NewsChannel5 reveals Northeast Ohio’s killer roads

CLEVELAND - In a place where a turn on an interstate has the unofficial title of "Dead Man's Curve," you'd expect a lot of carnage on the roads. You'd be right.

Nearly every day, the routine act of driving can quickly turn to tragedy.

But where are Northeast Ohio's killer roads?

To answer that, Scripps Howard News Service crunched the numbers in a comprehensive analysis of every deadly accident from 1994 to 2008.

 

Cuyahoga County

• No. 3

Interstate 71 = 52 deaths

• No. 2

Interstate 480 = 63 deaths

• No. 1

Interstate 90 (the home of “Dead Man's Curve”) = 93 deaths

Summit County

• No. 1

Interstate 76 = 65 deaths
(No other road in Summit County comes close)

Stark County

• No. 3

State Route 172 = 18 deaths

• No. 2

US Highway 62 = 20 deaths

• No. 1

Interstate 77 = 22 deaths

 

Lorain County

• No. 2

State Route 303 = 15 deaths
Interstate 90 = 15 deaths

• No.1

Interstate 80 (the Turnpike) = 20 deaths

Lake County

• No. 3

State Route 2 = 19 deaths

• No. 2

US-20 = 23 deaths

• No. 1

Interstate 90 = 32 deaths

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said some of the carnage can be blamed on the engineering of the roads themselves -- like that 90-degree danger of "Dead Man's Curve."

Peters said, "We have made tremendous progress with engineering, but we're learning every day. And the more we learn and the more we can get at the causes of these crashes, the safer we can be."

The leading causes of deadly crashes are tied to the drivers and passengers themselves.

Of the tens of thousands of deadly crashes across Ohio from 1994 to 2008:

• 65.6 percent were not wearing a seat belt
• 33.2 percent were caused by drinking and driving
• 22.2 percent were a result of speeding

That means most of the deaths on our killer roads could have been prevented.

Peters said, "That may be something to get at because it's behavioral, but we can make progress and I will be happy when we have zero deaths a year."

For a full map of fatal accidents by state and county, click here .