ORANGE COUNTY, N.C. — Deadly road crashes are at the highest total since the 1970s.
What You Need To Know
- There were 1,761 fatal traffic accidents reported in 2021
- That’s the deadliest year since 1972 when 1,983 were reported
- The Orange County Sheriff’s Office detects traffic using various technology
- The main causes of fatalities are speed, distracted driving and not wearing a seat belt
More people were killed in traffic fatalities in 2021 than in any other year in the past two decades, according to the North Carolina State Department of Transportation. The deadliest year on record is 1972, when 1,983 people were killed based on traffic crash data from the N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles.
Although vehicles may have more technology to keep drivers safer, some in law enforcement say drivers are less aware. Speeding, not wearing a seat belt and distracted driving are a few of the factors contributing to this issue.
Spectrum News 1 rode along with an Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputy to see how they track what people are doing on the roads. Deputy Jared Greenlee said he has noticed an eagerness from people behind the wheel to go above the speed limit.
Greenlee said he sees speeding all the time.
“You just got to slow down. Where you are going will be there when you got to get there. Just slow down. It’s important,” he said.
Driving at a safe speed is one of two key components for him that are of the utmost importance — the other is driving sober.
“Not too long ago I had an impaired driver I stopped. They were doing 108 [mph]. Right down here on I-40, just down a couple exits,” Greenlee said.
The OCSO deputy didn’t hold a radar gun to clock the fastest cars. Instead, he used a lidar to detect speed across and perpendicular to the interstate. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said both radar and lidar are forms of “electromagnetic radiation.” However, the differences “are the frequency and wavelength of this energy.”
A communications specialist with the OCSO said a patrol deputy who is parallel to traffic typically uses radar guns. The result of high speeds can be death.
“The lives lost are the worst part,” Greenlee said.
The rise in fatal crashes is happening during the worst period of many people’s lives — a pandemic. Information released this month from the N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program said 1,761 people died in traffic crashes in 2021.
To curb those stats, the deputy keeps a photo in his patrol car as motivation: his daughters Emma and Addison.
“They are the reason I want to come home at night,” Greenlee said. “Really, my metric is, would I want them on the road next to my little girl driving? Everything out here, every fatality, is completely preventable. Speeding is preventable. Impaired driving is preventable.”
Some of that collective driving behavior can be gathered with a sign on the side of the road that blinks when drivers pass by. A speed awareness sign informs the OCSO’s understanding of the problem.
Lt. Bubba Whitehurst is on the Regional Task Force for the Governor’s Highway Safety Program. The lieutenant said a sign records speeds and volume so deputies plan patrol patterns around the heaviest traffic.
“We are able to take that data and analyze. Just that little ounce of prevention may have saved somebody’s life," Whitehurst said.
Whitehurst said his father was a state trooper for 25 years, and his great grandfather was a police chief. Public service is in his blood.
The same passion courses through the veins of Greenlee. Buckling down on people not buckling up is an ongoing problem as well. The deputy believes every drunk driver he arrests and every ticket he writes saves a life.
“I just kind of fell into this because I felt like I was making a difference every single day,” Greenlee said.
It’s the same feeling he gets every day since he entered the world of law enforcement in 2007.
“Every single day I felt like I could go home with some sense of satisfaction of having accomplished something. Maybe saving somebody’s life,” Greenlee said.