What caused three serious highway crashes on SR 97; What can you do to stay safe

Three accidents in a span of three days on State Route 97 in Chelan County. 10 are injured and one loses her life.  What causes drivers to lose control of their vehicle, and cause sometimes catastrophic injury to others by crossing into the oncoming lane at highway speeds?

"We start looking for patterns," Washington State Patrol Trooper Jeremy Weber shared with KOZI. "In these cases, we have three separate causes. We have bad passing, we had someone that fell asleep at the wheel, and then we had impaired driving."

"We are making a plan to have some extra patrols up in that area," said Weber. "We're driving around with deadly weapons. Destruction happens when two vehicles are going at a minimum of 60 miles an hour, or plus. It's breath-taking just to see the damage that these cars can do."

"We have so many distractions; it's not just (talking on) cell phones or texting," shared the trooper. "Nowadays there's a lot of distractions. The whole dashboard looks like a laptop. It's easy for us for us to take our eyes off the road. As far as the falling asleep, that's a significant thing. There's some elements that we can prove that you can actually go down the road of vehicular homicide or assault."

The accident scenes from the collisions that occurred this week are being thoroughly investigated with drug recognition experts analyzing information. Drones are being used to assist investigators with accurate measurements to help determine what happened..

"All these collisions could have been avoided," Weber said in offering advice when driving at highway speeds on two-lane roadways. "We might need to take more time and prepare. This isn't the day and age when you can be anywhere you want in 15 minutes. We have a lot more traffic, a lot more people on the roadways. Most of our collisions are speed related.

"If someone gets right up on my tail, I just put on my turn signal on, I pull over and let people get past me," advised Weber. "I'm going to do the speed limit. If more people would get into that mind set, I think we'd be a lot safer on our roadways."

If an oncoming vehicle enters your lane of travel, the trooper suggests, "Dumping your speed is going to help on the (potential) impact. Some people drive off onto the shoulder and try to over correct and they end up flipping their car."

To help steer future driving behavior, Trooper Weber visits local high schools to talk with young drivers and discuss with them driving distractions.

"This driving thing is a privilege not a right," exclaimed Trooper Weber.