Fatal crashes increase in state, drop in Valley

Staff/wire report

COLUMBUS

The number of traffic deaths around Ohio has increased for the second year in a row, the State Highway Patrol reports.

The state had at least 1,057 confirmed traffic fatalities in 2015. That’s up from 1,008 for 2014 and 990 confirmed for 2013, which was the lowest reported since the record-keeping started in the 1930s.

Preliminary statistics tallied before New Year’s Eve show at least 42 more deaths from the past year are under review but not yet confirmed as traffic fatalities. If confirmed, the number of traffic deaths in the state would have increased by about 10 percent over 2014.

In the Mahoning Valley, the data were mixed. The number of fatal crashes throughout the Valley declined slightly, but that was due to about a 60 percent decline in Columbiana County last year. The number of fatal accidents increased in both Mahoning and Trumbull counties last year, according to OSHP data.

A patrol spokesman says roughly 60 percent of Ohio’s fatal crashes in 2015 involved someone not wearing a seat belt.

About one-third involved a driver impaired by alcohol or drugs.

He says the numbers of fatal crashes involving motorcycles, commercial vehicles and pedestrians each increased compared with 2014.

Statewide, the patrol investigated more than 68,000 crashes in 2015.

It also made more than 24,500 stops in operating a vehicle impaired cases and about 116,000 stops for seat-belt enforcement.