NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — As you travel to shop or celebrate this season, Shawn Steward with AAA Kansas wants you to stay focused on the road.
"Holidays can be a hectic and stressful time for a lot of people," Steward said. "A lot of times, we see that manifest in bad driving behaviors. Whether that's aggressive driving, speeding, distracted driving, there's just a lot of things going on. The hustle and bustle of shopping, heavier traffic congestion in many cases, family tensions, just a lot of things on people's minds."
Aggressive driving includes a whole host of unsafe driving behaviors, such as weaving through traffic, running traffic lights, tailgating and speeding.
"Slow down," Steward said. "Leave plenty of time to get where you're going. Obviously, there's always going to be things on your mind, but, if you can just focus on driving, that's going to really pay dividends in terms of not only road safety, but in terms of your peace of mind."
Kansas statistics on crashes show that inattention and aggressive driving are problems here.
"We looked at 2022 crash statistics from the Kansas Department of Transportation," Steward said. "The four most frequent contributing circumstances noted in crash reports were inattention, 22.5% of crashes, right of way violations, following too closely, again, that's an aggressive driving behavior and driving too fast for the conditions. Speed related crashes, specifically, numbered nearly 5000, with 93 people killed and more than 2000 people injured. We also see alcohol related crashes being a big issue on our roads, especially during the holidays, from Thanksgiving to New Year's. Nearly 2200 alcohol related crashes occurred in Kansas last year, with 95 fatalities and nearly 1200 injuries resulting from those crashes."
December had the third highest number of crashes in Kansas in 2022.
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