58. Male. Summit County.
That’s the handwritten script inside a white heart at Red Rocks, where CDOT this week transformed the fabled music venue into a memorial for traffic fatalities.
The white heart was surrounded by 257 other white hearts. Each one represented a person killed in a speed-related car accident last year. They filled more than two whole rows.
“The powerful display aims to put statistics into perspective by using a famous concert venue to remind drivers that these numbers represent real people who had families that loved them,” CDOT says in a news release.
Speed was the leading factor in traffic deaths in Colorado in 2023, claiming more lives than impaired driving (228) and unbuckled crashes (222).
CDOT’s Red Rocks memorial comes with a Spotify playlist. It’s meant to encourage slower speeds and backed up by research. A study from Memorial University of Newfoundland showed people who listen to up-tempo music are more likely to drive over the speed limit.