2021 Was MA's Deadliest Year On The Road Since 2007 — Here's Why

MASSACHUSETTS — Last year was the most dangerous year to be on Massachusetts roads in over a decade.

In 2021, 408 people died in crashes in Massachusetts, the most since 2007, the last year prior to the pandemic, according to figures from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. There were 389 fatal crashes — more than one person died in some crashes.

Experts and advocates are concerned. While Massachusetts tends to be among the nation's safest, according to MassDOT safety engineer Bonnie Polin, "We should not be comfortable with that number."

"Even before covid, there was a desire to bring numbers down," Polin said. "They were trending down, but then covid changed everything."

"You don't want it to be you who gets killed," said Emily Stein, president of the Safe Roads Alliance. "If you've lost a family member or been a survivor of a serious crash, it is life-changing. You can't take your mistakes back."

But road safety trends in the last two years have pointed in two directions: while deaths have surged, crashes overall are down, significantly.

In 2020, the state recorded over 40,000 fewer crashes than in 2019; that number only partially rebounded last year. Crashes with serious injuries but no deaths fell, for the second year in a row.

Why the divergence? Experts and advocates point to a number of possibilities, but one factor explains half the increase in fatalities — motorcycle crashes.

Motorcycle and moped crashes

"The number of motorcyclists who died on our roads dramatically shot up," Polin said.

The number of fatal crashes involving motorcycles is up over 50 percent in just two years. Combined with mopeds, motorcycles account for more than half the two-year increase in fatal crashes, according to state data.

That in part relates to there being more motorcycles on the road, and potentially "people who haven't ridden motorcycles in a while," Polin said.

Active motorcycle registration fell from 2019 to 2020, according to statistics from the RMV, but rose in 2021. Anecdotally, the state official said, state agencies have heard from a lot of riders who said they took out their motorcycles for the first time in years.

Even with no change in experience levels, more motorcycles on the road is likely to mean more fatal crashes. Over the last 20 years in Massachusetts, 2.5 percent of crashes involving motorcycles and mopeds resulted in a death, versus just 0.3 percent of all crashes.

During the two pandemic years, motorcycles and mopeds were involved in a larger fraction of all crashes statewide.

Risky driving behavior

Polin also said risk-taking behavior surged during the pandemic, including speeding, driving impaired and driving without a seatbelt buckled.

"That's not just Massachusetts, that's everywhere," she said.

When many people stopped commuting to work in March 2020, traffic cleared up and people were able to drive faster.

"During the early days of covid, people took out fast cars and saw how fast they can do," Polin said. "That continued."

Stein of the Safe Roads Alliance suggested that pandemic safety rules might be crowding out people's willingness to follow the rules of the road.

"The majority of people are really trying to follow the rules with covid," she said. "When people get back in their cars, they might not want to follow any more rules — they're tapped out, and this is their personal space to shut everyone else."

Pedestrians back on the roads

When the pandemic began, crashes involving pedestrians fall dramatically and it was the state's safest year for pedestrians in a decade. But pedestrians fatalities rebounded last year.

"People are out there more," Polin said. "We want to make sure they're safe."

Road safety took a back seat to the virus

According to Stein, road safety initiatives in the works prior to the pandemic were put on the back burner.

For example, her organization was heavily involved in advocacy for the Massachusetts hands-free law, which went into effect just as the pandemic was at its worst in the state. Messaging that would have been devoted to teaching drivers about the new law instead focused on virus safety. The group also opted to wait to implement an elementary school road safety program, Stein said.

"It's hard to reach the public with two really important messages: stay safe with covid and stay safe with the roads," she said.

What can be done?

"These crashes and fatalities are preventable," said Catherine Gleason, the public policy manager at Liveable Streets Alliance, a transportation and housing advocacy nonprofit. "The state has made progress in certain areas but there is still a lot to be done."

(Stein and Gleason's organizations are both members of the MA Vision Zero Coalition, a road safety group.)

Polin said the DOT has a motorcycle safety task force and is looking at how to make roadways safer.

"Even though we're the DOT and we work on the infrastructure side, the infrastructure can affect driver behavior," Polin said. "For example, if there are two lanes in each direction, it might be possible to reduce that to one lane in each direction and change the feel so it's not a raceway."

But Polin emphasized that "speed management is in the context of the road. I am not here to say we're going to be slowing the speed down on the interstate."

Stein and Gleason called for road changes as well, like installing sidewalks and protected bike lanes, reducing road widths and adding curb bump-outs at crosswalks.

Gleason also pointed to several bills on the table in Massachusetts which could promote road safety, including one that would allow municipalities to install red-light cameras, which are currently illegal in the state. Another bill would require trucks to install side guards, which prevent bicycles, pedestrians and motorcyclists from moving under trucks and getting run over.

Stein mentioned Charlie's Law, a bill named for Charlie Proctor, a Somerville cyclist killed in Arlington in 2020. Charlie's Law would ban recording or broadcasting video while driving.

"Given how preventable these crashes and these fatalities are, it's important for us to be preventing them when we can," Gleason said.

As of Friday, the state crash dashboard, with incomplete data, already reports two fatal crashes and dozens of injuries in 2022.

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at 412-265-8353 or chris.huffaker@patch.com.

This article originally appeared on the Across Massachusetts Patch