Last year was a deadly one on Park County’s roads and highways.

Eight people were killed in motor vehicle crashes in Park County in 2015, according to Wyoming Department of Transportation data; a ninth fatal crash took place just a matter of feet from the county line.

For comparison, that’s essentially as many fatal wrecks as the previous four years combined. There were zero fatalities in 2011, five in 2012, one in 2013 and three in 2014 — a total of nine deaths.

Park County’s eight fatalities — and another five in Big Horn County — drew WyDOT’s attention, said Cody Beers, a regional spokesman for the agency.

“We’re killing more people in that part of the Big Horn Basin than we are down on Interstate 80, where there’s just thousands and thousands of people every year — a lot more traffic,” he said.

Across Wyoming, around 145 people died in crashes in 2015, according to preliminary data from the Wyoming Highway Patrol. There were roughly the same number of deaths in 2014.

Of last year’s fatal crashes in Park County, one involved alcohol and three involved people who were not wearing seat belts, according to WyDOT data.

“That’s the single most dangerous thing that most people do in any given day, is getting behind the wheel,” Beers said. “And just taking those two or three seconds to buckle your seat belt makes all the difference. It really does.”

Beers speculated that people get too relaxed while driving in such a rural state.

“When you get in a vehicle, do what the car’s intended to do for you and just drive to your destination,” Beers said. “The biggest problem that people have is they’re trying to do all kinds of different things while they’re driving, and they’re thinking about all kinds of different things.”

WyDOT does not call the fatal crashes “accidents,” “because these things are preventable,” he said.

“Bottom line, first thing people need to do when they get in the vehicle is put the seat belt on and then just drive,” Beers said.

According to WyDOT data, last year’s fatal crashes involved:

• A teenage driver going too fast for icy conditions and rolling his truck on Road 19, resulting in the death of a passenger.

• A two-vehicle crash on Wyo. Highway 295/Lane 5 caused by a driver who went through a stop sign; that driver was later convicted of vehicular homicide.

• A head-on collision on U.S. Highway 14-A that resulted from an 81-year-old driver drifting into the wrong lane.

• A SUV driver failing to yield and hitting a man who was riding an ATV on Robert Street in Cody.

• A driver rolling her pickup on Road 1AB in the Clark area, a crash attributed to excessive speed and driver inattention and alcohol investigated as a factor.

• A motorcyclist colliding with another motorcyclist after making an improper U-turn on Wyo. Highway 120.

• A motorcyclist missing a turn on the Beartooth Highway while going too fast in snowy conditions.

• A motorcyclist crashing into a SUV that failed to yield to him on Lane 9/Road 11; the SUV driver has been charged with vehicular homicide.

There was some good news for Park County, Beers noted: there were no fatal crashes in the county over the final four months of 2015.

Things also got off to an improved start in 2016, with zero fatal crashes in Wyoming over the New Year’s holiday weekend. However, that streak ended Monday with a one-vehicle rollover near Laramie in which a passenger was improperly wearing his seat belt and was killed, Wyoming Highway Patrol said.