OREGON COAST — The month of July saw at least four fatal car crashes on highways in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook Counties.
Three of those crashes happened in just one week near the end of July.
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Oregon saw a spike in serious crashes. Preliminary data from the Oregon Department of Transportation suggests this is starting to drop, but summer is a busy time on Oregon’s North Coast. Traffic can be heavy on the major highways leading to and along the coast. It isn’t uncommon for traffic accidents — minor and major — to rise during this time.
A total of five people died across the four crashes in July. The individual causes for the accidents varied, but in each instance the highways shut down at the scene for hours.
The Oregon Coast is a popular tourist destination for people all over the country, noted David House, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
“Many of the drivers in the summer are not familiar with the highways in Oregon,” he said. “It may be their first time here. So that’s one thing to keep in mind if you’re a resident.”
Also, while the rate of serious crashes seems to be dropping, some of the troubling driving trends the state started recording during the pandemic have carried through to today.
“And those things, since the pandemic, include higher speeds and more people driving intoxicated,” House said.
The state is also seeing an occasional fatality because someone involved in a crash that they should have survived wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, an issue that had been on a downward trend in Oregon.
According to data collected by the Department of Transportation, Tillamook and Clatsop Counties saw more than 5,000 car crashes that resulted in injury or death in a ten year period stretching from 2013 through 2022.
Of those, over a fifth happened during the pandemic years of 2020 through 2022.
During the 10-year period, there were 184 fatal car accidents in the two counties. Of those, nearly half occurred during the pandemic years.
The state has made some adjustments to how flagging is done in work zones to provide additional layers of protection from distracted drivers and to free up more people to help manage traffic through a work area. But House says there have not been major changes to highway engineering or signage in response to the data.
He says the state is in frequent communication with local governments about concerns on the roads – a long and continuous process.