Spending
an hour on the side of Interstate 20 isn't exactly how the Addisons planned on
starting the holiday season.
"We
were just driving and the car started swerving and so I just pulled over and
saw I had a flat tire," said Jarvis Addison. He's on a road trip with his daughter Brianna.
Traveling
from Columbia to Atlanta then onto Tampa, the Addisons are one of hundreds of
families getting on the road for the Thanksgiving weekend, one of the highway's
busiest traveling weekends, and one of the most dangerous.
"Georgia
is on the verge of having an increase in traffic fatalities for the first time
in six years," said Col. Mark McDonough, commissioner of Georgia's Department of Public Safety.
More
than one thousand deaths have been recorded in Georgia this year. And as the
year starts to wind down, Georgia State Troopers are launching Operation Safe
Holidays; reminding drivers not to speed, drink and drive and to always wear
your seatbelt.
"If
you're not wearing a seat belt and you're ejected, your chances of
survival are
slim to none," said State Trooper Harris Blackwood, director of the
Governor's Office of Highway Safety. "The seat belt will keep you in
what's going to protect you and
that's the automobile."
Not
wearing a seatbelt is a common problem troopers see across the border in the Palmetto state too.
"Seven-hundred
and twenty seven fatalities so far this year in South Carolina," said South Carolina State Trooper Judd Jones. "A big portion
of those people killed were not wearing a seatbelt."
Like Georgia, South Carolina Highway Patrol says
drinking and driving and speeding are also issues they deal with. And as
travelers get on the road, state troopers are hoping to send a strong message
to help travelers make it to their destination and back home safely.
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