Traffic is down but road fatalities are up, MassDOT says

BOSTON — The governor’s stay-at-home advisory that was in effect for the entire month of April has stifled traffic, but it’s also led to another, more dangerous, consequence.

On a Zoom news conference, the state’s head of road safety told us the rate of deadly crashes doubled last month.

“The last thing we want to do is get people out on our roadways driving unsafely, having these fatalities build up,” Massachusetts Department of Transportation Road Safety Administrator Jonathan Gulliver.

MassDOT believes because the traffic is so light, people are driving much faster and when there is a crash, someone is more likely to be killed.

MassDOT reports 28 people were killed in April. Of those fatalities, 18 were drivers, four were passengers, two were operating motorcycles, one was on a bicycle and three were pedestrians.

“We do think it is in large part related to, you have an open road in front of you, whereas before you did not,” said Gulliver. "There is probably some psychology where people are trying to make the most of the time they have now that they don’t have the congestion they deal with.”

MassDOT is ramping up preventive measures, including deploying more speed feedback signs. They are also working with state and local police to do more targeted enforcement.

“To look at where we have hot spots. Where we need to have some targeted enforcement," Gulliver said.

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