisa Freeman, executive director of the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission.
“A rural road crash is more than twice as likely to include a fatality as a crash in an urban area,” Freeman said. “As for the reasons behind it, you can round up the usual suspects –– speed, improper or no seat belt use, distractions, and impairment.”
Those driver-behavior factors often lead to roadway departures, a situation where a vehicle swerves off the shoulder of the road or crosses the centerline into oncoming traffic. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that roadway departures are responsible for 66% of all rural road fatalities.
“Usually, there is less traffic on rural roads, and where there’s less traffic, some people drive faster,” Freeman said. “Speeding magnifies any small mistake the driver makes, so a slight drift toward the shoulder or centerline becomes a swerve, and a steering adjustment becomes an overcorrection.”
Impaired driving is also responsible for a disproportionate number of fatal crashes on rural roads, according to data from the Center for Analytics and Research in Transportation Safety at LSU. More than two-thirds of the fatal crashes in rural areas involved alcohol in 2022. Further, preliminary crash data from 2023 indicates that the percentage of alcohol-involvement in fatal crashes on rural roads may top 70%.
“We call on all road users to do their part in promoting safe driving habits,” including “supporting proven safety countermeasure initiatives to reduce rural roadway departures,” Gov. Landry’s proclamation reads.
The National Center for Rural Road Safety offers resources for drivers and local government agencies who are interested in learning more about the “4E’s” of highway safety: Engineering, Enforcement, Education, and Emergency Response.
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