The Lima/Allen County Regional Planning Commission has put together a draft of their 2020 traffic crash report.
The report found that there were just over 2,800 crashes in Allen County last year, which is significantly down from the 3,200 crashes in 2019. Ten of those 2020 crashes were fatal. The highest number of incidents were at the intersection of Allentown and Cable Roads, with 84 collisions last year.
With less people out on the roads because of the pandemic, some of these findings were not much of a surprise for the Regional Planning Commission.
"Year to year we do expect some variation in general, but these kind of follow trends that we were seeing with traffic patterns," said Adam Haunhorst, planning engineer for the Lima/Allen County Regional Planning Commission. "Our local roads were down something like 12% in reduction of traffic range, and our interstates were something like 17%, so we do expect to see less traffic crashes with less traffic."
And with this information, the Regional Planning Commission says that they will be able to make changes where they're needed.
"The high-crash intersections have been identified, and that’s one of the areas of focus that will be doing a lot more work and research over the next year or so as we look to fund some more of the safety monies that will be offered by ODOT," said Shane Coleman, executive director of the Lima/Allen County Regional Planning Commission.
The report also found that crashes involving pedestrians were up in 2020, but crashes involving people under the influence were down.
