CDOT, Colorado State Patrol, city officials plan continued safety campaigns
Colorado reversed a decade-long surge in traffic fatalities with 716 deaths recorded in 2023, a decrease of 6% compared with the record-setting 764 fatalities in 2022.
But Colorado Department of Transportation data reflects a continued shift toward what authorities describe as high-speed reckless driving and increased roadway fatalities involving pedestrians and bicyclists.
Nearly a third of 2023’s traffic fatalities — 31.2% — involved drivers who were impaired due to alcohol or cannabis, CDOT data shows. The latest estimates for “distracted driving” deaths hadn’t been completed but drivers gazing at smartphones and vehicle touchscreen systems have played a role in about 60 deaths a year.
Around the state, drivers crashed with deadly results most often in El Paso County, where authorities recorded 78 deaths, followed by Denver County (71), Arapahoe County (68), Adams County (62), Weld County (55), Jefferson County (48), Larimer County (44), Pueblo County (40), Boulder County (28) and Douglas County (23).
The total miles traveled on Colorado roads has increased due to population growth and people driving more. Colorado’s traffic fatality rate — deaths per 100 million miles traveled in vehicles — has increased rapidly since 2011. The rate since 2021 has hovered around 1.3 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. That’s about half the fatality rate in the 1980s when the Colorado population and vehicle miles traveled were much lower.
We’re cautiously optimistic that we’ve reached the peak and that in the years to come we will continue to see declines. There is a national trend of roadway traffic fatalities increasing. Are people just being more careless? I don’t know. But a lot of this has to do with the variety of roadway users out there. We see more people walking, biking, and riding e-bikes and scooters. This has a lot to do with the deaths on roads. That’s where the spikes have been the largest — with those vulnerable roadway users.
CDOT spokesman Sam Cole
Read the full article on the Denver Post website.