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(AP) -- WASHINGTON - Federal safety officials say auto fatalities dropped almost 10 percent in 2008 through October. If the trend holds up for the last two months of the year, highway deaths could reach their lowest level since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says there were 31,110 auto fatalities in the first 10 months of this year. That's a 9.8 percent decline over the same period in 2007.

The traffic safety administration has been tracking auto fatalities since 1966, when there were more than 50,000 deaths on the highways. The number of deaths peaked in 1972 at 54,589, then generally declined over the next two decades. The total has hovered above 40,000 the past few years.

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