Anyone who has driven the state’s back roads can attest to their danger. Combine narrow winding roads, speed and large trucks and the result is often deadly. A recent report confirms this: 81 percent of highway fatalities in Maine occur on rural roads, the second highest percentage in the country. Worse, the state’s traffic fatality rate is rising. These numbers reiterate the need for improvements to rural roads, more attention to driver behavior and the importance of raising the truck weight limit on Maine’s interstate highways to get big rigs off back roads.

The report also highlights, if it needs to be said again, that the lack of a complete north-south interstate and a modern east-west highway is literally killing Maine drivers.

According to a report released earlier this month by The Road Information Program (TRIP), a national transportation research group, 52 percent of highway fatalities nationwide from 1999 to 2003 occurred on rural roads, even though just 28 percent of traffic traveled such roads. In Maine, 52 percent of travel is on rural roads and 81 percent of traffic deaths occur there. The good news is that Maine has the lowest fatality rate in the nation on nonrural roads.

TRIP found that motorists on rural routes are 61/2 times more likely to be killed while attempting to negotiate a curve and four times as likely to be involved in a fatal collision between vehicles going in the opposite direction than motorists traveling on all other routes. Most head-on crashes on rural roads are likely caused by a motorist making an unintentional maneuver as a result of driver fatigue, being distracted or driving too fast in a curve.

In Maine, speeding and driver inattention or distraction were by far the top contributors to fatal accidents, according to The Maine Transportation Safety Coalition. Driving off the road and head-on collisions were the most common types of fatal accidents.

The safety coalition, which includes transportation, police, health, labor and other officials, is expected to release soon a plan for reducing the state’s accident and fatality rates. Although road improvements, which the Maine Department of Transportation continually work on, will help, changing driver behavior is likely to do the most good.

The Maine State Police already use fatality maps to target speed enforcement efforts. Campaigns to increase seat belt use have also been successful in improving the state’s perennially low rate. As part of his budget, Gov. John Baldacci included a provision to allow officers to stop and ticket drivers who are not wearing seat belts. Currently, drivers can only be stopped for another offense and then also cited for lack of seat belt use. Boosting the state’s seat belt use could save 20 to 30 lives a year, according to the Maine DOT.

The TRIP report also bolsters Maine’s case for a pilot project to increase the interstate truck weight limit to 100,000 pounds. The current 80,000-pound limit forces big trucks onto the state’s back roads. A report by TRIP last year predicted that the amount of freight hauled by trucks in Maine would increase by 52 percent by 2020, a slightly faster increase than the national average. The result is likely to be fatal accidents unless the biggest truckers are allowed on the safer interstates.

Improved roads will help, but the best thing drivers on rural roads can do is buckle up, slow down and pay attention.