U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater Announces $1 Million for Georgia to Help Reduce Alcohol-Related Crashes

Topics:  Rodney E. Slater

NHTSA
September 30, 1999

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NHTSA 46-99
Thursday, September 30, 1999
Contact: NHTSA, Tim Hurd, (202) 366-9550

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater today announced a cooperative agreement between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety that gives Georgia $1 million to reduce alcohol-related crashes.

"A strong message and tough state laws have done a lot to bring about a change in the public's attitude toward impaired driving," said Secretary Slater. "Safety is President Clinton's highest transportation priority and these funds will help save lives."

The funds will assist the state in increasing levels of law enforcement with heightened publicity through a 30-month demonstration and evaluation program.

Unlike a grant, a cooperative agreement involves closer participation by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the state during administration of the program. To receive the funding, the Georgia submitted a proposal that met specific requirements for administering the demonstration program.

Georgia plans to increase the level of enforcement activity dramatically and improve the effectiveness of state criminal proceedings for specific driving under the influence (DUI) violations. The Georgia State Patrol is also committed to raising the number of sobriety checkpoints to more than 500 over the 15-month intervention period.

A pilot program will be launched in the Atlanta Metro area where several lawyers will be added to the Department of Public Safety to help law enforcement personnel deal with those offenders arrested for DUI. The findings from this effort will be part of the overall evaluation component of the study.

"In 1998, a person was killed every 30 minutes in an alcohol-related crash. In Georgia alone, 509 people died last year," said Ricardo Martinez, M.D., administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "Programs like this one in Georgia will redouble our efforts to reduce the number of these crashes and the tragedies that accompany them."

This 30-month effort in Georgia hopes to demonstrate that a comprehensive and sustained law enforcement effort combined with publicity directed at getting safety messages about this program to the public can result in a substantial drop in alcohol-related crashes. ###