Report: Safety programs pay off across state

TYLER - A recent study released yesterday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation showed that 2006 was a safer year than 2005 for motorists on the nation's highways, and that trend is reflected right here in Texas.

In Texas, there were 61 fewer fatalities in 2006 compared to 2005 (3,475 fatalities in 2006 and 3,536 fatalities in 2005), a drop of 1.7 percent.

"A lot of that decrease has to do with our state-wide seatbelt use," said TxDOT public information officer Larry Krantz. "Thanks to campaigns like Click-It-Or Ticket, seatbelt use in Texas has risen to an all-time high of just under 92 percent, which is up 16 percent from where we started in 2001.

"Many people don't know that TxDOT is a huge grantor of state and federal dollars that are used each year to pay to put more traffic policing on the streets, which has the added bonus of keeping a larger police presence on the streets in cities and towns that take advantage of our safety-related grants."

In the 2007 fiscal year, the Tyler District had four active traffic safety grants, including the cities of Tyler and Longview, the Van Zandt County Sheriff's Department and the Gregg County Sheriff's Department, worth a combined $153,000 in added law enforcement to the districts roads

and highways.

The Tyler District also handed

out two $4,000 Click-It-Or- Ticket incentive awards to the Gun Barrel City Police Department and Kilgore Department of Public Safety in 2006, and plans to hand out another $4,000 incentive check to the Kilgore College Police Department later this week for its voluntary - and unfunded - participation in the Click-It-Or-Ticket program.

But Click-It isn't the only way TxDOT is working to improve safety along its highways.

In 2004, the Tyler District was the single largest recipient of safety-related funding - called safety bond funding - based on project proposals submitted to TxDOT in Austin. Out of 650 awarded statewide, Austin approved over 50 projects in the Tyler District, which netted the district some $116 million in funding, opening the door for projects like the lighting and median barriers on Interstate 20, widening numerous Farm-to-Market roads and state highways throughout the district, and median projects on South Broadway and Loop 323 in Tyler and Loop 281 in Longview.

A recent Tyler Morning- Telegraph article (July 17, 2007 "Medians Mean Best Option Possible") quoted Tyler Police Department spokesman Don Martin as saying the medians had indeed increased safety along the corridors where they'd been installed, with wrecks falling by 50 percent where the medians were in place.

"Obviously, that's an excellent number," Krantz said. "What makes it even more impressive is that traffic volumes have done nothing but increase in East Texas during that same time, so accidents are down 50 percent in spite of more vehicles using these roads than ever."