At the time of writing, 171 people have been killed on Maine roads this year. This number is treacherously close to 177, the total number of lives lost in this way in our state in 2022, a surge that marked a 15-year high. It goes without saying that one death is a death too many.

If you’ve ever been scanning local news headlines in 2024, you may not find the number all that surprising. Maine’s nauseating drumbeat of traffic fatalities has been just that — very frequent crashes result in widespread death and injury statewide. It seems hardly a day goes by without another grisly collision reported.

Indeed, if you’ve been driving around Maine, you may not be surprised, either. Each of us has been witness to chilling examples of dangerous driving. Many of us are left wondering if anything new is being done, at the local, municipal or state levels, to clamp down on it.

As we embark on a holiday week heavy with car and truck travel — in a lengthy season of darkness, freezing cold and reduced visibility — it’s worth us all reflecting solemnly on our unfortunate record. The motorists among us must ask ourselves what we ourselves are doing on the roads.

These pages often carry letters and op-eds written by incredulous and angry drivers, people moved to write to their local paper about horrifying driver inattention and phone use, speeding, the state of the roads, the challenges posed by “mismanaged” construction projects, ill-conceived signage and lights that are either too bright or not bright enough.

Last January, as we reported on data charting a relatively safe 2023, the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety’s director said that, despite that year’s “vast improvement,” the organization was “stepping up its work to educate the public about safe driving behaviors” and would “continue to identify and work with communities that are underserved or overrepresented in crash data.”

Today, it is clear that the bureau’s educational push has to be stepped up again.

Earlier this year, that same director, Lauren V. Stewart, joined the ranks of those writing about road safety in these pages. In a sobering Aug. 30 message (“Drivers of Maine, what exactly is your hurry?”), she demanded the following of readers:

“Have you ever considered how many traffic fatalities on Maine roads are acceptable to you? Is it 100 fatalities? Is it 50? Is it 25?

“Safe driving cannot be the sole responsibility of federal and state government entities, auto manufacturers, legislators, law enforcement officers or driving instructors,” Stewart wrote. “Safe driving is the responsibility of each one of us who uses the public roads for transportation as a condition of our privilege to drive.”

Stewart is right, on this point, and this editorial board has generally been firm on the argument — that the buck stops with individual drivers — in the past. Something as seemingly rudimentary as seat belt use is simply lost on some road users — 60% of motor vehicle occupants killed on Maine roads in 2023 weren’t wearing seat belts.

Faith in the individual can be hard to sustain. Hand in hand with that expectation of responsible road use must go improved and increased enforcement — the likes of which the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety specifically disburses grants to support.

In short, that means more monitoring of drivers, and more stopping of delinquent drivers. The state government needs to make this reform a priority. The change should be as obvious to drivers as the hazard is now.

Higher penalties for using the phone while driving are also a no-brainer. One of the people opposed to a 2023 proposal before the state Legislature in this spirit (it would have hiked the penalty from a paltry $50 to a persuasive $500 for a first offense, and it failed) complained that it would “give police greater license to accost Maine people on the roads.” To that we say, phone use by drivers is a scourge that has to be approached and addressed.

Redesign of accident black spots and notoriously challenging stretches of road, off-ramps and on-ramps also has to be a priority for Maine. We can all list the parts of our commutes that seem to bring out the worst in drivers.

If you bristle at the suggestion that we might meaningfully crack down on reckless endangerment by drivers, that you might be held to a higher standard of comportment on the road, ask yourself a simple question: How many traffic fatalities on Maine roads are acceptable to you?