Troopers Take Back Our Highways

Following seven days of intensive patrol activity, Alabama state troopers wrapped up an aggressive highway safety campaign aimed at saving lives on state roadways. This latest course of Take Back Our Highways, which concluded July 31, saw Alabama partner with four other Southeastern states for the crackdown on driver behavior contributing to traffic crashes.

Nearing the end of the campaign, troopers had worked 11 fewer fatalities, 17 fewer injuries, and 42 fewer crashes than in 2008. They made 144 DUI arrests, wrote 6,674 speeding tickets, and issued 2,026 citations for safety restraint violations.

Similar to previous campaigns, the latest TBOH initiative placed troopers from every rank and division in uniform and on patrol.

TBOH premiered in August 2007 as an innovative statewide blitz to reduce crashes and save lives. The initiative achieved its goal: Drivers in the state became more aware, slowed down, buckled up, and crashes and fatalities dropped significantly in 2007 and 2008.

“In the last two years, our state troopers have saved 195 lives on state roadways,” said Col. J. Christopher Murphy of the Alabama DPS. “However, we’re still seeing too many preventable fatalities in Alabama, from the drunken driver who drove off the road and overturned, to the teenage driver not wearing a seatbelt, who failed to yield the right of way, or the speeding motorcyclist who lost control. These fatalities should have never happened.

“These are the lives we are working on to save,” Murphy said. “We have seen great improvements, but as long as 65 percent of trooper-worked fatalities are not buckled up, and as long as more than 40 percent of trooper-worked fatalities involve alcohol, there are fatalities we can and will prevent.”

During the course of the Take Back Our Highways initiative
the end of July, every available Tennessee trooper, including
command and administrative personnel, worked the roads
to reduce traffic fatalities and increase safety.

Tennessee and Mississippi took notice, and in 2007 partnered with Alabama on a Thanksgiving TBOH safety campaign. The latest version of TBOH brought in Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia to make the campaign a regional effort to reduce highway traffic fatalities.

Murphy is optimistic that the week-long campaign can help bring about long-term improvements in driving behavior throughout the Southeastern region.

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