(Undated)– A special emphasis is being put on safe driving as we enter a peak travel time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Kevin Krull, a trooper with the Iowa State Patrol, tells KUOO news it’s the time of the year when accidents and fatalities greatly increase…
“In 2024 the last 35 days of the year, kind of in that Thanksgiving timeframe to the end of the year, we had over 5,000 crashes on Iowa roads with 633 people reporting injuries from those. There were others that were possible injuries, but 633 injuries and 107 were serious. And then we also had on top of that 40 fatalities. So that’s more than one per day in that time period and it’s just one of those that there’s more people out and about. The weather is starting to change for us so we have that in combination with the fact people are celebrating and then they forget that with that celebration we need to plan for our safe ride home.”
Krull says we’re headed into the holiday season on a positive note when it comes to traffic fatalities year to date…
“Knock on wood, we’re down, we’re in that 244 and we’re down 20 percent from where we were last year, but last year was a really bad year for us and we kind of shy away from talking about it just out of superstition but, you know, we have that attainable goal if we do things right. If things line up we can possibly get under 300 deaths on Iowa roads for the first time I believe since 1925.”
Krull says troopers have adopted a theme for enforcement over the holidays called “Side With Us” with the S in side standing for seatbelts…
“You know we’ve got 40 percent of our people that are still dying in our crashes not wearing their seatbelts, so we need to wear our seatbelts all the time no matter where we’re at in the vehicle and just prevent further injury and make ourselves a little bit safer. Impaired driving is where the I comes from in side with us and this is that time of the year where we see quite a bit of impaired driving with the holiday parties where we go out and we just have a few here and then a few others and we find that impairment comes in to factor on a lot of our crashes this time of year. But then the one program that we’ve been out there really stepping up our enforcement on is that distracted driving, the D in side with us is distracted driving. With that new law in place we’ve been out there issuing lots of warnings, but come January 1st we’re going to start issuing citations for that. The big thing to remember on that. And then the E, the last of the side with us, is excessive speed. We’ve got to watch our speed and just take your time to get there. You’ll get there if you take your time. Relax and just abide with the side with us and watch that traffic and watch the road conditions.”
Krull says they’re hoping to improve on the numbers during the Thanksgiving holiday period a year ago…
“Last year, the same reporting period Thanksgiving weekend, we had 961 crashes with 17 either seriously injured or fatalities in that, just in that seven day period. So that’s quite a few people that are having their lives changed or ended, unfortunately with that. And then that extends out to family members, of course. This is supposed to be, we’re at Thanksgiving, obviously, thus it’s called Thanksgiving, but to give thanks and be joyful of the things we have and that, we want everybody there.”
Krull says you can expect to see an increased presence of state troopers and other law enforcement agencies on the roads now into early next week as a special traffic enforcement campaign will be taking place.
