The frequency of crashes may increase throughout the state in the fall as well as the summer due to holiday travel. (Devan Ridgway, WFIU/WTIU)
Data from the Bloomington-Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization shows that the number of car crashes in the county have tended to spike in the months of October and November within the last 10 years.
Pat Martin, senior transportation planner at the city of Bloomington, said traffic patterns have returned to normal since the pandemic. During the pandemic, statewide traffic decreased by 40 percent. The number of car crashes also decreased, but the number of fatalities and serious injured reported were above normal.
“When they [the state] examined the data, they found that cars were traveling faster on less congested roads, and therefore were more likely to lose control,” Martin said. “They had a sense of comfort, like, ‘yeah, we're fine.’ And in reality, they weren't.”
In many of these cases, people were traveling on more rural, “dangerous” roads. Some of the crashes resulted in the vehicle leaving the roadway.
Martin said the most recent crash report, 2019-2022, has not been released yet. However, he said disregarding the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, car crash patterns were similar to those from the 2015-2019 crash report. The data shows that October reported the highest number of car crashes, 11 percent of the total number of car crashes, followed by November, which is 9.5 percent of the total.
“You're looking at sporting events in October and November,” Martin said. “You're also looking at movement through the area for Brown County and other activities.”
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Martin said it’s possible that car crashes increase in the fall months due to football and soccer games, as well as the beginning of basketball games. The upward spike in car crashes could also potentially be explained by the increased number of people traveling to Brown County State Park and the surrounding areas to see the foliage. The majority of these are automobile to automobile crashes.
January has the third highest number of car crashes due to slippery and snow-covered winter roads. There are the fewest number of crashes reported in July, likely because many people are out of town on vacation.
In the years 2019 and 2022, August is only fifth even though there are significantly more people in town for college move-ins.
“I would have thought that August would be the highest,” Martin said. “You've got people here with rental vans, people moving into town who have never been here before, who don't know the traffic patterns, are going the wrong way, turning down the wrong way streets.”
Martin said Bloomington’s numbers are a bit different compared to the state due to the various transportation options available, such as buses, Ubers, scooters and walking on IU’s campus.
Andrew Cibor, an engineer at the city of Bloomington, said the city sees the most crashes on state road 45/46 and 10th street.
“The city works a lot with other agencies…some are controlled and maintained by the Indiana Department of Transportation,” Cibor said. “We make sure they know which locations are on our list…and it’s their responsibility to address that safety.”
To reduce the number of car crashes, Cibor said the city has installed nearly 80 no-turn-on-red signs to protect cyclists and pedestrians and added more yield signs. They also shortened the pedestrian crossing distance at some intersections, such as the corner of the bypass and Third Street, so pedestrians are exposed to traffic for less time and are more visible to drivers.
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Cibor said the city responds to citizen concerns about potential crash sites and try to make places safer in advance to avoid crashes.
“Oftentimes, we'll get concerns for you know, ‘a bush at an intersection is limiting the visibility of oncoming cars,’” Cibor said. “We'll go out and try to make sure people are maintaining their landscaping to keep things safe or keeping sidewalks clear.”
Cibor said the city also tries to add more signs around construction zones so cars know where to go and do not accidentally hit something or someone. The city has also begun to address line-of-sight and landscaping-related issues that may force people to walk on the road because a branch is in the way.
“While for some people that might not seem like a big deal…it's actually a major issue for somebody that maybe has limited vision,” Cibor said. “Effectively, it makes it so they can't walk on that. So really trying to keep so pedestrians can walk on the sidewalk instead of on the road and use the infrastructure that we have in place.”
Devon McDonald, executive director of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, said in the state of Indiana and in the country as a whole, people aged 25-34 years old are most likely to get into a car crash in October and November.
“They’re younger drivers, still kind of inexperienced,” McDonald said.
McDonald said there are potentially higher numbers of crashes in the fall months due to changing weather and increased animal movement in preparation for the winter. He has also heard reports of people getting into crashes going westbound because of the sun.
“In Indiana, mostly, you would see wildlife collisions, maybe more deer, especially in rural areas,” McDonald said. “It's the time of year that they're more active - it's their breeding season.”
McDonald said the frequency of crashes may increase throughout the state in the fall as well as the summer due to holiday travel.
The ICJI awards state and federal funds to reduce the number of car crashes and fatalities each year. Funds come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
“Statewide we have about $19 million dedicated to law enforcement agencies around the state to focus on speeding and distracted driving and seatbelt usage and impaired driving,” McDonald said.
The ICJI also has programs to promote driver safety and educate, such as the Standard Field Sobriety Test, a driving instructor course, and the Drug Evaluation and Classification Program, which trains police officers and approved public safety officials to recognize and deal with impaired drivers. The Stop Arm Violation Enforcement Grant Program is dedicated to making the roads safer for kids during the school year. Law enforcement sends out more officers to target stop arm violations and reckless driving around school buses, and decrease the number of crashes and injuries.
McDonald said the state also allocates funding to overtime patrols — officers will work beyond their regular duty to conduct high visibility patrols in an area to catch more instances of impaired driving and unusual behavior.
“A lot of times, we do see increases in the number of arrests that are made… and there tend to be fewer incidents,” McDonald said. “[With] that extra little bit of enforcement, they [officer] may identify a couple 100 extra impaired drivers during those time frames statewide. Those are potentially several 100 lives that are saved from an impaired driving crash.”
The Indiana Department of Transportation’s numbers for this year through August so far show that there have been 585 traffic deaths, 2,317 suspected serious injuries and 29,577 traffic injury crashes in the state. There is an increase of nearly two percent in the average number of traffic deaths in the last five years. There is also an increase of 7.27 percent in the average number of traffic injury crashes in the last five years.
