Report: WA sees decrease in deadly crashes for 2024 from 33-year high in 2023
In 2024, there were 731 people killed in traffic crashes on Washington roads, a 9.6% decrease from 2023 numbers.
However, at the same time, the preliminary total for 2024 is 36% higher than the number of people killed on Washington roads in 2019.
'Traffic enforcement efforts have increased statewide, resulting in larger numbers of traffic stops for speeding, distraction, and suspected driver impairment. Enforcement fell dramatically during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic. Some cities have also increased their use of automated enforcement for speeding, particularly in school zones and in other areas where pedestrians travel,' WTSC said in its report.
Since 2015, the state saw its lowest number of people killed in crashes in 2019, with 538 reported.
'This is obviously a welcome change to see our annual fatality numbers decline after experiencing large increases over the previous four years. Law enforcement and other traffic safety partners have worked hard to reverse the deadly trend we experienced in 2020-2023. And we still have a lot of work to do to further reduce these historically high fatality numbers,' said Shelly Baldwin, director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.
Driver impairment by alcohol and/or other drugs remains the most common risk factor involved in fatal crashes.
The initial total involving impaired driving was 348 traffic deaths, which represents 48 percent of all fatalities.
This number often rises as additional evidence is processed and recorded in these cases. Final numbers will be released in late 2025 or early 2026.
Speed remains another major factor in fatal crashes, as excessive speed increases both the likelihood and severity of a crash. In 2024, 247 people were killed in crashes involving excessive speed, which represented 34 percent of all fatalities. There is a substantial overlap in crashes involving both speed and impaired driving. Among fatalities involving excessive speed, 62 percent also involved an impaired driver.
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San Francisco Chronicle
8 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. man slain at Muni stop an avid cyclist with a ‘strong sense of what's right and wrong'
Many people would have looked away. But Colden Kimber could not. The 28-year-old student noticed a man ranting at a group of women and children standing at a busy train stop in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood. 'You think you are better than me,' the man taunted. 'You are scared of me.' So Kimber, a towering former hockey goalie at 6 feet 4, stepped between them. Then, without a word, the man plunged a 6-inch knife into Kimber's neck as he turned to glance at an arriving train, prosecutors said. With his girlfriend standing behind him, Kimber tried to restrain the man. Seconds later, as blood poured from his neck, Kimber stopped moving, according to court records. Surgeons at San Francisco General Hospital tried to save him. 'I'm sorry he didn't make it,' Lara Litchfield-Kimber, Kimber's mom, recalled one of them speaking into the phone. 'It's like a fever dream, where it's not reality.' Police arrested Sean Collins, 29, who officers said was covered in blood, a few blocks away from the stabbing last Saturday. He was charged with murder in connection with Kimber's killing at Ocean and Lee avenues. Two children, ages 8 and 14, witnessed the stabbing, prosecutors said, adding that Muni cameras captured the attack. Kimber, an avid cyclist who grew up in central New York, was finishing his degree in kinesiology, the study of human movement, at San Francisco State University. He discovered his love of cycling when his mom, who was fighting breast cancer, dropped out of a triathlon in New York and he took her place. 'He had never ridden a bike on a road,' she said. 'The bikes were the things that stuck.' After moving to San Francisco with his girlfriend in June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kimber joined the Dolce Vita Cycling team and a semiprofessional ice hockey team based in Vacaville. Some evenings he rode his bike at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park, where he held cycling records on the social fitness app Strava. An intense athlete, Kimber racked up 12,000 to 13,000 miles on his bike some years. 'People would say, 'I had a Colden sighting,' but it wasn't that rare because he was always on his bike,' Litchfield-Kimber said. When he was off his bike, he had a knack for building and fixing them. As a part-time bike mechanic and salesperson at American Cyclery in the Haight, 'he was a 'gear guy' who could take the most complicated bike and put it together — without a manual,' Litchfield-Kimber said. Friends and family say Kimber worked out seven days a week, ate well and never drank. 'He was letting his own body be his own living laboratory,' Litchfield-Kimber said. 'He collected data on his own training. He was very into understanding the sociology behind sports performance.' Bradley Woehl, owner of American Cyclery, recalled Kimber as 'a driven, motivated guy' with a 'strong sense of what's right and wrong.' A memorial ride in Kimber's honor is planned at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park on Sept. 7. Collins is scheduled to be arraigned in mid-August. 'This whole thing is a tragedy, there's no excuse for what happened. Only in the darkest recesses of his mind, perhaps he knows he did what he did. But it also appears he blocked out the incident. This is not a 'whodunit,'' said Bill Fazio, Collins' attorney. 'I'll be looking into having him examined to see if psychiatrists can help me understand what happened. This case depresses me, because it shouldn't have happened.' A GoFundMe to support Kimber's family had raised more than $76,000 toward its $90,000 goal as of Saturday night.
Buzz Feed
12 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
31 Bizarre Body Quirks Women Have Learned To Accept
Reddit user Conscious_Can3226 recently asked the r/AskWomenOver30 community, "What's a weird thing your body does that you've never heard of anyone else experiencing?" Some of the responses were super shocking! But body does them too! Wild. Check it out: "I always know my period is coming because my right upper leg feels extremely nauseous. That makes zero sense, but I can't find a better way to describe the feeling than severe nausea in my leg." "I hear music when I'm falling asleep every single night. Sometimes it's rock, sometimes country, sometimes classical. No, there aren't any radios playing anywhere in our home or our neighbors' homes. It happens literally wherever I am and am falling asleep." "My cheeks sweat when I eat apples." "I cry when I pee. It's completely involuntary/not emotion-driven. Tears just start streaming down my face as soon as I start. Mainly, if I hold my bladder too long." "Every time I was pregnant, my nipples would behave like they had Raynaud's disease. They would turn black and then start turning white at the tip. I would have to take all my clothes off and just have them in warm water. I would be walking around and feel a chill, and my nipples would get hard and start this reaction that felt like someone was holding a hot iron to the tips. Went away immediately at birth. It was once the first symptom I felt. I knew I was pregnant because my nipples burned." "I get incredibly nauseous right before I sneeze. Like I think I'm gonna puke, and right when I get to the point where I'm heading to the bathroom, I sneeze and it's like I'm fine. I didn't develop this until after I gave birth." "My right elbow hurts if I eat McDonald's. Never my left elbow or any other fast food." "Instead of brain freeze, I get spine freeze. The location is about two inches down from the top of my sternum, only on the inner side of my spine." "I get nauseous if the inside of my belly button is touched. People interpret that to mean I'm ticklish, but I get a full-body reaction!" "My eyes squeak when I rub them." "I have to crap every time I go shopping." "Some people have a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. I have a gene that makes cucumbers taste rancid, like bad fish." "Since having COVID, I can taste metal when I hold some in my hand, like a fork or a metal cup. I hate it!" "If you tickle my left elbow, I can feel it in my inner ear." "My throat always gets sore for a couple of days before my period, like clockwork." "The base of my skull makes fizzy popping noises when I'm super hungry. I've looked it up and apparently it's a thing, but it doesn't happen to anybody I've ever mentioned it to." "If I have a moment of genuine connection with another person, I get tingly over the entirety of my scalp. It's pretty cool. This can also happen when I see a particularly poignant video or hear a song that evokes a lot of emotion." "My teeth hurt when I hear sounds I don't like. One of my biggest triggers is someone running their finger along paper." "Sometimes when I pinch my skin in one place, I can feel it in a different place too. For example, I pinched my skin above my right knee, and I've felt it above my right elbow. It's more prominent before my period." "When my throat is itchy, I get an itch in my lower abdomen too, with the exact same sensation and intensity of the itch." "My eyes start watering whenever anyone describes something supernatural (ghosts, alien encounters, or unexplained goings on). It's like I'm crying, but without the emotion or the lump in the throat. I just start tearing up." "I have one tooth that randomly 'itches.' There's nothing wrong with the tooth or gum there. Itching is the best way I can describe it. It's super weird and annoying. I don't know what causes it. I brush, floss, and use mouthwash. Just got good remarks from my dentist last month, so I don't get it. When I tell my husband or friends about it, they have no idea what I mean or what I'm describing." "When I go to other people's houses, if I'm not 100% comfortable with them, I get really gassy after being there for longer than an hour or two. It used to happen a lot when I visited my in-laws, and once it happened when I drove to Arizona to visit a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. It's funny because when I told my friend I was gassy, her husband laughed and said it happens to her too." "My left thumbnail grows at twice the rate of the rest of my fingernails. I get manicures every three weeks like clockwork, and my nail tech noticed." "The left side of my body sucks. I get kidney stones, migraines, shoulder pain, itching, toothaches, ovarian cysts, all on my left side." "The inside of my ears hurts in the cold weather, wind, or when I have to run. It stings, and no one else ever seems to have it when my ears are killing me." "When I feel deep emotional pain or anguish, I get this aching sensation in my right wrist and hand. I've found very little online about it. It's so odd, but I lowkey love it when it happens while reading a novel or watching a movie. It shows me I'm really connecting with the plot!" "My left thumbnail has a defect that causes it to split in the same spot, so I always have a notch in my nail that gets caught on everything. My mother and my grandmother had the same thing on the same finger, and all three of us developed it at around 35. It must be a genetic quirk. I haven't heard of other people/families that have this." "Sometimes, my feet get warm when I pee. I remember telling my dad about it years ago, and in typical dad fashion, he told me to quit pissing on my feet. Still no answers." "When I get scared, my legs itch and tingle, and it's purely psychological. Never noticed until I started riding a motorcycle." And: "I get shoulder pain when I have to poop really badly. It's only in my right shoulder." Women, do you have any body quirks you literally can't explain? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form. Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Los Angeles Times
16 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Precinct DTLA, well-known gay bar, warns it could close after former employee claims discrimination
A downtown Los Angeles bar known as a haven for the gay community is warning it could soon shutter as it faces a costly legal fight with a former employee. 'We're a couple of slow weekends away from having to close our doors,' owners of Precinct DTLA wrote Friday on Instagram. 'Like many small businesses, we've taken hit after hit — from COVID shutdowns and ICE raids to citywide curfews and the ongoing decline of nightlife. But what we're facing now is even more devastating.' In May, Jessica Gonzales sued the bar, its owner, manager and an employee, alleging she faced discrimination and harassment as a cisgender, heterosexual woman and was subjected to an unsafe work environment. Gonzales, who worked at the bar on Broadway for eight years, claimed that when she reported employees and patrons were having sex in the bar, its owner told her to 'stop complaining.' According to a complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Gonzales was required to work the coat check for Precinct DTLA's weekly 'jockstrap / underwear party' without receiving pay. She said the bar's manager eliminated the coat check fee, believing it would 'incentivize more patrons to drop their pants.' Gonzales claimed the environment grew so hostile she needed to bring stress balls to work. One day, her complaint said, another employee grabbed her stress ball and refused to give it back to her. In a struggle over the stress ball, Gonzales claims the employee broke two of her fingers. According to her lawsuit, Gonzales was effectively fired after the incident, in part because Precinct DTLA's owner and manager wanted to replace her with a gay male employee. 'These claims are completely false,' the bar's representatives wrote on Instagram. In the post, they added that the lawyer representing Gonzales 'appears to have a clear anti-LGBTQ agenda.' 'There are multiple reports — including from individuals who previously worked with him — that he used anti-LGBTQ slurs in written emails while at his former firm,' they wrote on Instagram. Gonzales is represented by John Barber, court records show. The Times reported in 2023 that Barber and his colleague, Jeff Ranen, regularly denigrated Black, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Asian and gay people in emails they exchanged while partners at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith. After Barber and Ranen left to start their own firm, Lewis Brisbois released scores of the lawyer's emails, which showed the men regularly used anti-gay slurs to refer to people, The Times reported. In a joint statement at the time, Barber and Ranen said they were 'ashamed' and 'deeply sorry.' Barber didn't immediately return a request for comment Saturday. In the Instagram post, Precinct DTLA's representatives said defending themselves from Gonzales' allegations was 'draining us emotionally and financially.' 'Come to the bar,' they wrote. 'Buy a drink. Order some food. Tip the staff. Show up.'
