(Radio Iowa) – A spokesman for the D-O-T says traffic deaths dropped back down after a starting out the New Year up in January. Stuart Anderson told the State Transportation Commission that the lack of winter weather in January led to more cars on the road, and more fatalities. “Of course, last month we talked about January being an unusually high month, particularly coming off our record low year in 2025. February was a significantly low month,” Anderson says.

There were 24 traffic deaths in January, but that dropped to only nine deaths in February. “So I believe that was the first single-digit month we’ve had since we’ve been recording a fatality. So February was remarkably low,” he says. Anderson says this month is not off to a good start. “March has started out a little challenging. Again, we’ve had six fatalities in March so far, and we’re still obviously early in the month,” Anderson says.

The 33 traffic deaths through February of this year is down one from the first two months of last year