ST. LOUIS — Although the pandemic has forced many to work from home and stay off the roads, St. Louis and state officials say more people have died in automobile crashes in 2020 than in recent years.
St. Louis police reported 73 fatal wrecks in the city as of Tuesday. Twenty-two of those involved pedestrian deaths.
Last year there were 56 deaths in St. Louis, including 14 who were pedestrians. And in the year before that there were 49 deaths, with 17 of those killed being pedestrians. The numbers were similar in 2017: 52 killed, including 13 pedestrians.
The Missouri Highway Patrol said 929 people have died in auto crashes statewide so far in 2020, higher than the last two years.
Police and traffic experts have said the pandemic played a role. Authorities started seeing a higher number of wrecks when stay-at-home orders were imposed. Even though fewer motorists were on the streets, they were driving faster and more recklessly, according to the National Safety Council, based in suburban Chicago.
The highway patrol’s tally of traffic deaths includes any fatality on a Missouri road, not just the highways and roads monitored by the patrol. The St. Louis count is folded into the statewide number.There have been at least 103 pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles across the state as of Tuesday. Last year there were 111 pedestrians killed, according to highway patrol Capt. John Hotz.
Some of those pedestrians had walked away from disabled vehicles and were struck. Hotz said anyone whose car breaks down should try to move it as far off the road as possible. If the vehicle can’t be moved, “we recommend that people stay inside of their vehicle with their seat belt on,” he said.
“Oftentimes when people experience problems along the roadway, they lose sight of the fact that they are in or very close to a busy highway,” he said. “It is much safer to stay inside your vehicle with your seat belt on and call a tow truck than to get out of the vehicle and walk around in the roadway.”