U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet announced a new $3.2 million grant for creating highway safety plans for five cities, towns and counties from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program.

The money adds to the $28.6 million in grants for 11 projects in Colorado awarded earlier this year.

Colorado’s grants to Canyon City, Monte Vista, Grand Junction, Nunn and Delta County are part of a $5 billion, five-year appropriation from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“We passed our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fix our aging roads and bridges,” Hickenlooper said in a news release. “And that’s exactly what this new funding is doing. It’s investing back into our communities to protect Colorado families and help them thrive.”

In 2022, roughly 42,500 people died on roadways across the nation. A total of 2,382,771 people were injured, with 67,336 being pedestrians, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In the same timeframe in Colorado, 754 people lost their lives, the most roadway deaths the state has seen in the last 41 years. That amounted to a 57% increase from just 10 years ago and included a record number of pedestrians and motorcyclists, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

“What we’re seeing across Colorado are the consequences when too many drivers ignore the rules of the road, and it’s unacceptable,” said Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol.

Of the people killed that year, 271 were pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists. The number of motorcycle and pedestrian fatalities is the most on record since 1975, according to the CDOT website.

“I wish we could correlate the increase in fatalities to Colorado’s population growth. But that’s not the case,” said Keith Stefanik, chief engineer for CDOT. “After falling for 30 years, the rate of crashes has steadily risen during the last decade.”