Rich Ploch well remembers the last fatal crash he handled and hopes it will be just that: the very last. The La Salle County coroner has had enough of auto fatalities, thank you.

But as summer 2025 winds down, Ploch and other law enforcement agencies have spotted an encouraging trend in the otherwise unhappy tally: fatal crashes are poised to fall nearly in half by year’s end.

Ploch and his deputies dashed off to seven fatal crashes in 2025, a notable drop from last year’s 19. Even if there are additional fatalities the rest of the year (the projection is four), the county could see a 42% decline year over year.

Ploch said he pays less attention to the number of cases than to the contributing factors. Here, he noted some positives – fewer accidents in construction zones – but also noted impaired driving remains a menace even as alcohol shows up in fewer toxicology panels.

“Several of the labs came back showing THC and other drugs of abuse,” he said. “Alcohol was a contributing factor in just one of our crashes this year.”

“Up until about 2008, our average was 25 fatalities a year and then we started to see a decline.”

—  Jody Bernard, retired coroner

The bigger story is a gradual decline in accidents, particularly injurious and fatal crashes, over the past generation. While the yearly totals have fluctuated, auto fatalities have generally fallen over the past two decades.

While the news isn’t all good – distracted driving is surging – authorities point to four long-unfolding trends that have generally made the roads less deadly.

SAFER CARS

Vehicles today typically are fitted with backup cameras and safety features, including collision alerts and lane-keeping assistance. These features have not only reduced fatalities but also traffic accidents as a whole.

According to data from the Peru Police Department, the volume of reported accidents (with or without injury or citations) has slid by nearly a quarter since 2010.

Police Chief Sarah Raymond noted that accidents bottomed out at 598 in 2021, when the Illinois Valley was emerging from the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the totals “are heading back up or hovering around the same.”

Nevertheless, last year’s 601 crashes marked a 23% decline from 776 recorded in 2010, which may indicate safety features are indeed reducing vehicular mishaps.

MORE COPS

Police recruitment, which fell off following the pandemic and especially the George Floyd killing, has begun to rebound. With more boots on the ground, departments have stepped up patrols and participated and holiday enforcement campaigns.

La Salle County Sheriff Adam Diss will have six new deputies on the road by year’s end. Greater visibility and activity may be getting drivers to slow down and buckle up.

“I do feel like we’ve got a pretty proactive force,” Diss said. “We try to put more deputies out there and participate in more enforcement campaigns and it seems to be helping.”

An April campaign to target distracted driving resulted in 84 tickets for cellphone use behind the wheel, plus 56 for speeding and 15 for seat belt or child car seat violations. Diss said the increased presence of police cruisers may boost safer driving.

LESS IMPAIRMENT

Holiday enforcement campaigns may be getting motorists to buckle up, but they aren’t necessarily catching more drunk drivers. DUIs are at a historic low in 2025.

DUIs once were stubbornly high – 780 per year in the 2000s – but then tumbled to an average of 540 in the 2010s. This decade, police have nabbed fewer than 400 drunk drivers each year, except in 2021.

Fewer drunk drivers translates into fewer fatal collisions. Former La Salle County Coroner Jody Bernard spotted the correlation right away when, on the heels of the Great Recession, DUIs began tumbling.

“Up until about 2008, our average was 25 fatalities a year,” Bernard said in a 2014 interview, “and then we started to see a decline.”

LESS DRIVING?

Don’t feel like cooking? There are apps to send out for food. Need new clothes? More of us buy online. Want to visit friends? Social media lets us interact from afar.

More of us work from home since the pandemic, which has limited our need to drive and the distances we travel. The trend is particularly notable among young people, who aren’t as eager to sign up for driver’s ed when they can text and FaceTime their friends.

“I just began my 20th year teaching and I would agree that there is a number of students that aren’t as excited about getting their driver’s license, primarily because of the nine-month wait time,” said Jim Cherveny, division chairman for physical education, health and driver education at La Salle-Peru Township High School.

That wait time has saved lives. In 2008, Illinois implemented graduated licensing, which increased the number of behind-the-wheel hours for student drivers and boosted penalties for non-compliance. Traffic citations tumbled a whopping 60% between 2003 and 2018 – a timeline that parallels the reduction in auto fatalities.

“I would agree that the graduated licensing program is the main factor is reducing the number of fatalities,” Cherveny said. “I’m very very fortunate that I’ve never had a former student killed in a car accident.”