Motor vehicle crash deaths on the rise

The Arizona Department of Transportation announced earlier this week that the amount of deaths caused by motor vehicle crashes rose in 2016 to 962, that is up by 7.3 Percent. The rise in vehicle collisions is something to be aware of. This is the second straight year that traffic fatalities on our roadways have increased and the majority of them being caused are due to impairment. Lori Frankiln, with YPD gives us a break down on the amount of fatality crashes she has seen locally this year along with the main reason behind them. “We respond to a lot of accidents on a daily basis, last year 2016, we had 5 fatality accidents, the majority of those were impairment related. So far we’ve had two fatality accidents and both of them were caused by impairment,” said Franklin. According to ADOT, 250 people were killed in 2016 in motor vehicle crashes due to not wearing their seatbelts and a startling statistic, every nine hours one person is pronounced dead due to a motor vehicle collision. For more information, you can head to their website at www.azdot.gov/crashfacts.