newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — The number of people killed on Alaska’s roads last year was the lowest in more than a decade, and officials are attributing the good news partly to bad news: Gas prices that spiked above

$4 per gallon.

“People in Alaska and nationwide are traveling less now,” Lt. Dan Welborn of the Fairbanks Police Department said.

In 2008, 63 people died in traffic crashes in what is the lowest number since 1994, the earliest year that data is immediately available. The number could change but is not expected to. The Alaska Highway Safety Office in Juneau monitors traffic deaths on a daily basis.

The previous low was in 1998 when 70 people died in traffic accidents, according to numbers posted on the state Web site www.dot.state.ak.us/stwdplng/hwysafety/fars.shtml.

The number of fatal crashes in Alaska fell by 25 percent from 2007 to 2008, the charts show.

Cindy Cashen of the Alaska Highway Safety Office said there’s been a gradual decrease in highway deaths over the last three decades.

“Hopefully, it’s the increased traffic enforcement and the educational messages. We’ve really ramped up both of those,” she said.

Cashen pointed out that traffic deaths involving the use of alcohol also plunged last year.

In 2008, nearly 30 percent of the traffic deaths involved someone who was impaired by alcohol, according to the highway safety office. In 2007, the number was 43 percent. Historically, alcohol has factored into as many as 55 percent of traffic fatalities.

“A lot of it has to do with seat belt usage being on the rise too,” Department of Transportation spokesman Roger Wetherell said. “People are more safety conscious.”

Seat belt use has risen every year since 2004, according to the highway safety office. In 2008, 84.9 percent of motorists buckled up. The goal for 2009 is 88-percent seat belt use, transportation Commissioner Leo von Scheben said in a statement.

Most of last year’s traffic fatalities, 51, happened in the southcentral part of the state, which includes Anchorage. The northern region, including Fairbanks, saw 11 traffic deaths. Only one of last year’s fatalities happened in the southeast, according to a research analyst with the highway safety office.

Several states across the nation reported a sharp decline in traffic deaths last year. Wisconsin ended its year with the lowest number of traffic fatalities since 1944, transportation officials announced there. Ditto Minnesota, and MSNBC is reporting the same for Nebraska.

In Virginia, traffic deaths declined sharply in 2008 for the first time in 16 years, according to the state police there. Add New Jersey, Maine, South Carolina and Oklahoma to the list. They each saw a decline last year, according to various news reports.