The Iowa State Patrol says twice as many people died on the state’s highways this past Labor Day weekend than a year ago. Sergeant Robert Hansen gathered the figures from the Patrol’s 14 district offices.There were five accidents in which six people died — compared to three wrecks and three deaths last year. Hansen says troopers wrote about 100 more tickets for speeding this year.They stopped four-thousand-900 speeders and issued tickets to 27-hundred. Just over 12-hundred people were ticketed for seatbelt violations — a 20-percent increase. Hansen says there wasn’t a significant increase in alcohol violations.There were six accidents involving alcohol compared to five last year. He says there were 48 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol, a slight drop. Hansen did not know if any of the fatal accidents involved alcohol.
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