Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon's Department of Transportation tallied up a year's worth of auto wreck statistics, and now points to the number one culprit in traffic fatalities.  April Baer reports.

While drunk driving may get the lion's share of media attention and political censure, the number one killer on Oregon roads is still speed.

Sally Ridenour  "Speed is involved in almost all crashes in Oregon."

Sally Ridenour with ODOT. She says half of all people killed in Oregon auto wrecks died in accidents caused by speeding. 

Ridenour says rural accidents were  four times more likely than urban accidents last year to end in a death. She calls that a warning not to assume sparsely-travelled country roads are safer. 

Sally Ridenour  "Even though speeding may not seem like a big deal at the time, the physics of motion make it very deadly."

The percentage of people killed by speeding hasn't budged much from last year, but Ridenour says the preliminary numbers suggest Oregon may have had fewer fatal crashes, measured in raw numbers.