Utah drivers doing better, but still not good enough, UHP says
It was a Friday night and Annie Jolley says she and her teen friends went out for a casual drive for fun with no destination in mind.
While in a residential area in Pleasant Grove, the Jeep that Jolley was a passenger in went down a hill, "probably going too fast," she said, when it hit a "large dip" that the driver didn't see.
"We definitely caught air. We landed, we spun and we hit the back of a parked car on the road and continuously flipped multiple times," she recalled.
The car rolled three times, landing on its side against a tree, according to the Utah Highway Patrol. Jolley said the top of the vehicle was ripped off.
"Seeing the Jeep that was rolled over (and) wedged under a pine tree, I could tell it was a very serious accident," Jolley's father, Chad Jolley, said of his reaction when he got to the scene.
Despite suffering a concussion and minor back and neck injuries, Jolley and her five friends escaped without serious injuries thanks mostly in part to wearing a seat belt.
That was in March of 2022. Now, over a year later, Jolley, 18, was invited Thursday to speak during the UHP and Utah Department of Transportation's annual press event to remind drivers to be safe during Labor Day weekend.
"The most important thing is putting your seat belt on first," she said.
Labor Day weekend marks the end of the so-called "100 deadliest days of summer," the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Through Thursday, there have been 82 people killed on Utah's roads this summer in 72 crashes, compared to 98 fatalities during the same time period last year.
UHP Col. Michael Rapich said drivers in Utah did better this year, but "we didn't do good enough. … Every fatality is too many."
Of the 82 people killed this summer, 13 deaths were due to crashes involving an impaired driver, 14 deaths were caused by crashes in which speed played a significant factor, four were killed in incidents involving distracted driving, and 13 of those killed were not wearing seat belts, according to the UHP.
"We had an opportunity to do a lot better than we did," Rapich said.
UDOT spokesman John Gleason concurred that while drivers in Utah were better this summer, "It's hard to celebrate when you still have so many people dying on our roads."
One area of special concern is an increase in teen fatalities in 2023. From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, 28 teens died on Utah's roadways, compared to 24 during the same time the year before. and 19 in 2021. At least 10 of those teens killed were at fault for causing the fatal crash, according to UHP data.
Gleason says the message from UDOT this year heading into the holiday weekend is to "go back to the basics of safe driving." That means wearing seat belts, not speeding and not being distracted or impaired while driving, he said.
Rapich says troopers will be working over 100 overtime shifts this weekend in an effort to keep the state's highways safe.
In total, through Wednesday, 180 people had been killed on Utah's roads in 2023 compared to 217 over the same time last year.
