Last year, 63 people died in crashes on Portland streets, the most in more than 30 years. Twenty-nine were pedestrians, the highest number the city has seen for that group in half a century.

Portland Police reported an even higher number, 67 traffic deaths, under a broader definition that includes circumstances like a medical crisis that leads to a crash.

The increase was also reflected statewide. Across Oregon, 581 people died in car crashes last year, a 15% increase from 2020.

And the first six months of 2021 suggested a spike in fatal crashes across the country, too. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported an 18.4% increase in traffic deaths from January through June compared with the same time in the previous year. At that rate, 2021 would be the deadliest year on U.S. roads since 2006.

State and city analysts are still examining the data and have yet to say what’s behind the increase — a trend that’s spanned several years, reversing decades of progress in reducing road deaths — or which roads were the most dangerous and why.

But 2022 has started off in the same troubling pattern, with about 15 traffic fatalities around the state less than two weeks into the new year, including four pedestrian deaths. Five of the fatal crashes have been in Portland.

Traci Pearl, Oregon Department of Transportation’s transportation safety office manager, said there’s a direct connection between the pandemic and the increase in fatal crashes.

With fewer cars on the road, people are driving faster and more recklessly on open roads, Pearl said. Police officers, she said, are reporting more people driving more than 100 miles per hour.

Pearl said staff shortages at many police departments have also curbed traffic enforcement.

“Right now, law enforcement is a tenuous issue for people, but it is our No. 1 proven countermeasure to making people not drive risky, because they’re afraid of getting a ticket,” Pearl said.

Portland Police Sgt. Ty Engstrom, the only full-time member of the bureau’s traffic division, said the city has also seen an uptick in speed and racing contributing to fatal crashes, but it takes a while to identify the exact cause of each collision.

State officials say they’ve made efforts to prevent and reduce crashes on the most dangerous roads.

Oregon has 22 “safety corridors,” or stretches of highway where fatal and serious crashes are recorded at rates higher than the statewide average. Officers are supposed to patrol those roads more frequently, and fines for speeding are higher in those sections.

According to a highway safety plan for 2021, ODOT also received state and federal grants for safety programs like improving street safety near schools and to promote a media campaign about distracted driving. And the state said it will receive $1.2 billion from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, approved by Congress in November, for projects that reduce serious injury crashes and deaths, although it has not said what those projects would be.

But even in Portland, the rate of crashes on state-owned roads remains high. About half the city’s traffic fatalities in 2021 occurred on roads operated by ODOT. That includes three interstate freeways, Powell Boulevard and 82nd Avenue — each of which saw multiple fatal crashes last year.

One of those state highways — 82nd Avenue —will be transferred to city jurisdiction in the coming years after a series of safety upgrades.