Highway Deaths Hit 13-Year High in 2003 By John Crawley http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&u=/nm/20040428/us_nm/transport_deaths_dc_2&printer=1

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of U.S. traffic deaths rose nearly 1 percent in 2003 and reached a 13-year high at 43,220, the government reported on Wednesday.

It was the fifth straight year road deaths rose, although passenger car fatalities decreased. Sport utility vehicle deaths went up roughly 10 percent over 2002, with more than half of the victims in those crashes killed in rollovers. Motorcycle deaths also jumped.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (news - web sites) said preliminary figures showed 405 more highway deaths overall in 2003 than the previous year and the most since 1990 when 44,509 people were killed.

Despite the increase in the annual death count, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled remained constant at 1.5 deaths because more people were on the road.

But Jeffrey Runge, the safety agency's administrator, expressed alarm at that figure and said it had to drop measurably soon or the country could return to 50,000 deaths a year by the end of the decade.

In 2003, more than half of those killed in passenger vehicles were not wearing safety belts. Forty percent of all fatalities, or 17,401 deaths, were alcohol-related, essentially unchanged from 2002.

Runge said those figures underscored the need for states to adopt standard safety-belt enforcement laws and to get tougher on drunken drivers.

"This problem will not be solved in Washington, D.C., alone," said Runge. "We need the cooperation of every American to drive responsibly, fasten his or her safety belt and care for each other's safety on the roads."

Runge, an emergency room physician, has also raised the potential dangers of light trucks sharing the road with smaller passenger cars and has addressed the propensity of SUVs to roll.

Sport utility deaths went up by 456 with more than two- thirds of victims not wearing seat belts, the safety agency said.

"A large part of the problem is keeping all four wheels on the roadway," Runge told reporters about the rollover propensity of SUVs. Some manufacturers have addressed the problem but Runge wants more safety changes. For instance, his agency is proposing a standard to improve the strength of vehicle roofs to reduce rollover deaths.

Cars have a slight edge in sales over light trucks, which include SUVs, pickups and minivans. But SUV sales rose more than 10 percent last year.

Consumer and safety groups have long targeted SUVs as unsafe, and are pressuring the government to mandate tougher design changes. SUV safety and other provisions are included in highway legislation awaiting final consideration in Congress.

"Affordable, feasible safety improvements could help prevent the rising death toll in SUVs," said Joan Claybrook, president of consumer group Public Citizen.