US traffic deaths drop for 2023, but toll of 41,000 called too high
DETROIT — U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.6% last year, but still, almost 41,000 people were killed on the nation’s roadways, according to fullyear estimates by safety regulators.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was the second year in a row that fatalities decreased. The agency also released final numbers for 2022 on Monday, saying that 42,514 people died in crashes.
NHTSA Deputy Administrator Sophie Shulman said traffic deaths declined in the fourth quarter of last year, marking the seventhstraight quarterly drop that started with the second quarter of 2022.
The declines come even though people are driving more. Federal Highway Administration estimates show that Americans drove 67.5 billion more miles last year than the previous year, a 2.1% increase. The death rate per 100 million miles driven fell to 1.26 last year, down from 1.33 in 2022, NHTSA said.
Authorities have said that even with a decline, the number of deaths is still too high. Shulman blamed the problem in part on distracted driving. In 2022, 3,308 people were killed in crashes that involved distracted drivers, while 289,310 were injured.
“Distracted driving is extremely dangerous,” she said while kicking off a rebranded campaign against it called “Put the Phone Away or Pay.” The agency will start an advertising campaign this month, and law enforcement officers will crack down on the behavior in a campaign from Thursday through Monday.
Bird flu development: A person in Texas has been diagnosed with bird flu, an infection tied to the recent discovery of the virus in dairy cows, health officials said Monday. The patient was being treated with an antiviral drug and their only reported symptom was eye redness, Texas health officials said. Health officials say the person had been in contact with cows presumed to be infected, and the risk to the public remains low.
It marks the first known instance globally of a person catching this version of bird flu from a mammal, federal health officials said.
However, there’s no evidence of person-to-person spread or that anyone has become infected from milk or meat from livestock, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genetic tests don’t suggest that the virus suddenly is spreading more easily or that it is causing more severe illness, Shah said. And current antiviral medications still seem to work.
Russia shooting: Russia’s top security agency said Monday that it has broken up what it called a “terrorist cell” in southern Russia whose members had provided weapons and cash to suspected attackers of the Moscow concert hall. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said that on Sunday it detained four suspected members of the cell in the Russian province of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.
The agency alleged that the suspects detained in Dagestan were involved in channeling money and providing weapons to the gunmen who attacked the concert hall on Moscow’s western edge on March 22, killing 144 people in the deadliest attack on Russian soil in two decades.
Last USS Arizona survivor Lou Conter, the last dies: living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that sank in the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died at 102.
Conter passed away Monday at his home in Grass Valley, California, of congestive heart failure, his daughter Louann Daley said, adding that she and two of her brothers, James and Jeff, were beside him.
The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that launched the United States into World War II. The battleship’s dead account for nearly half of those killed in the attack.
Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. Dec. 7 that year. Sailors were just beginning to hoist colors, or raise the flag, when the assault began.
Conter recalled how one bomb penetrated steel decks 13 minutes into the battle and set off more than 1 million pounds of gunpowder stored below. “Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides,” Conter said. “Oil all over the sea was burning.”
His autobiography, “The Lou Conter Story,” recounts how he joined other survivors in tending to the injured, many of them blinded and badly burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their senior surviving officer was sure they had rescued all those still alive.
The rusting wreckage of the Arizona is still where it sank. More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed inside. Only 335 Arizona crew members survived.
Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years in the Navy.
He was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His family later moved to Colorado. Conter is also survived by another son, Tony; a stepson, Ron Fudge; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
With Conter’s death, there are 19 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack still living, according to Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.