The long holiday weekend claimed five lives on Iowa roadways. State Public Safety Department spokesman Jim Saunders says there were two special enforcement projects underway — the Combined Accident Reduction Effort and the Special Traffic Enforcement Program. He credits that enforcement effort with the arrest of 27 drunk drivers, more than 2-thousand 380-speeding tickets, 325 seatbelt citations, and 665 tickets for other violations. Troopers also stopped to help 267 motorists in distress during that week. Five people died in crashes on state roadways during the four-day period Thursday through Sunday. In three of the crashes that were investigated by state troopers, the victims were the people who weren’t belted in. The difference is clear, says Saunders, as the people who survived those same wrecks were the ones who HAD buckled up. “Our troopers unfortunately are called all too often to respond to accidents where folks were ejected,” Saunders says, “and it’s a high likelihood that those folks would not have been injured and certainly may not have lost their lives had they just taken the time to fasten that seatbelt.”
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