{"id":69,"date":"2010-03-11T22:29:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T06:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2010-03-11T22:30:39","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T06:30:39","slug":"2009-was-the-lowest-year-ever-for-highway-fatalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/2009-was-the-lowest-year-ever-for-highway-fatalities\/","title":{"rendered":"2009 was the Lowest Year Ever for Highway Fatalities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just when you were considering garaging your car forever, and walking or biking everywhere comes some good news in the world of auto safety. A decline in the number of traffic fatalities has brought the number reported as of the end of 2009 to the lowest level since 1954, and making Q4 2009 the 15th consecutive quarter in which fatalities reported by the U.S. Department of Transportation decreased. <\/p>\n<p>While the final data for 2009 has not yet been completely analyzed, early projections place the fatality rate, which accounts for the number of miles traveled, at the lowest level ever recorded. <\/p>\n<p>By the numbers, the projected fatality data for 2009 shows a drop of 8.9% to 33,963 highway deaths, as compared to the 37, 261 deaths reported in 2008. The ratio for 2009, the lowest fatality rate on record, declined from 1.25 fatalities per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in 2008 to 1.16 fatalities per 100 million VMT last year. <\/p>\n<p>David Strickland, of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhtsa.dot.gov\">National Highway Traffic Safety Administration<\/a>, said in a statement, &#8220;This continuing decline in highway deaths is encouraging, but our work is far from over. We want to see those numbers drop further. We will not stop as long as there are still lives lost on our nation&#8217;s highways. We must continue our efforts to ensure seat belts are always used and stay focused on reducing distracted and impaired driving.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the NHTSA, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/car-accident-statistics.htm\">decline in fatalities<\/a> last year is attributable to a variety of factors including campaigns to increase seat belt use and decrease drunk driving, as well as stronger enforcement of drunk driving laws. In addition, they say safer roads, safer driving habits, and drivers spending less time on the road are all factors as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just when you were considering garaging your car forever, and walking or biking everywhere comes some good news in the world of auto safety. A decline in the number of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19],"tags":[46,370],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-safety","category-dui","tag-auto-fatalities","tag-auto-safety","cat-15-id","cat-19-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carinsurancelist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}