Montana Holiday Toll Reaches 7 Labor Day Traffic Count Is Highest Since 1994

Montana’s traffic toll for the long Labor Day weekend moved to seven Monday, the highest count for the Labor Day weekend since 1994.

One man was killed early Monday in Madison County, and the patrol added the death of a man in a crash that occurred in Flathead County Friday night.

The latest victim was killed early Monday morning when the pickup truck he was driving missed a curve on Highway 84 about three miles east of Ennis, the Montana Highway Patrol reported.

The eastbound truck went off the road and rolled.

A passenger in the vehicle was injured and taken to the Bozeman hospital.

The patrol decided Monday to count the Flathead County death on Friday night as a traffic death despite its unusual nature.

The 51-year-old man was swept away in the South Fork when his pickup truck tumbled end over end down a 100-foot-high embankment south of the Spotted Bear ranger station, the patrol said.

The man had driven off the public road into a meadow and was confused, the patrol said.

The truck was maneuvering along a footpath when it went over the embankment.

Officials withheld the names of both latest victims.

Two people fatally injured in the first crash of the holiday weekend, a two-car collision north of Gardiner on Friday, were identified Monday as Jean Lucy Bauers, 61, of Gardiner, and Erich Maier, 20, of Johnstown, Pa.

Officials still withheld the names of a 42-year-old woman who died in a pickup crash near Oswego on Saturday afternoon.

The deaths raised Montana’s 1997 traffic toll to 175, or 41 more than had died on state roads on Sept. 1 last year.

If the current pace of traffic fatalities continues for the last third of the year, the 1997 highway death count would reach 260, the worst since 1983.

The last time highway deaths increased 30 percent in one year was 1952.