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SALT LAKE CITY — Carlos Braceras said he got a call Tuesday evening from Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.
They both had the same issue on their minds. Three people died in three different communities within an hour earlier in the day, including a pregnant Salt Lake City woman who, along with her 2-year-old daughter, was struck by a suspected drunk driver while they walked along a residential sidewalk.
The night before, two 3-year-old boys playing in a corral in Eagle Mountain were killed when police said a speeding and impaired driver crashed into them. There was also a 13-year-old boy riding a bicycle who was struck and killed by another suspected drunken driver at a West Jordan crosswalk the week before.
Those recent crashes, along with a general spike in fatal traffic crashes across the state this year, have the attention of Mendenhall and Braceras. They don't think they have to rethink their traffic safety programs, but it's clear more work is needed to reverse a troubling trend across Utah.
"I don't say (this moment) is a starting point, it's more like shake the tree, like holy crap, we need to do more,'" Braceras, the executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation, told KSL.com on Thursday.
Mendenhall, Braceras and local and state police joined together at the steps outside the Salt Lake City-County Building on Thursday afternoon to announce new initiatives and funding aimed at improving street safety in Salt Lake City and along the Wasatch Front.
We're not going to be passive observers in a trend that, right now, is taking the lives of our residents. It can't continue and none of us should take this lightly.
–Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall
Salt Lake City will form a new multidepartment Safe Streets Task Force, where the city, police and transportation experts will share crash, citation and traffic pattern data to find the "most critical areas" in Salt Lake City where new traffic projects may be needed, Mendenhall said.
The mayor added the city is also officially partnering with the state's Zero Fatalities education program, which aims to prevent drowsy, distracted and impaired driving. While Salt Lake City has shared the program's educational materials before, she said the new partnership will open new communications, including new collaborations between state transportation officials and community councils.
"We're not going to be passive observers in a trend that, right now, is taking the lives of our residents," she said. "It can't continue and none of us should take this lightly."
Not to be outdone, Braceras said UDOT is pledging $4.2 million every year specifically for bicyclist and pedestrian safety improvement projects, and making a 50% increase to the department's Safe Routes to School program to improve safety along pathways children typically bike and walk to school.
A rise in fatal crashes
Thirty-four pedestrians and cyclists have died in traffic crashes as of Wednesday, which is more than double the number during the same time last year. The 16 deaths last year had previously matched 2016 and 2019 as the most of those types of crashes by May 4 over the past seven years. Pedestrians also account for nine of the 11 road fatalities in Salt Lake City already this year.
All six of the fatal bicyclist deaths have occurred in the past 30 days. There were only five bicycle deaths on Utah roads by May 4 over the last four years combined, according to state statistics.
While Thursday's announcement centered around pedestrian and cyclist-related crashes, Braceras said it's impossible to ignore that there have already been 105 deaths on Utah roads this year compared to 86 at the same time in 2021 and 66 in 2020. Last year ended up the deadliest year on Utah roads since 2002.
"Things can't continue like this. We must change," he said. "Poor decisions while driving ... may sometimes feel like a small consequence, but those small choices people make have real consequences. Essentially, we're giving these families a life sentence with these choices people are making. We need to care more about each other as people."
Utah Highway Patrol Major Jeff Nigbur added there were 10,691 DUI arrests, or about 29 DUI arrests per day, in 2021. There were also close to 5,000 citations involving drivers traveling over 100 mph.
It's still a problem this year. There have already been 31 confirmed impaired driving fatalities of the 105 traffic deaths; there have already been nearly 2,000 citations issued in Utah for drivers traveling over 100 mph, too.
Adjusting the message
It's unclear what policies and changes the task force will process but a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office said everything is up for consideration. Mendenhall suggested Thursday that new pedestrian signage, crossing lights, barriers, adjusted speed limits or new impaired driving awareness campaigns are all on the table.
The Salt Lake City Council gave the city's transportation department the green light to study an idea to reduce the default speed of city streets to 20 mph earlier this year.
The community organization Sweet Streets, which is behind the push for the city to reduce all residential street speed limits, called on the city and UDOT to make changes, issuing a news release at the same time as Thursday's press briefing. They called on leaders to make drastic systemic changes to current road policies to help avoid fatal crashes in the future.
"It's disingenuous to blame drivers or pedestrians or bicyclists or people with disabilities for the rise in crashes we're seeing. Our streets are designed to be dangerous," Taylor Anderson, a Sweet Streets board member, said in a statement. "These crashes aren't caused by human error. They're caused by a series of policy choices to move cars as fast as possible at the expense of human life."
State officials, on the other hand, are reviewing what works in safety programs and what's not working, Braceras said. He's aware people are tired of hearing the same message but there is a lot of work to be done.
Take impaired driving, for example. The state initially saw improvements after it reduced its impaired driving legal limit to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that adjustment led to an 18% reduction in its fatality rate and a 20% drop in the crash rate among impaired drivers in Utah from 2016 to 2019.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and it threw a wrench in the data. Speeding, aggressive driving and impaired driving have all been up since the pandemic began. Braceras believes the weight of the pandemic took a toll on drivers who have taken their frustrations out on the road, resulting in the uptick in unsafe driving, but that's still a part of ongoing research.
Braceras said he's challenged his staff to find ways to find news to target chronic unsafe drivers, such as repeat DUI offenders. He also encourages Utahns to not only take driving more seriously but also talk to family members or friends who struggle with unsafe driving habits.
UHP, now close to being fully staffed again, also plans to have more impaired and distracted driving blitzes to curb the number of cases on roads.
"It's probably time to start doing things we haven't done before," Braceras said. "We need to try new ideas and double down on the things we've been doing that make a difference."
