Why the death toll on Nevada roads might get worse this year

Nevada could see more traffic fatalities in 2024 than in years past, said police and traffic safety advocates who gathered Thursday at the Nevada Highway Patrol’s Las Vegas office to discuss what they say is a too-high number of lives lost on the state’s roads.

“This is kind of the horrible part,” said Pat Gallagher, project manager at Parsons Corporation and a consultant to the Traffic Incident Management Coalition, a group of public agencies and private sector partners that work together to detect, respond to and clear traffic incidents from the roads, before sharing the group’s most recent fatal report.

As of July 31, 236 lives had been lost in fatal traffic incidents in Nevada, Gallagher shared. “I imagine we could probably add probably 15 or 20 more people to this,” he said, reflecting on lives lost in August.

The number, a nearly 8 percent increase from the same statistic recorded on the same day last year, puts Nevada on track to record more than 400 traffic fatalities, while recent years have seen around 380, explained David Strawn, traffic incident management program specialist at Parsons, whose emergency transportation operations group is part of the Traffic Incident Management Coalition.

“That’s phenomenal to me,” Strawn said. “The numbers are not going down.”

According to the coalition, the top contributing factors in fatal incidents are impairment and speeding.

“I started thinking about those are people’s families,” Strawn said of the moment he realized Nevada’s traffic fatalities are on track to breach 400.

“What if one of those people would have had a major impact in the community?” Strawn said. “We’ll never know.”

Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.