Highway fatalities in Maine are at their highest number in 15 years, according to the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety.
The bureau reports that as of Wednesday, 177 people have died in fatal accidents on Maine roads in 2022.
State Bureau of Highway Safety Director Lauren Stewart says during the pandemic in 2020 there were fewer people driving to work, but some of those people drove faster and caused fatal crashes. And Stewart says that trend has continued.
"We thought that it would drop off in 2021 as things got back to normal. But we didn't see the decrease in speeding fatalities. And that has carried over into 2022 where we're seeing 38% of our fatalities involving high speeds," she says.
Stewart says almost half of highway deaths this year involved people not wearing seatbelts. A third, she says, were impaired by alcohol, drugs or both.
