Georgia Launches Safe Holiday Campaign
If you plan to enjoy the holidays with a drink, the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and TEAM Georgia have a message for you…drive sober or get pulled over. The two organizations are once again coming together for their Safe Holiday campaign to help prevent impaired driving during Christmas and New Year’s.
The Safe Holiday campaign, which urges businesses and private party hosts to make the safety of their guests and patrons the reason for the season, involves area bars and restaurants displaying Safe Holiday information, offering a free non-alcoholic drink to designated drivers and informing patrons about safe rides home through AAA’s Tow to Go and Checker Cab. Safe Holidays reaches thousands of Georgia businesses with safe celebration suggestions, as well as safety and legal reminders for partygoers.
The reason for the message is all too clear. During the 2014 holiday travel period in Georgia, there were 14 traffic deaths in only 102 hours from 6 p.m. on Dec. 24 to midnight on Dec. 28. During all of 2014, there were 8,931 alcohol-involved traffic crashes in Georgia that resulted in 5,250 injuries and 165 deaths.
“This has been a rough year in Georgia for traffic fatalities and impaired driving, along with distracted driving and unbelted crashes, is a big part of that,” GOHS Director Harris Blackwood said. “We want people to make it to their family and friends safely so they can celebrate the holiday season. It takes a village to keep Georgia motorists safe so that’s why we’re appealing to citizens, law enforcement and businesses to create and enforce a safe holiday atmosphere this year.”
“Members of the law enforcement community are our invaluable partners in getting drunk drivers off the roads,” TEAM Georgia Chairman Ron Fennel said. “The business community, however, wants to take the fight against DUI one step further by focusing on preventing drunk driving at the outset. That’s why we use our holidays as the time to alert the public to the need for heightened responsibility regarding alcohol and travel.”
It’s not just Georgia where holiday drunk driving crashes are a problem. In 2013, 10,076 people nationwide were killed in crashes involving a drunk driver and in December alone that year, 733 people were killed in crashes involving a driver with a blood alcohol of .08 or higher. Twenty-three of those people died on Christmas Day.
GOHS is also reminding Georgia motorists that a sober ride home is always within their reach by downloading “Drive Sober, Georgia”, the free smartphone app available for both Apple and Android devices. The app lists both paid and free sober ride programs available statewide.
AAA will also be offering their free Tow To Go program Christmas Eve through 6 a.m. on January 2. Program guidelines can be found at https://autoclubsouth.aaa.com/safety/tow_to_go.aspx. To take advantage of Checker Cab’s free holiday ride offer, which also runs through Jan. 2, visit http://www.atlantacheckercab.com/ for more details.
For more information on TEAM Georgia, visit www.teamgeorgia.net and for more information on GOHS and its impaired driving initiatives, visit www.gahighwaysafety.org.