The bad news is that South Dakota saw an 11% jump in traffic fatalities in 2017. The good news is compared to history and other states, South Dakota roads are still pretty safe.
So says Office of Highway Safety director Lee Axdahl:
There were 129 traffic fatalities in South Dakota during 2017. That is up from the 116 reported in 2016, a year which saw the second lowest fatality total of all time.
“For most of 2017, we were actually on target to finish the year with fewer than 100 traffic fatalities for the first time in state history,” says state Office of Highway Safety director Lee Axdahl. “But in the last three months of the year, there were 42 additional fatalities which dramatically affected our expectations.”
…“The 2017 numbers are up, but we still have one of the lowest five-year fatality trends in the nation,” Axdahl says. “And, while even one traffic fatality is one too many, the numbers prove that South Dakota drivers are among the safest in the nation” [SD Department of Public Safety, press release, 2018.03.16].
Axdahl notes that 66 out of the 101 people who died in motor vehicles were not wearing seat belts. Seat belt use is 90% nationwide but only 74% in South Dakota (the second-lowest rate in the nation, ahead of only New Hampshire). The fact that 74% of all motorists are wearing seat belts and only 35% of motorist fatalities were buckled in makes pretty clear that universal seat belt usage would have saved at least a couple dozen lives in South Dakota in 2017.
South Dakotans love to be thrown from their vehicles in crashes. It’s even more popular than putting their heads through windshields, though they love that too. We can do New Hampshire one better with a state slogan. Let ours be “Live Free and Die.”