On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a followup to previous conversations about why fatal crashes have increased despite traffic volumes declining substantially during the pandemic.
Following up on previous episodes featuring a number of Michigan experts on the topic, this week’s conversation features a perspective from a neighboring state. Michael Hanson, director of Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety, joins the podcast after an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. (Kudos to Hanson for emphasizing driver responsibility and why these are crashes and not “accidents.”)
Preliminary numbers indicate 1,032 people died from crashes on Michigan roads in 2020, while the number was 985 in 2019. This, despite traffic volumes being down as much as 60 percent in the weeks immediately following stay-home advisories from the outbreak and remaining down around 20 percent through the rest of the year.
With many fewer vehicles on the roads and reduced congestion, Hanson echoes the analysis of other experts about eye-popping speeds.
Hanson also talks about what law enforcement officers are seeing in Minnesota, which mirrors observations from law enforcement officers in Michigan.
In Minnesota, Hanson talks about the axiom that speed kills and says authorities are tackling the problem with some creative initiatives.
On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a followup to previous conversations about why fatal crashes have increased despite traffic volumes declining substantially during the pandemic.
Following up on previous episodes featuring a number of Michigan experts on the topic, this week’s conversation features a perspective from a neighboring state. Michael Hanson, director of Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety, joins the podcast after an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. (Kudos to Hanson for emphasizing driver responsibility and why these are crashes and not “accidents.”)
Preliminary numbers indicate 1,032 people died from crashes on Michigan roads in 2020, while the number was 985 in 2019. This, despite traffic volumes being down as much as 60 percent in the weeks immediately following stay-home advisories from the outbreak and remaining down around 20 percent through the rest of the year.
With many fewer vehicles on the roads and reduced congestion, Hanson echoes the analysis of other experts about eye-popping speeds.
Hanson also talks about what law enforcement officers are seeing in Minnesota, which mirrors observations from law enforcement officers in Michigan.
In Minnesota, Hanson talks about the axiom that speed kills and says authorities are tackling the problem with some creative initiatives.
[Music]
Jeff Cranson: Hello, this is the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson, director of communications at the Michigan Department of Transportation. As we've noted on previous episodes, traffic volumes were down substantially as the pandemic took hold a year ago, but there was an 8% increase in crash deaths over the previous year. This week, we learned that in Michigan there have been 23 more fatal crashes than there was this time last year. Today, to get a view from a neighboring state, I’m speaking with Michael Hanson, director of Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety. Michael was recently a guest on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, and though, very unfortunately, the NPR crew referred to accidents instead of crashes it was otherwise a very thoughtful interview and put a spotlight on something we've talked about a lot in Michigan. Unfortunately, this is something that Minnesota and Michigan definitely share in common is the dramatic rise in fatalities from crashes, even while crashes overall were down and traffic was greatly down. So, Michael, thank you again for being here.
Michael Hanson: Well, Jeff, thanks for having me on. I'm glad to be able to talk with you today.
Cranson: So, let's start with your speculation about what's going on. I know it's—without hardcore surveys and all kinds of years to crunch some data it's hard to say for sure, but you have your own thoughts, I think, on why this trend has been what it is.
Hanson: Well, certainly, Jeff, and the data is really what we rely on to tell us the story about what's taking place on our roads in Minnesota and really across the country. I talked with Mike Prince, my counterpart there in Michigan, and our other partners in Region 5 here and we're all seeing similar things, which is as traffic volumes decreased, and decreased significantly, during the initial parts of the pandemic response, we saw corresponding drops in overall crashes. What was really alarming in Minnesota, this became very quickly apparent, while the crashes were down, traffic was down, the severity of those crashes went up and went up significantly. When we started to take a closer look at that data to try and figure out what was causing this all of a sudden because it was absolutely counter to everything that we expected. We thought that the fatality curve would follow the rest of the traffic, but it didn't. It quickly became apparent that the number one driver for the increase in severity, and it makes perfect sense from a standpoint of traffic safety, but it was speed, and that continues right to this day.
Cranson: Yeah, it's an old axiom that speed kills, obviously the faster people are going the more severe those crashes are going to be, but, you know, what I can't quite figure out—I mean I have my own theories that people just got tired of being told what to do, whether it was to wear a mask and that extended to wearing seat belts and just kind of a reaction to everything, people driving fast and taking chances. I don't know beyond that. Can you trace it to anything? I know that you talked with NPR about drugs and drinking and depression.
Hanson: We're dealing with a great, big, simmering cauldron that has a lot of ingredients in it. You touched on a number of really important key points in this discussion. I think, yes, there was some of that pushback against being told what to do, but, you know, when it comes to speed limits, they've been around for, you know, about a century now if not longer in some places. So, that was one rule that, you know, we should be kind of used to adhering to, but as those the stay-at-home orders went into effect you touched on the risk-taking behavior that was really taking place. This is what I hear from our law enforcement partners all the time is that increase in the risk-taking behavior, the “me first” attitude, less congestion, less traffic, a lot more open roadways, and a lot more space to use and abuse, and that's exactly what drivers did. As a consequence, you know, just looking at Minnesota, even this year, we are 11 fatalities ahead of where we were last year which was really setting a horrible pace for us. Of the 69 fatalities that we've experienced so far in Minnesota to date this year, 27 of those, or more than a third, are the direct result of a speeding driver. When you think about it, Jeff, speed is the one thing that each and every driver has complete control over. It's the one decision that we can all make when we get behind the wheel that's either going to get us safely to where we're going, or it can, and unfortunately often does, end up in tragedy if we make the wrong decision. I think another thing that was driving a lot of what law enforcement was seeing out there, Jeff, was a significant misperception that because of the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the precautions that everybody had to take in dealing with it that many drivers out there figured that ‘well, heck, I can do what I want because law enforcement really isn't engaged in traffic enforcement,’ but nothing could be further from the truth, at least talking from my Minnesota perspective, because I visit with sheriffs, with chiefs, and with troopers all the time and they never lost a step. They continued to do traffic law enforcement the way they always had with the, you know, the caveat that they were seeing things that they had never seen before. The number of over 100 mile an hour violations is just off the books. Last year, just the Minnesota state patrol troopers alone issued well over a thousand tickets for more than 100 miles an hour. If we look at current trends in 2021, they're on a pace to outpace last year. So, we have some significant challenges on our road, and we've got a project in place that is specifically designed to try and address that.
Cranson: Yeah, talk about that project. I will mention, when you talked about where your crash deaths are this year versus last year, that we're up 23 over last year in Michigan. That's obviously nothing to be proud of, but I’m glad, too, that you made that observation about speed being something we control. That kind of goes to why we're so aggressive here about trying to educate people about the word crash versus accident because they aren't accidents. We do have control, and it's up to us to take responsibility for how we drive.
Hanson: Yeah, great point, great point. These are crashes. These are preventable incidents. The fact that people die in motor vehicle crashes is not inevitable. As I mentioned, in Minnesota, starting in January we've implemented a long-term project that is specifically looking at speed and aggressive driving and working with our partners at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Governor's Highway Safety Association, the Safety Council, and a number of others. Certainly enforcement is a big part of this because we have to take some very active steps to try and get this horse back in the corral, so to speak. Part of it is also education and outreach and helping people understand why speed limits are important, why it's important for us to obey them, and, you know, Michigan has winter weather just like Minnesota does and none of us are done with it yet, so not only do we need to drive according to the speed limit, but we need to drive according to the speed or to the existing conditions, whether that be road, weather, traffic, you know, there's lots of things that affect the flow. Our transportation system is designed to work most efficiently when the flow is the same, so those on either end of that spectrum, really fast or really slow, are where we see those differentials come in and the problems that go with that. You made another comment I’ll just build a little bit on, you said speed kills and that is absolutely the truth. Speed equals energy. When you're in a crash, energy equals injury and the more energy you bring, the more injury you're going to cause. Oftentimes, in these high-speed collisions, that injury is enough to cause death. Cars are engineered wonderfully these days. They have safety systems, redundant safety systems, everything you know to protect us from ourselves, but when you exceed the design parameters for those safety systems you are leaving yourself very little hope for surviving when something goes wrong.
Cranson: Yeah, you know, Michael, I’ve thought about that a lot during my time in transportation, and these aren't things I thought in my former life as a journalist. It seems that the more we do to improve the safety of our vehicles and the steps that we take, you know, toward automated and connected vehicles, which are going to bring tremendous safety benefits the end, but even while we do all those things to make ourselves safer, we do crazier things as drivers. It's almost like, you know, you can compare it to war and an arms race. We create better detection systems and better armament and then we create better bombs, so how do we get citizens driving more safely?
Hanson: You're exactly right, and cars are so nice to drive these days. I think you're probably a little bit younger than I am but, you know, I grew up at the tail end of the muscle car era. So, if you remember the cars that were designed and built and that I drove for the first part of my driving career, you know, they were built in the 1960s and power steering, power brakes, things like that, you know, if you had them, great, but most of us didn't. You literally had to drive the car. It seems like today, especially with some of the driver assist systems, the car is driving you and it's very comfortable for that, but I also take a look at advertising and how cars are being built and marketed. The arms race comparison is very true, just look at the horsepower race coming out of many of our major manufacturers and look at the way that they're advertised. It's a professional driver on a closed course doing things that you should never do on the open road, but, you know, that's a marketing strategy and it apparently works.
Cranson: You know, that's another question I have. You did some time on the road prior to this job, I understand. Is that right? You were trooper?
Hanson: Yes, I did just about 33 years with the Minnesota State Patrol.
Cranson: So, knowing that what we're seeing on the open road, as you discussed, and that's obviously some of those speeds on the freeways, but is this is this translating to the local roads and the city streets too?
Hanson: Jeff, at least Minnesota, that's one of the scary things that we're looking at because more than half of these incidents are taking place off of the freeway system and off of the state and U.S. trunk highway system. They're happening on our county roads and on our city streets. I was just at an event where we recognized a deputy for some really great work, and he was doing a traffic detail in a suburb of the Minneapolis area in a 45 mile an hour zone and he clocks a car at 112. So, yeah, it is everywhere and, you know, as we get toward that summer driving season, and I know Michigan is very similar to Minnesota, you know, those hundred days between late Memorial Day and Labor Day is when most of our traffic hits the road. If we're not able to, you know, really bring some sanity back there we're setting ourselves up for a lot of carnage and a tremendous amount of heartache as we get into that summer driving season.
Cranson: Well, I think it would be nice to see, you know, I don't know about your state, but we haven't had any hearings on this. I haven't seen any of the chairs of our committees bring this issue up, and I think we need to get lawmakers and policymakers involved in this discussion too because, you know, they might think ‘well, I’m not the one driving 120 miles an hour,’ but you and I could very well be the victims of that.
Hanson: Well, that's it exactly, you know, it's the innocent driver who is in the wrong place at the wrong time through no fault of their own as often as not, you know, pays the price for this selfish decision is really the simplest way to put it because, as I said, you are in control of your speed. When you make that decision to drive at those excess speeds that is a selfish decision. Everybody else around you on the road that's somebody's mom, their dad, their brother, their sister, their kids, you know, it's people you go to church with, people you go to work with, you have a responsibility as a driver to use the transportation system in a safe and efficient manner. If everybody does that, the system works. If everybody doesn't do that, that's where we have carnage, that's where we have heartache, and that's where we have tragedy.
Cranson: Yeah, very well said. I think that's really good and some good things to think about. Michael, I appreciate you taking time to talk with us about this.
Hanson: Well, Jeff, it was my pleasure, and I know you've had a really talented team in your State Highway Safety Office there working with Mike Prince and the Michigan State Police, so I think with all of us working together on this, and I know Minnesota is not alone in addressing this, that we can bring some control and some sanity back to our roads again.
Cranson: Well said again. Thank you again for listening to this week's edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I would like to thank Randy Debler and Corey Petee for engineering this week's podcast. To subscribe to show notes and more, go to Apple podcasts and search for Talking Michigan Transportation.