With more and more visitors heading to Yellowstone National Park, it might be reasonable that there would be an increase in motor vehicle accidents. But the increase has been incredible, with a nearly 900 percent jump in vehicle rollovers in 2016 vs. 2014.
“What we’re finding is our roadways -- how roadways are performing -- are crowding," said Ryan Atwell, Yellowstone's resident social scientist. "It’s all relative. What do we compare Yellowstone to? Do we compare it to a big city, do we compare it to a rural area? What we’re finding is we’re hitting places where vehicles are often traveling in platoons on the most focal corridors, say from the West Entrance to Canyon, the Canyon rims, and to Old Faithful. You’re oftentimes following another car, passing is difficult, we have big wildlife issues compounding things. Seeing wildlife is awesome in Yellowstone, but then that compounds our traffic conditions.
"... the one other thing that’s been real striking, from a social scientist standpoint it’s fascinating, and from a park operations and visitor safety standpoint it’s alarming, but the rates of major emergency incidences have increased at a pretty dramatic rate from 2014 into 2015 and 2016," he added.
According to park figures, in 2014 there were 18 motor vehicle accidents with injuries. In 2015 that increased to 48 (167 pecent), and in 2016 there were 34, down from 2015 but up 89 percent from 2014. Motor vehicle rollovers, meanwhile, went from just two in 2014 to seven in 2015, a 250 percent increase, to 19 last year, an 850 percent increase over 2014.
Search-and-rescue missions also are rising in Yellowstone, from 37 in 2014 to 61 in 2015 and 85 last year.
Mr. Atwell said studies so far haven't identified any one specific road corridor in the park that is more dangerous than another.
“I do know that some of the more severe accidents have occurred in very different parts of the park," he said. "Last summer a few bad accidents on the south corridor road, bewteen Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Just based upon the time of day and the circumstances involved, it seemed likely to have sleep-induced driving involved. That’s a corridor that a lot of people are trying to make distance to get from Jackson up to the park late in the day. We had several accidents where one car crossed the center line and head-on to another. Distracted driving, because people viewing scenery and wildlife in Yellowstone we know is an issue.”
Keep this in mind if you're heading to Yellowstone this summer, and drive defensively.
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Comments
We camped in Yellowstone for 10 nights in the Summer of 2016 and still did not see everything. We found that a lot of visitors, especially those who only came for one day...were the worse on the roads as they were in such a hurry to try and "see the park in one day"...therefore, were passing dangerously and parking in areas illegaly. These would be the same people that would drive around Bison and such to get to their next viewing spot. A suggestion that a limit of how many visitors allowed into the park within a day...those who have camping and hotel reservations get forst dibs. We have the same problem in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada...it is a winder more people are not killed on these roads.
thank you for your time,
Wendy
Paris, Ontario, Canada
For Ryan Atwell: I would like to see an analysis of the countries in which the drivers involved in Yellowstone vehicle accidents obtained their licenses, because it could align in an explanatory way with the influx of foreign visitation, especially from countries like the People's Republic of China where individually owned autos are still quite rare. It would also be interesting to see these numbers broken down by season because of the likely correlation with road conditions and (domestic and/or foreign) driver inexperience in the "slick" seasons.
EVERY winter I see (and often photograph because of the drama) vehicles that have gotten stuck in deep roadside snow; these vehicles invariably include over-snow mattrack-equipped multi-passenger coaches in the interior, and tire-equipped individual and commercial vehicles in the Northern Range. I suspect most of these slide-offs don't result in significant injuries or even much by way of vehicle damage because they probably are mostly "soft landings."
It would be interesting to know how many of these accidents were due to drivers paying more attention to their electronic devices than to their driving.