Highway safety has become a top priority in Tennessee. This has been made apparent by the numerous public and private campaigns aimed at educating motorists and preventing car, truck, and motorcycle crashes that cause auto accident injuries.
The efforts seem to be paying off, considering new reports show the state’s highway fatality rate reached an all-time low last year. According to WBIR News, 961 motorists lost their lives on Tennessee roadways in 2014. This was an almost 3.5 percent decrease from 2013, when 995 roadway deaths were recorded.
One of the major contributing factors to this decrease is the Tennessee’s focus on preventing drunk driving accidents. Officers arrested approximately 2,000 more intoxicated drivers last year in 2013, which may have contributed to the state’s 18.6 percent drop in alcohol-related traffic deaths.
State officials hope to keep the downward trend in traffic fatalities alive in 2015 by sponsoring a campaign called “Toward Zero Deaths”. The program focuses on eliminating highway fatalities in a single year by improving highway engineering, law enforcement strategies, education techniques, and emergency response protocol.
At Ponce Law, we are proud of Tennessee’s focus on highway safety, and our Nashville personal injury lawyers are hopeful the trend continues into the new year.
