Report: Maine near bottom in alcohol-related driving deaths

Alcohol contributed to fewer highway deaths in Maine last year than in all but one other state, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Of the 216 traffic fatalities in Maine in 2002, alcohol contributed to 51, or 24 percent, according to the federal agency’s report released Thursday.

Maine ranked behind only Utah, at 22 percent, in termsof the percentage of alcohol-related highway deaths.

The Maine numbers bucked a national trend that saw alcohol-related traffic deaths, as well as total highway fatalities, increase from the previous year.

Nationwide, alcohol played a role in 41 percent, or 17,419, of the 2002 highway deaths. That number is up slightly from 17,400 in 2001, the report states.

Maine’s exhibited the lowest rate since the state began keeping track of alcohol-related crashes in 1980, when drinking was involved in 60 percent of auto deaths.

State officials credited the marked decline, as well as Maine’s perennial place near the bottom of the national list in recent years, to strict enforcement of tough drunken driving laws.

“It used to be the police would drive you home, now they drive you to jail,” Richard Perkins, director of the Maine Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of Highway Safety, said of the change in attitude toward drunken driving in the past 15 years.

The total number of deaths on Maine highways last year jumped 13 percent from 2001, marking the highest fatality rate in the past 15 years,.

The increase tied Maine with Mississippi among the states with the fastest-rising occurrences of highway deaths.

Nebraska experienced the greatest percentage increase in the number of traffic fatalities last year at 25 percent to 307 deaths. Other notable increases were seen in Nevada, at 21 percent, Montana at 17 percent and Minnesota at 16 percent.

States showing significant decreases included Vermont and Hawaii at 15 percent each, as well as the District of Columbia at 31 percent.

Among the most notable of the Maine crashes was a September 2002 accident near Johns Bridge in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway that killed 14 migrant workers.

The deadly crash, the worst since seven people died in a 1958 accident in Richmond involving a tractor-trailer, did play a role in boosting Maine’s numbers, state officials said. But even without those fatalities, 2002 was the deadliest year on Maine’s highways in a decade.

In addition, state officials attributed the increase to speed-related accidents involving young drivers ages 16-24.