MARYSVILLE — The crash Sunday that claimed four lives along Highway 9 was the deadliest drunken-driving incident in Snohomish County in recent memory, experts said.
Drunken driving is the leading cause of traffic deaths statewide and across the country.
Each year, about 11,000 people die in drunken driving-related crashes in the U.S., said Carl McDonald, a national spokesman for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
He called the loss of four lives “horrific.”
Sunday’s collision was the deadliest alcohol-related crash in the county since at least 1995, Snohomish County DUI Victims Panel coordinator Tracy McMillan said.
The deadliest crash in the state blamed on alcohol killed 11 near Wenatchee in 1994, according to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.
Increased education and enforcement efforts combined with safer vehicles has helped reduce the number of deaths in recent years, said Lowell Porter, the commission’s executive director. Still, more needs to be done to curb drunken driving.
“We haven’t gotten to where we want to be, which in this particular area is zero,” he said.
Advocacy groups are lobbying to install ignition locks in all new cars that would stop people from driving if intoxicated, McDonald said.
Washington and some other states already can require the devices for people convicted of drunken driving. McDonald said hopes new cars will feature the devices within the next 10 years.
Between 1993 and 2008, there were 712 fatal crashes in Snohomish County, killing 777, according to state statistics.
Several fatal crashes in Snohomish County have occurred that haven’t been linked to alcohol or drugs.
In August, three men died in a wreck near Monroe. Prior to that, three people died on Memorial Day 2005 on I-5 near Marysville.
The deadliest crash in Snohomish County records occurred just before midnight on Aug. 29, 1998. Two cars collided on Highway 9, not far from Sunday’s crash site. A driver drifted into the wrong lane and over corrected. Four people in one car and one person in the other car died.
Icy conditions are blamed for taking 16 lives in 1945 near Lake Chelan in what remains the single deadliest crash in state history, records show.
Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437, jholtz@heraldnet.com.
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