LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The results are in, and Arkansas drivers joined many others across the country in pushing the accelerator down hard during the pandemic as evidenced by a large rise in excessive speeding tickets and fatal crashes.
"We went back, and believe me, we've been scratching our heads trying to figure out what we can do to prevent it," said Maj. Jason Aaron, the Arkansas State Police commander of the patrol division for all the troops in the eastern half of the state.
The tally of lives lost to COVID-19 during the pandemic is pretty clear, but the findings of crashes are among other counts that are coming to the surface along with drug overdoses and suicides.
The numbers have been jarring.
"Our total number of crashes have gone down, but our fatalities have increased," said Maj. Aaron.
Arkansas had been driving in the right direction. According to state police fatal crash reports going back to 2004, an average of more than 600 people a year died on federal and state highways. Over a decade, we pulled that down by about 100 people a year.
But then the pandemic locked us down and left highways wide open for those that needed to be driving. It shot the number of deaths to levels not seen since 2007.
"Comparing 2019 to 2020, our 100+ mile per hour tickets we saw almost 100 percent increase in those," said Maj. Aaron pointing to what could be termed an obvious cause. "I don't know if people just thoughtless cars out the faster they could drive."
Troopers' speed guns across an entire region lit up. Five neighboring statewide law enforcement agencies from Arkansas through Nebraska reported writing between 60 (Kansas) to 108 percent (Iowa) more tickets for excessive speeding.
In Arkansas, even concentrated speed traps didn't always work.
"We would set up a targeted enforcement area and then seen where we've left those assignment areas and within hours troopers have been called back to that same area to work a fatal crash," the major said.
Like several other things about the pandemic, there are things we wished we could have done differently. We can't go back and wear masks or make vaccines faster. On this, all we can do is slow down as more of us get back to full speed.
And use common sense.
"I think traffic volume is picking back up," Maj. Aaron said. "I think life is getting back to normal. I just ask that people slow down, take their time, leave plenty of distance between them and the vehicle in front of them, stay off the phone and wear a seatbelt."