MDT to increase patrols

Increased law enforcement part of new Montana Department of Transportation initiative to save lives.

SANDERS COUNTY — As the Montana Department of Transportation begins its new “Vision Zero” initiative directly aimed to save lives on Montana roads, almost 50 law enforcement agencies throughout the state ramp up patrols to enforce Montana seat belt laws and stop behavior that puts drivers and occupants at risk during the start of the busiest travel season.

As part of MDT’s May Mobilization efforts to increase seat belt usage and encourage safe driving, increased patrols by local police departments, county sheriff’s offices and the Montana Highway Patrol start Monday, May 19, continuing through Memorial Day weekend and concluding Sunday, June 1. The Montana Highway Patrol’s Safety Enforcement Traffic Team will focus special patrols on Interstate 90 and U.S. Highway 200, two of the state’s busiest travel corridors. Patrols monitoring all traffic violations, including impaired drivers, heighten again during the weeks around Fourth of July and Labor Day.

Increased enforcement is timed during what has historically been the deadliest period in Montana for fatal crashes —between May and October — when 61 percent of all vehicular fatalities occurred in the last 10 years.

“We’re starting the time of year when a majority of our highway fatalities happen in Montana,” said Montana Department of Transportation Director Mike Tooley. “From May through October, when the roads are dry and days are long, is not a time for Montanans to be complacent about safe driving, but a time to be extra diligent on the roads by always buckling up and only driving sober.”

Of the total 2,309 Montana highway fatalities in the last decade from 2004 – 2013, 62 percent of these people were either not wearing a seat belt or wearing it improperly. In Montana’s new Vision Zero initiative, a combined effort across public safety and law enforcement agencies to eliminate deaths and injuries on Montana roads, MDT calls for all Montanans to buckle up, drive sober and practice safe-driving behaviors.

“Too many lives are shattered on Montana highways from tragedy that could have been prevented,” Tooley added. “Vision Zero is a goal and a new mindset for all Montanans that death and serious injury on Montana roads is unacceptable. We won’t address our traffic fatality issue as a state until every Montanan buckles up, drives responsibly, avoids distraction and only drives sober.”

In a new media campaign this month, MDT reaches out to embolden all Montanans to buckle up. On outdoor billboards motorists will see a bloody crash scene depicting the realistic devastation of a young person thrown from the vehicle, a scene that happens frequently on Montana roadways with occupants in crashes who have not buckled up. The boards will hang with the banner “Life Shattered” to remind Montanans that by not buckling up their lives could too easily be shattered as well as the lives of their loved ones.

On TV, MDT shows how lives shattered in a car crash also shatter the lives of those who love the victims. In MDT’s latest commercial, a mother mourns the loss of her son, whose life could have been spared if he had buckled up.