Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputies will be out in force this Labor Day weekend cracking down on impaired drivers.
Major Lafayette Woods Jr., operations commander for the department, said deputies and other law enforcement agencies throughout the state will be involved in an effort to “keep the roads safe.”
If the weather permits, Woods said the department’s Reserve Unit will be patrolling the waterways in the county.
“Initiatives such as Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over are the types of enforcement operations that our agency is all too familiar with,” Woods said. “The focus is year round; however, because of the influx of drivers traveling during seasonal holidays such as Labor Day on our highways and byways, there is a greater potential for those individuals to drive impaired, which requires additional personnel and resources to have to be dedicated toward our efforts to keeping our roadways safe.”
Woods said impaired driving is “one of America’s deadliest crimes.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“On average, there is one alcohol-impaired driving-related-fatality every 51 minutes across America, according to studies,” Woods said. “Research has shown that high visibility enforcement reduces alcohol-impaired driving fatalities by as much as 20 percent.”
While Woods said alcohol-impaired driving is one cause of accidents, there are many other impairments and distractions that drivers can experience.
“Distracted driving is any activity that could divert a person’s attention away from the primary task of driving,” Woods said. “All distractions endanger the safety of drivers, passengers and bystanders.”
Common distractions which can affect a person’s driving ability including texting, using a cell phone, eating and/or drinking, reading, grooming, using a navigation system and adjusting a radio or CD player.
“All of these things can cause a motor vehicle collision resulting in serious injury or even death,” Woods said. “However, because text messaging requires visual, manual and cognitive attention from the driver, it is by far the most alarming distraction.
“Text messaging creates a crash risk many times worse that driving while not distracted,” Woods said. “Our message is clear, the best way to end distracted driving is to educate all citizens about the danger it poses and enforce the laws prohibiting such actions.”