Highway Patrol Report Released

Accord­ing to fig­ures released by the Ohio High­way Patrol, we are com­ing off of the safest year on Ohio road­ways since they started keep­ing records.

The High­way Patrol says less than 1,000 peo­ple statewide died in traf­fic crashes on Ohio’s road­ways last year, the low­est num­ber since the patrol began keep­ing records back in 1936. In the six-county area, which includes Williams, Defi­ance, Ful­ton, Henry, Pauld­ing, and Put­nam coun­ties, there were 28 fatal crashes in 2013. So far in 2014, there have been 14 fatal crashes in the six county region.

Troop­ers say the major­ity of tick­ets they write are for speed and safety belt vio­la­tions, even though safety belt vio­la­tions are a sec­ondary offense, mean­ing troop­ers must observe another vio­la­tion and can­not stop a vehi­cle based on the safety belt vio­la­tion alone. They do say though, that it is an offense for which the patrol has a zero-tolerance pol­icy.

They say that while dis­tracted dri­ving is get­ting a lot of atten­tion, it has always been a prob­lem.

In years ear­lier, it was dri­vers chang­ing 8-track tapes or cas­settes, now it’s mobile phones.

And while teen dri­vers often are cited for their dri­ving inex­pe­ri­ence, police say another demo­graphic that con­tributes to a large per­cent­age of crashes is seniors.

Slower reac­tion times, decreased vision and impaired hear­ing are just some of the fac­tors that can affect dri­vers as they get older accord­ing to the High­way Patrol, which aslo sug­gested that peo­ple should con­sider hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with their older fam­ily mem­bers or friends if they start to see that their dri­ving is affected.