{"id":16100,"date":"2025-10-16T14:26:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/motorcycle-deaths-continue-to-rise-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:36:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:36:00","slug":"motorcycle-deaths-continue-to-rise-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/motorcycle-deaths-continue-to-rise-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorcycle deaths continue to rise in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A motorcycle rider heads west on Chalk Creek Drive near Nathrop, with 14er Mt. Princeton in the Collegiate Peaks rising above the Arkansas River Valley. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Motorcycle crash deaths reached a record high in Colorado recently, and the state patrol is urging both riders and drivers to do their part to help save lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been recording deaths for a while, and I could tell you that 2024 saw a drastic increase in motorcycle deaths across the state, and we had a total of 165 deaths up to July 23 of this year,\u201d said Sgt. Ivan Alvarado of the Colorado State Patrol in a Colorado Matters interview with host Chandra Thomas Whitfield. \u201cWe\u2019re already at 61 deaths when it comes to motorcycle riders. One death is too many, and we\u2019re trying to talk to everybody out there, especially the riders, that they need to ride carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alvarado said 2024 was the deadliest year on record for riders in Colorado. \u201cRight now, I\u2019m seeing numbers from 2020 all the way through 2024, and I think the lowest of those years was 135 deaths for 2023. So we did see a huge spike, another 30 deaths, when it comes to motorcycle riders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alvarado said two leading causes stand out.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the 165 riders that died in 2024, I could tell you that two of the highest contributing factors were speed and intoxication,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cSo we have riders out there that are obviously driving way too fast and then driving while impaired. That is not a great combination at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helmet use also plays a significant role in survival, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, it is a big factor because 44% of those 165 riders last year were not wearing a helmet; that is 73 people that were not wearing a helmet,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cEven though it\u2019s not illegal, even though people are not required to wear it, we definitely encourage riders to wear that helmet to increase your chances of survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Motorcyclists also face higher risks on Colorado roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though motorcycles only account for 3% of traffic, when it comes to fatalities, they account for a quarter of all fatalities,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cThese days, it is a higher risk than before. Because a lot of drivers out there in their cars are driving with their cell phones, driving with a burger, being distracted by passengers and everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of January 1, 2025, it is illegal for drivers to hold or manually use mobile electronic devices like cell phones. The Hands-Free Law<\/a> was passed in an effort to reduce distracted driving crashes. It does allow cell phone use if a driver uses hands-free accessories.<\/p>\n

Regarding the criticism that the state patrol has faced for not enforcing distracted driving laws enough, Alvarado acknowledged that more needs to be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take the criticism, and we know for a fact that we\u2019re trying to do everything we can, but we should do more. And that is not questionable that we should do more,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wish we could stop everybody that\u2019s driving with a cell phone. We wish that there was a way that everybody would just put it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another relatively new law that may confuse both drivers and motorcyclists is Colorado\u2019s Lane Filtering Law<\/a>. It allows a motorcyclist to pass cars in between lanes but only when all traffic is at a complete stop, usually at a red light or in gridlocked traffic. Again, the idea is to lower the risk of a motorcyclist being injured or killed in a crash by reducing the chances a rider might get rear-ended by a car or a truck.<\/p>\n

Alvarado stressed that responsibility is shared.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a collaborative matter that we all just need to be responsible and take a part in,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cFor the drivers, let\u2019s start with being aware that there are motorcycles out there. And if you put your phone down, you put the burger down and you focus on just driving, you\u2019re helping a lot just by doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For riders, his message was clear: \u201cLet\u2019s not drive too fast. Let\u2019s drive sober, let\u2019s drive careful,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cIf you and everybody out there start to just get the word around that helmets save lives, and more riders start to wear helmets, then we\u2019re also going to see that number decrease. So everybody, focus on driving and riders slow down, put on that helmet.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

says \u2018distracted driving\u2019 to blame<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1936],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-motorcycling"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20015,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16100\/revisions\/20015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16100"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}