Annual traffic safety operation signals start to summer travel season

A total of nine state police and highway patrol agencies are partnering again this year for the East Coast’s most extensive traffic safety initiative targeting non-interstate highway corridors.

This will be the seventh year for Operation Border to Border, which focuses on U.S Route 15 and U.S. Route 17. Both are popular highways with college students and families kicking off their summer vacations and trying to avoid congested interstates.

To help ensure safe travels for thousands of students and families up and down the East Coast, state troopers from Maryland, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia will carry out Operation Border to Border to prevent traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities along targeted primary highways within each state. Beginning at 12:01 a.m. Friday, June 7, 2019, through midnight Sunday, June 9, 2019, this seamless traffic safety effort will include saturation patrols, sobriety checkpoints and other enforcement initiatives aimed at saving lives and combating criminal activity along the major, non-interstate highways.

The operation will specifically be targeting 791 miles of U.S. Route 15, which originates in Waterboro, S.C., and ends in Corning, N.Y. Florida and Georgia state troopers will be concentrating their patrol efforts on 317 miles of U.S. Route 17. West Virginia State Police will be patrolling different stretches of non-interstate, heavily-traveled highways throughout the state that are prone to traffic crashes. With so many state troopers on patrol this weekend, motorists are reminded to comply with each state’s #MoveOver law.

Speed, distracted driving and impaired drivers are again at the core of the traffic safety initiative. During the three-day 2018 Operation Border to Border, a total of 1,047 speeders were cited, 19 DUI arrests were made, and 332 seat belt violations were cited across all nine states. In addition, 153 commercial vehicle violations were cited and 16 drug/narcotic arrests were made.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), speeding killed 9,717 people in 2017, accounting for more than a quarter (26%) of all traffic fatalities in the U.S. that same year. Distracted driving was a factor in 3,166 traffic deaths across the nation last year. Every day, almost 30 people in the U.S. die in drunk-driving crashes, which equated to one person killed every 48 minutes in 2017.