Memorial Day begins the 100 deadliest days on the road, with area officials hoping to flip the script and make them the 100 safest days.
The 100-day stretch includes summer, multiple holidays and the busy travel season, with hundreds of thousands of visitors enjoying the city and celebrating graduations.
Many of these occasions will involve alcohol and drug use, which can lead to crashes, sometimes fatal, when motorists make bad decisions behind the wheel and drive impaired, distracted or recklessly.
Every day during the 100 deadliest days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, an average of eight teens die as a result of crashes in the United States, which is higher than the average of seven seen daily during the rest of the year, according to research cited by PedSafe Vegas, run by traffic safety advocate Erin Breen.
“It’s warm out, the kids are out of school, and families are traveling for vacations,” UMC of Southern Nevada trauma surgeon Allison McNickle said Friday during a news conference at the hospital. “We see an uptick in the number of traumatic injuries from motor vehicle collisions, motorcycle crashes, ATVs, scooters, boats and everything else. According to our data, our leading mechanism during this time is motor vehicle crashes, both for adults and children. In addition, we see a number of motorcycle crashes. Last year alone, in the month of June, we saw nearly 50 patients admitted to this hospital with injuries from motorcycle crashes.”
Carelessness on the road
Kelly Dodder, a teacher at Manion Middle School, knows all too well the trauma of losing a loved one to a crash. Her husband, Jordon Dodder, was killed last year at the age of 37 when a driver ran a stop sign and hit him while riding his motorcycle to work.
“My husband did nothing wrong that day,” Kelly Dodder said. “I searched endlessly for answers. I’ve read the police report, I’ve read over the autopsy, and I have no explanation except one: carelessness.”
“Every week, I see updates from the police department about lives lost on the road — last week, we lost three people — and every time, I’m taken back to that morning, the phone call. ‘Kelly, Jordan was in an accident, and it doesn’t look good,’” she said. “The scream that came out before I even understood what was happening.”
The three E’s
Officials address the road problems with a mix of education, enforcement and engineering, looking to make people aware of dangerous driving behaviors, citing them when they break the law and creating safer roads for all users.
Clark County Commission Chairman Michael Naft approved a supplemental budget to add more Metropolitan Police officers, mainly concentrating on traffic enforcement.
“It is really a status quo budget with the exception of some critically important positions,” Naft said Friday. “Most of those positions are in the traffic bureau. These are positions that we’ve worked for quite some time now with the addition of two new squads and the addition of detectives who are going to be able to help crack down both proactively and reactively to the events that are happening in this community.”
Efforts paying off
Metro Police traffic captain Jarvis Dudley said the work officials are doing in the valley is paying off: They have seen a decrease in fatal crashes so far this year.
“We are now 25 fatalities less than last year,” Dudley said. “That number represents family members, sons, daughters, mothers, children that are spending time with their families now and their families are having a great time because they’re not deceased from the fatalities that occur on our roads.”
Kelly Dodder said if everyone remembers the responsibility they hold when getting behind the wheel, the city will be a safer place.
“Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve forgotten that driving is not a right, but it’s a privilege,” Dodder said. “Every time we get behind the wheel, we hold somebody else’s life in our hands. It only takes a few careless seconds to create a ripple effect of pain that destroys families forever.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X. Send questions and comments to roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com.
