Pocatello already seeing fatalities for 100 deadly days

It’s just barely three weeks into the 100 deadliest days of summer and already, the fatality count for the Pocatello area has started.

“So far we’ve investigated 32 crashes and last year at about this time, it was about 29,” said Lt. Fritz Zweigart with ISP. “So we’ve seen an increase in crashes over the last two and a half weeks.”

Of those 32 crashes, six were injury crashes, 25 resulted in property damage, one was a hit and run and three were deadly. In comparison, for 2016 for the same period of time, there were 29 total crashes. Nine of those were injury crashes, 19 had property damage, one was a hit and run and only one was a fatality. Those numbers are for ISP’s Pocatello region only. It does not include other jurisdictional crashes, like Bannock County or Pocatello police.

Zweigart said three fatal crashes in nearly as many weeks is not a good start to the 100 days.

It’s not only law enforcement that is seeing an increase in accident numbers already.

Portneuf Medical Center has also seen its share of injuries and trauma patients.

“We’ve really started the first couple of weeks of our trauma season with a bang,” said Dr. Curis Sandy, an emergency medicine physician. “Our numbers from trauma patients has definitely been on the rise over last year. Currently, up to date, our trauma patients are up 38 percent from last year.”

Sandy said they do get some bicycle accidents and other traumas coming in to the ER, but the bulk of what they’ve seen so far have been from car or motorcycle accidents.

“We’re seeing a lot of increased injuries because of how fast the vehicles are going,” Sandy added. “And also, obviously because people are not wearing their seatbelts.”

Zweigart agrees those are two main causes of fatality crashes that ISP deals with.

“Fatalities we commonly see during these days are impaired drivers, distractions in the vehicle that cause vehicles to off the road and overcorrect, and people not wearing their seatbelts,” he said.

Zweigart said several of the crashes have also been in construction zones. So he wants to remind people to pay attention to your surroundings and be patient with construction. And of course, always slow down when hitting the road.

During 100 deadliest days in 2016, ISP reported 85 fatal crashes statewide.