Monmouth County Ranks Second In Accident Fatalities, Overall New Jersey Deaths Down in 2008
Stricter enforcement, enhanced auto safety features, and of course, the fact that high gasoline prices made sure most people thought twice about making that not-so-necessary trip – these were the reasons the rate of road accident deaths in New Jersey, from Passaic County to Ocean County and beyond, fell to their lowest in over a decade.
The numbers were particularly encouraging in Ocean County, where the number of deaths from road accidents fell by almost 50 percent to 36 in 2008. In 2007 year, a total of 74 people had died in traffic accidents in the county. That's s a significant drop, and one that has as much to do with better monitoring by our law enforcement agencies, as it has to do with high gasoline prices. In our very own Monmouth County, the drop hasn’t been very steep – from 55 in 2007 to 48 in 2008. Worse yet, Monmouth County was second on the list of auto fatalities in 2008 in the state.
Taken countywise, law enforcement officials say, these statistics don't mean much since the rate could vary from year to year for each county, and not be that significant in the overall scheme of things, but when you consider that there has been the biggest ever drop in the past thirteen years in the total number of deaths from traffic accidents in New Jersey overall, then that is a significant development. The death rate in 2008 was 597 for the entire state, compared to data from the past thirteen years, which show a death rate that’s constantly above 700.
Nobody's saying that we should all cheer because we had 597 New Jerseyans die on our roads last year, but if we look clear and hard at some of the programs our enforcement agencies managed to implement last year, and see how much these had to do with reducing the death rate so dramatically, then we may find ways to see such similar decreases in 2009, and beyond. It appears that better seat belt enforcement and anti-drunk driving measures played a big part in law enforcement programs in 2008, and these seem to have paid off richly in terms of lives saved.
All in all, whatever else is happening in the rest of the state, Monmouth County needs to get its act together. Since 2002, the county has constantly ranked among the top three counties, for accident related deaths. One reason why Monmouth County accident lawyers are as busy as they are, but definitely a trend we need to see moving in the other direction.
