Lakewood engineer ties rising nighttime pedestrian deaths to drug impairment, outlines Colfax countermeasures

Lakewood’s traffic analysis shows a growing share of the city’s traffic fatalities now involve impaired road users, particularly pedestrians at night, and the city is responding with a mix of data-driven timing changes, design fixes and partnerships with the coroner and police, a Lakewood traffic engineer told the Denver Regional Council of Governments virtual meeting.

Matt, a traffic engineer for the City of Lakewood, said injury crashes in Lakewood have fallen about 20 percent since 2016 but that fatalities have remained roughly steady in the mid-to-upper teens annually while impairment has become a larger factor. "Going into COVID, we were at half of our traffic fatalities were impairment, and now we're right around 75 to 80 percent of our traffic fatalities," he said.

The engineer said he reviewed 38 recent pedestrian deaths and that "all but five" of those pedestrians had impairment identified in post-mortem testing. He gave counts he said came from those reviews: 16 involved alcohol, 13 involved methamphetamine, and 16 involved combinations of narcotics or alcohol. He emphasized that these categories overlap and that working with the coroner’s office clarified toxicology results not available in initial police case files.

Why it matters: Pedestrian deaths that involve impairment present different behavioral patterns than sober crashes, the engineer said, and that affects what engineering countermeasures are likely to help. He added: "When these are the vast majority of your crashes and your ultimate goal is 0, you find a way to prevent these deaths from happening." He argued that understanding medical and toxicology context — via coroner autopsies — helps tailor…