Ohio road deaths down over holiday weekend
It was a safer Thanksgiving weekend on Ohio roads this year as fatalities were down 50% from a year ago, the State Highway Patrol said.
Nine people died in nine fatal crashes on Ohio roadways over the 2020 Thanksgiving weekend, which ran from Wednesday, November 25, at midnight through 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
In 2019, there were twice as many fatalities — 18 deaths in 15 crashes during the same time frame.
Lt. Craig Cvetan, of the State Highway Patrol, said he didn’t know if traffic deaths were down because there were fewer people traveling on the roads for Thanksgiving due to the pandemic.
“I assume there were less people traveling,” Cvetan said.
However, State Highway Patrol statistics also show that the number of fatalities over Thanksgiving weekend has gone up and down annually for the last few years. While there were nine fatalities this year and 18 in 2019, there were seven fatalities in 2018 compared to 22 in 2017.
Cvetan said the State Highway Patrol this year “still devoted the same resources as we would any other Thanksgiving weekend.”
Yet statistics show that the patrol increased its citations for distracted driving, speeding and other enforcement actions by 20.5% this year. There were 6,973 enforcement actions in 2020 compared to 5,786 last year, patrol statistics show.
Cvetan said that the patrol has made it a priority to stop motorists who are creating a potential danger to others. Distracted driving citations were up by 64%, with 146 citations this year compared to 89 last year.
Of the nine fatalities this year, two were pedestrians. Four of the fatalities involved people who were not wearing a seat belt, and two of the cases involved an impaired driver. jwoods@dispatch.com; @Woodsnight