Utah Gets An ‘F’ Grade This Summer

If safety on the road is a test, Utah is failing miserably.

The Utah Department of Transportation just released the numbers for Utah's "100 Deadliest Days of Summer," the period between Memorial Day (May 27) and Labor Day (Sept. 2) where traffic accidents and fatalities tend to tick up in numbers.

The report is not pretty.

During those 100 days (well, 102 technically), there were more than 15,000 crashes in the Beehive State, leaving 7,007 people injured.

The worst of it was the number of fatalities. All-totaled, 101 people lost their lives on Utah roadways this summer, and while that's not a record, July's total of 49 fatalities is a record for a single month.

Going into the final weekend last weekend, we were at 96 fatalities. Five people lost their lives on Utah streets over Labor Day weekend.

Traffic spokesman Lars Richards said the biggest culprits are speed and impaired driving.

"Drunk driving, even with our stricter rules here in Utah, is still a huge problem," he said. "As for speed, well people just need to slow down. It's as simple as that."

Some other pertinent numbers from the "100 Deadliest Days of Summer":

• There were 91 fatal crashes (with several having multiple fatalities)
• Last year (2023) a total of 81 people died on Utah roads
• The all-time record deaths during the "100 Deadliest Days" was in 2015, when 111 people perished on Utah roads
• Almost three-fourths of the fatalities this summer (72 percent) were males
• Speed was a factor in 40% of the fatalities.
• Two-thirds of the fatalities involved just a single-vehicle crash
• 15 pedestrians died this summer
• The main cause of 58 of the fatal crashes are still being investigated
• Adding in the rest of the year, a total of 190 people have died on Utah roadways