A 19-year-old young woman from Powell on Tuesday became the 20th person to die on Wyoming roads and highways so far this year, while three days earlier a 22-year-old man from Mountain View was killed in a collision with a semitrailer. He was the 19th.
That’s well ahead of the 13 fatalities recorded by this time last year and 10 in 2024, the Wyoming Highway Patrol reports.
With such a mild winter and lack of snowfall across much of Wyoming so far this season, why would driving deaths spike so much?
The answer is simple, WHP spokesman Aaron Brown told Cowboy State Daily: bad roads don’t cause nearly as many crashes as inattentive and distracted drivers.
“One of the biggest things about this winter is people seem to have been letting their guard down, getting lulled into this false sense of security,” Brown said. “The weather folks were telling us we were going to have this colder, snowier winter this year, and we haven’t seen any of this moisture we were supposed to get.”
While slick roads and poor weather conditions can certainly be factors in fatal crashes, those are often paired with people driving too fast for those conditions, he said.
That’s what the WHP has flagged as the cause of huge pileups last week on Interstate 80 that closed a 21-mile stretch of the highway in both directions for more than 16 hours.
Two people were killed in that incident, Brown said, both in the westbound lane in a crash that involved 20 semitrailers and 12 passenger vehicles.
“It’s easy to look at that and see it,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t dump a ton of snow, that doesn’t matter in those high-altitude areas where you can’t see 15 feet in front of your face.”
Because of the number of vehicles involved, unraveling just who was at fault and should be ticketed will take some time, he said.
“It’s going to take several weeks, if not months,” Brown said. “It will take some time to sort through all of the videos (and other evidence) and be some time before any citations are issued.”
They Were Young
In both of the most recent fatal crashes, driver inattention is being investigated as a factor, Brown said.
On Tuesday, Kameryn Allphin, 19, of Powell was killed at about 7 a.m. in a single-vehicle rollover on Highway 14A about 4 miles west of Lovell, the WHP reports.
“Troopers arrived to find a 2008 Chevy Impala had been eastbound on 14A when it drifted off the road to the south,” the report says. “The driver overcorrected to the left, beginning a counter-clockwise spin as the car entered the north right of way.”
It then “tripped and rolled,” the report continues. “It landed on all four tires, slamming into a metal power pole on the passenger side.”
Allphin was driving, wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was ejected, dying at the scene, according to the WHP.
Three days earlier on Saturday, Cleb Gooding, 22, of Mountain View died at about 2:42 a.m. about 11 miles west of Lyman on Interstate 80 when the car he was driving collided with a semitrailer, according to a separate Highway Patrol report issued Wednesday.
“A 2023 Freightliner semitruck was westbound on I-80 in the righthand lane (when) a 2025 Toyota GR Corolla hatchback was approaching behind it,” the report says. “The driver side of the Toyota struck the passenger side of the Freightliner trailer, and the Toyota skidded along the rear portion of the trailer before leaving the roadway to the right.”
The driver of the semi wasn’t hurt, the report says, adding that “driver inattention and speed are believed to be the primary cause in this crash.”
Those Distractions
When it comes to avoiding being involved in a crash, drivers are the No. 1 factor, Brown said.
So far this year with the uptick in fatalities, he sees two reasons common themes.
“Speed and driver inattention,” Brown said. “And the big one for me is you have to be paying attention. The thing about Wyoming is it doesn’t matter if you’re going five minutes from your home or driving for hours, inattention and speed kills.”
He referenced a Feb. 1 two-vehicle crash near Lander where both were factors with both drivers.
A Toyota Rav4 made an unsafe turn “due to driver inattention” into the path of a Dodge Challenger that was going about 117 mph, the WHP reports.
Two people in the Challenger were killed.
“It’s this combination of not wearing seat belts and going too fast for conditions, even when it’s dry,” Brown said. In this crash, “it was partially caused by driver inattention on one side, and speed on the other.
“That’s a deadly combination right there, and on top of that they weren’t wearing their seat belts.”
That happened a week before a father-son driving duo from California died when their semitrailer exploded on impact with another semi parked illegally along eastbound I-80.
Aleksey Fedun, 36, was driving their Volvo semitrailer before 5:30 a.m. Feb. 8 when the truck drifted from the far left lane, through the right lane and collided with the parked semi, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
The Volvo exploded when it hit the parked truck, killing the driver and his 74-year-old father, identified as Volodymyr Fedun.
While the other truck was parked illegally on the side of the interstate near mile marker 94, “driver inattention and possible fatigue are being looked at as contributing factors” in the crash, the WHP reported at the time.
Wyoming is on pace for about 133 highway deaths in 2026, which would be nearly the same as the 134 fatalities recorded in 2022 and 11 fewer than the 144 in 2023. There were 124 deaths last year.
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
