Road safety during Labor Day weekend travel

TAYLORSVILLE — As many start hitting the road this Labor Day weekend, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety are urging drivers to focus on safe driving, as road fatalities are trending high.

This comes at the tail end of the 100 Deadliest Days, the time from Memorial Day to Labor Day when road fatalities tend to increase.

UDOT and DPS said they were hopeful going into this year, but July proved to be deadly, as the worst month to date for single-vehicle fatalities.

“The biggest month we’ve seen is the month of July. This July was probably the worst July we’ve seen in over a decade,” Kristen Hoschouer, Zero Fatalities program manager, said.

So far this summer, 95 people have lost their lives on Utah roads.

That is nearly one fatality a day over the last few months. That is up from last year’s 81 fatalities last summer.

This comes as Utah Highway Patrol said law enforcement has been hard at work with some 4,300 overtime-specific shifts focused solely on distracted driving and other bad driving behaviors. This weekend, drivers can expect those extra eyes to be on the road.

“Troopers are specifically focused on speed enforcement that would reduce the amount of injury and fatal crashes,” Lt. Chamberlin Neff with the Utah Highway Patrol said.

Neff said single-vehicle and single-occupant fatalities have been particularly high this summer, as well as single-vehicle motorcycle crashes.

Pedestrian fatalities also saw a jump in July.

With the busy weekend ahead: This a reminder to focus on the basics of safe driving, like buckling your seat belt, staying calm behind the wheel, and looking out for each other.

“Troopers are also focused on impaired driving when they’re out looking for any type of impairment that would obviously cause a crash related to that,” Neff said.

There are two areas where drivers have done better on the roads this year than last year: Teen driving and bicyclist-related road crashes.