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Published on Thursday, June 1, 2006
in the Melbourne Florida Today
37 die in Memorial Day crashes
From smoke-clouded highways to darkened back roads, the Memorial Day weekend was deadly for some motorists, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
A total of 37 people -- including a motorcyclist and an ATV driver in Brevard County -- were killed in traffic crashes across the state during the three-day weekend, the FHP reported.
Those numbers -- which included cases only worked by the highway patrol and not local police agencies -- actually dropped from the fatalities reported during the holiday last year, according to a report issued by the state traffic enforcement agency.
During the 2005 Memorial Day break, which lasted from midnight Friday to midnight Monday, the highway patrol investigated the deaths of 44 people killed in crashes statewide.
This year in Brevard, two people were killed during the Memorial Day weekend. On Sunday, 42-year-old Mike Mackinnon of Sebastian died after a 2003 Dodge Ram crossed the path of his motorcycle at U.S. 1 and Valkaria Road in Malabar.
He died after being thrown from the motorcycle while a female passenger was critically injured, said Kim Miller, spokeswoman for the FHP.
The second death happened on Saturday after Lance Worthington of Jacksonville made a sharp U-turn while riding an all-terrain vehicle on Burkholm Road in Mims. He flipped into a 6-foot deep embankment, Miller said.
Another motorist died Friday morning just west of the Brevard County line after smoke from lingering brush fires shrouded the Beachline Expressway in smoke, highway patrol officials reported.
Miller said high gas prices and highway closures caused by brush fires may have forced some holiday drivers to think twice before hitting heavily traveled roads like Interstate 95. The agency also handled 1,556 collisions during the weekend. "Our numbers were down. I talked to a lot of troopers who said that there wasn't as much traffic. Typically, that Friday afternoon you see backup issues on the interstates but we didn't see any of those," Miller said.
An estimated two million people took to the roads to take advantage of the long weekend at beaches, shops and tourist stops statewide, according to AAA Auto Club South.
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