On the chilly evening of March 3, 1995, Jim Dougan had a few happy-hour drinks with business buddies at the Warbonnet Inn before stopping at the Star Lanes Bowling Alley.
At about 10 p.m., he hit the road, breezing west outside of town along a dark, snow-packed Interstate Highway 90. He went only nine miles when his 1995 Dodge pickup skidded off the right shoulder, hit a slope and rolled over repeatedly. He died instantly of massive head injuries.
Dougan, a shy 52-year-old credit union manager who liked to bowl and help manage the semi-pro Copper Kings baseball team, wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He was also driving too fast for the weather and his blood-alcohol level that night was twice the legal limit.
Within two miles of the crash site near milemarker 215, four other fatal wrecks occurred on I-90 within two years. Killed were men and women in their prime: a college student, dry waller, cook and homemaker.
Here in Silver Bow County where Butte’s gold-rush days are long gone but its hard-drinking ways remain, there are more fatal crashes on I-90 for every mile traveled than on any other interstate stretch in America.
And there’s little question why. People drive too fast, especially when the weather turns bad, or they drive after hitting the bars that dot nearly every street. The out-of-state tourists sometimes nod off as they cross Big Sky Country.
“We’re like the Bermuda Triangle of interstate accidents,” says Dan Hollis, Silver Bow County coroner, referring to the local stretches of I-90 that runs from Boston to Seattle and Interstate Highway 15 that drops south from Canada to the California border with Mexico.
But Montana is not unusual. A computer-aided investigation by Hearst Newspapers, which analyzed every interstate death nationwide between 1990 and 1994, reveals that the interstates with the highest fatal crash rates are in remote western areas.
Los Angeles’ interstates have the highest number of fatal accidents, because they’re so heavily traveled. Yet their fatality rates–the number of deaths per mile traveled–are quite low.
In contrast, some of the isolated western stretches are the deadliest.
Second on the killer list, after Butte’s I-90, is Interstate Highway 70 in Utah’s Emery County, a scenic highway that winds through Castle Valley in the eastern part of the state.
Next is the I-15 stretch, in southwestern Montana’s Beaverhead County, mentioned by Hollis.
The road is also designated “scenic” as it crosses breathtaking valleys and passes the Clark Canyon Dam, known as the Land of the Lunkers for trout fly-fishing. The main town is Dillon, where the year’s biggest event is the Jaycee Labor Day Rodeo.
The fourth most lethal stretch is Interstate Highway 25 in New Mexico’s San Miguel County, which runs parallel to the Santa Fe Trail.
Fifth is Interstate Highway 10 in Crockett County, a remote southern part of Texas where some folks talk distances in beer volume, as in, “Oh, that’s about a six pack,” a throwback to when state law allowed a driver to drink behind the wheel.
Out here, fatal crash rates are many times the national average.
On I-90 in Silver Bow County, for example, there were 6.2 fatal crashes for every 100 million miles traveled between 1990 and 1994. Nationwide, there were 0.65 such crashes for the same distance.
In Montana, a state that has fewer people than San Antonio, there were 168 fatal crashes on interstates in that five-year period.
And in Alaska, less populated than Boston, there were 120 such accidents, making it the state with the highest fatal crash rate.
At first glance, the death toll may seem surprising because interstates are the safest highways in America. They’re designed to high standards. They usually have good signage, wide lanes, shoulders, medians and other safety features.
So, their fatality rate is less than half the average for all highways.
Still, an increasing number of people die on interstates every year. And the figure is expected to rise more with the repeal of the national speed limit by Congress.
In 1994, 4,694 lives were lost on interstates nationally, the same toll that would pile up if a jet crashed every week, killing everyone on board.
“Society has simply accepted the fact we kill people in unbelieveable numbers on highways,” says Bud Wright, director of the Office of Highway Safety at the Federal Highway Administration.
Every time a plane crashes, he says it makes the front page of a newspaper. But that doesn’t happen with car accidents, which kill people in ones and twos every hour across the nation.
More people die every year in accidents on the nation’s roads–at least 41,000–than from AIDS, drugs or guns. For those younger than 43, a traffic crash is still the most likely single cause of death.
And this represents progress. Fatality rates were much higher two decades ago, when states did not have the strict laws on drinking and seat-belt use that most have today. Cars also have gained air bags, anti-lock brakes and shoulder-strap seat belts.
Yet as cars get safer, some drivers take more risks. “They have a false sense of what they can trade off,” says Judith Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a consumer safety group.
Also as the road improves, drivers pick up speed. “When people get on an interstate, they tend to go like hell because they’re on a good road,” says John McPherson, sheriff of Silver Bow County.
Studies show that repaving a road worsens safety because a driver’s foot gets heavier as the surface gets smoother.
What’s most likely to cause a fatal crash?
While road conditions contribute to nearly one-third of them, driver error is a factor in almost every crash. Speed and fatigue are key problems but alcohol remains the single largest factor, despite improved awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving.
Drivers have to pay attention because even the best roads are designed so people can safely drive up only to 70 miles per hour–in good weather, says Richard Redding, senior transportation engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
So, too, seat belts and air bags are designed to work up only to a certain speed, beyond which a crash’s impact is just too strong. “You can’t repeal the laws of physics,” says Redding.
But too often, he adds: “Drivers themselves can’t recognize their own limits.”
Sheriff McPherson talks about fatigue as he explains the interstate death toll.
“When you have a state this big, you have a lot of open areas and people tend to push to get through,” he says. “Some drive all night from Washington State, and when the sun comes up, they’re bleary-eyed.”
While distance and fatigue are problems, alcohol is the primary catalyst, the records show.
Of the 12 fatal crashes along the 14-mile stretch of I-90 from 1990 through 1994, alcohol was involved in half of them. Speed was frequently cited as well. Ten of the crashes involved area drivers.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving was once active in the Butte area but isn’t any longer. And the only chapter in the state, in Great Falls, has largely disbanded.
Maj. Bert Obert, field forces commander for the Montana Highway Patrol, says he has only 200 uniformed officers to monitor safety for the state, in area the fourth largest in the nation.
Yet Obert, like many Montanans, favors an increase in the speed limit.
“If you’re driving 80 m.p.h. and paying attenton, you’re probably not going to have an accident–in daylight,” he says.
He acknowledges, though, that bad weather, a faulty tire, a few drinks or another irresponsible driver could skew the outcome.
Still, in Montana, people routinely drive 80 m.p.h. on the interstates, though the speed limit is 65 m.p.h.
With Congress’ repeal of the speed limit, Montana returned to its previous limit, which allows speed that’s “reasonable and prudent.”
Problem is, what’s “reasonable” to you may not be to the person barreling down the road next to you.
