Wednesday, November 29, 2000
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Wednesday, November 29, 2000 |
| Deputies focus on
enforcing seatbelt use during Thanksgiving travel holiday
By JOHN
MUNFORD It's not quite 6 p.m. on the official beginning of the "dangerous" Thanksgiving travel holiday, and already Fayette County Deputy Sheriff Doug Hardy runs into some gruff from a motorist. The female driver of a blue jeep doesn't think she should be ticketed for not wearing her seatbelt. While Hardy's talking to her, she flicks a cigarette butt out her window. "I just didn't want to put it in the ashtray of my car," she explained sheepishly as Hardy handed her tickets for the seatbelt violation and littering. "Our courts kind of frown upon littering," Hardy said from his patrol car while he completed the paperwork. The rest of the evening was mostly peaceful for Hardy. There were no weaving drivers to be found and few speeders to speak of, with only two receiving tickets. Fortunately, there were no traffic fatalities recorded in Fayette County during the five-day holiday period that ended Sunday at midnight. Traffic statistics from activity over the holiday period were not available from neither the Fayette County Sheriff's Department or the Fayetteville Police Department by press time Tuesday afternoon. The sheriff's department is one of three law enforcement agencies in the state that claims better than a 90 percent seatbelt usage rate from local motorists. The week before Thanksgiving, Maj. Wayne Hannah received the department's award for that achievement from the Governor's Office on Highway Safety. Maj. Hannah attributed the 92 percent seatbelt usage rate to heavy enforcement. He particularly praised the support of Sheriff Randall Johnson, who believes in enforcing Georgia's seatbelt laws. Wednesday night was a good example, as all but one of the department's 10 traffic units were on the road for the evening shift. A roadblock was set up at the intersection of Corinth and Carter Roads. Quite a few tickets were written for some of the 260 cars that went through. One car had five kids crunched shoulder-to-shoulder in the back seat. None were buckled up although one of them, a 2-year-old should have been in a car seat. The result was two tickets for the driver, and two of the kids rode home in Lt. Brian Woodie's patrol car. "It's all about saving these kids' lives," Woodie told the driver as he prepared to write the ticket. Johnson is a big believer in the power of a seatbelt, which saved his life in a serious crash in Charleston, S.C. back in 1991 as he and his wife went with friends to watch their daughter Melissa play a basketball game. Had Johnson not been strapped in, he could have been thrown from the car like had happened the week before to a woman in Fayette County who died from her injuries. "That made a believer out of me," Johnson said. "I don't think I'd be here to talk about it had I not had a seatbelt on."
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