WEDNESDAY'S EDITORIAL

By T&D Staff

Statistics don't tell the fatal highway story

THE ISSUE: Highway safety report

OUR OPINION: 2004 carnage will undo good news from ‘03

Sometimes, the statistics don't tell the real story.

The Carolinas AAA Motor Club in December each year releases a report on highway crashes in South Carolina, ranking the counties from safest to most dangerous in the number of accidents, fatalities and injuries based on highway miles traveled.

As much as you read about the carnage on highways in The T&D Region, the latest report paints a different picture. In fact, Calhoun County for the second consecutive year ranked second among the 46 counties as the location where a motorist is least likely to be injured.

Bamberg County was second in 2003 and Calhoun was fourth as places where motorists are least likely to be killed. And Orangeburg County, with the highest date rate in 2002 for crashes involving tractor-trailers, fell out of the top rankings in that category.

Overall, Calhoun County in 2003 ranked 43rd for the number of fatal collisions while Bamberg County ranked 45th. Orangeburg County, which posted the 10th highest death rate in 2002 with 41 people killed, fell to 22nd with 36 deaths in 2003.

So much for the good news. The numbers are from 2003. The toll from 2004 is much worse. Through Dec. 26, Orangeburg County has had 49 traffic deaths. That's more than a 35 percent increase in the number of fatalities from the year upon which the AAA report is based.

The story is similar in Calhoun and Bamberg counties. Calhoun has had 13 deaths in 2004 compared to 4 in '03. Six people have died in Bamberg County compared to two in 2003.

The AAA report, however, does hit home in another regard. For the third consecutive year, Marlboro County led the state across all three categories of fatal collisions, injury collisions, and property-damage-only collisions. And it is the least-traveled county.

Trooper 1st Class Sonny Collins with the South Carolina Highway Patrol assesses the problem: "Speeding and (not wearing a) seat belt are the common denominators in crashes in Marlboro County. We have really been pushing seat belt use this year, but people just aren't doing it and it is costing lives every year."

On Marlboro's rural roads, speeding just a little becomes dangerous.

"Usually it isn't outrageous speeding," Collins said. "Someone might fudge just five or 10 miles over the speed limit. But these rural roads are so narrow, people drift off the right side of the road and overcorrect."

While Orangeburg and Calhoun often make headlines for their miles of interstates and major roads, both counties, along with Bamberg, are largely rural. Nowhere is the issue of fatalities on secondary roads more pertinent.

"Rural roads remain the most dangerous roads in South Carolina, as well as the Southeast," said David E. Parsons, CEO and president of AAA Carolinas. "People somehow believe if the road isn't heavy with traffic, it is safe to speed. It isn't."

Possibly it is the high-profile, high-speed nature of collisions on interstates that makes them news while lots of accidents on secondary and other roads go comparatively unnoticed. They shouldn't.

As we near the end of a deadly year on local roads and highways, consider that the AAA report from 2003 concluded fatalities on rural, secondary roads were four times higher than on interstate highways.

That's a clear warning, no matter from which year the statistics are extracted.

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