(ABC 6 News) – According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Minnesota ranks third in the country for least amount of crash fatalities based on how many miles drivers travel.

In 2022, 444 died on Minnesota roads.

Not the lowest amount of deaths in a given state, but compared to how much Minnesotans drive, the fatality rate is actually remarkably low.

“Our fatality rate is based off of vehicle miles traveled,” said Kristine Hernandez, communications director for the state’s “Toward Zero Deaths” initiative. “It’s based on our population versus how many miles are traveled to come up with that number.”

In short, how many deaths per 100 million miles driven.

For Minnesota, that comes out to a fatality rate of 0.77, putting the state just behind Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

It hasn’t always been this way.

“We were around 650 deaths a year in the state of Minnesota before TZD got started,” said Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson.

The “Toward Zero Deaths” initiative has been a Minnesota program since the early 2000’s and has been one of the biggest contributors to that lower fatality rate.

“We looked at the data, what types of forces are out there that are causing these fatalities, and then we looked at getting people that were working on traffic safety in their silos, and actually bringing them together,” said Hernandez.

People like MnDOT, the State Patrol, and the Department of Health.

Another way to look at it is the five E’s: engineering, education, enforcement, EMS, and everyone else.

That last one is a key factor, because it’s everyone else on the road that determines how safe it is to drive.

“It’s terrible when you think of someone going out on the roadway off to work, off to sports, off to school and then they just don’t come home,” said Hernandez.

While the program has done a lot to reduce the number of deaths, there’s still a long way to go.

“Before Covid, we were getting down to nearly 300 deaths in a year,” said Torgerson. “That’s 300 families, 300 lives that are done and most of the time preventable.”

TZD’s current goal is to get below 225 deaths for 2025.