CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee's roads are dangerous for people on motorcycles.
According to a dashboard from the Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security and the Tennessee Integrated Traffic Analysis Network, 2024 has already seen a higher total number of crashes than 2019. The data also showed that, as of publication, 23% of those crashes involved someone under the age of 25, 8.66% were the result of speeding and more than half of crashes involved a vehicle other than a motorcycle.
Bubba Boswell, the president of Boswell Harley-Davidson in Nashville, told News 2 that his training courses emphasized the importance of learning to ride on the road with other drivers.
"There's just so much more traffic," Boswell said. "If you're talking about Nashville, [there's] just a lot of traffic around Nashville [and the] Middle Tennessee areas. Drivers don't really see motorcycles."
One area that has seen a fair share of crashes has been Clarksville. Police data showed that officers have responded to 159 motorcycle crashes in the last year — 11 people died.
"It's a risk to ride a motorcycle, just like today it's a risk to drive a car in downtown Nashville," Boswell added. "Be aware of the risk."
Authorities said that they've noticed contributing trends.
"A lot of these cases, though, do involve speeding on one side or the other, whether it's motorcycles or the person in the in the motor vehicle," Scott Beaubien, the public information officer for the Clarksville Police Department, said.
In light of the data, the department has focused on enforcement efforts, including issuing 774 speeding citations and 755 written warnings within the past three months. Authorities have also urged people to slow down.
"It is a domino effect that affects police, firefighters, EMS, and then families that get the notification: your family member is deceased because of something that's preventable," Beaubien said. "It's avoidable. And in most cases, preventable, because it's just a matter of slowing down."