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Published on Thursday, September 23, 2004
in the Palatka Daily News
Putnam County's five-year traffic crash statistics are on a downward trend, but those stats could always improve - especially where driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is concerned, said Brent Coates, Florida Highway Patrol captain in Palatka.
"We had higher than average alcohol-related fatalities between 1997 and 1998," Coates said Tuesday. "We got a grant from the state Department of Transportation to help us get a DUI squad out there for more enforcement."
As late as 2000, Putnam County was ranked in the top three counties out of 67 statewide for alcohol-related crashes per capita, he said.
Putnam is now below the 2003 state average for alcohol-related driving deaths (2.9 percent) at 2.18 percent of all driving deaths. The county is also below the 2003 state average for alcohol-related crashes (10.69 percent) at 6.68 percent.
The DOT's annual 2003 Florida Crash Statistics Report shows the county had a single bicycle death in its five-year history, which occurred in 2001.
Coates said the FHP began its Community Traffic Safety Team in 1998 - including partnerships with the highway patrol, district police departments, the health department, county and state road departments and the Putnam County Sheriff's Office - to address the county's then-spiking traffic crash statistics. The team's stated purpose, "to decrease the number and severity of traffic crashes ... by using a unified, multi-agency, multi-discipline approach," includes a variety of safety programs tailored to suit Putnam's specific needs.
One traffic problem Coates said causes accidents in the region is overcorrecting - when a driver strays off the road and swerves back onto it, causing the vehicle to spin out or flip.
"What we've got to do is figure out the causes and find preventions to the problem," he said. "The problem with overcorrecting is that it's hard to enforce. We have to educate people about the causes in order to prevent that from happening."
Past newspaper articles and media attention have helped make drivers more aware of that specific problem, Coates said.
"The cause is primarily a distraction of the driver," he said. "The instinct of the driver is to get back on the road as fast as you can, and that causes you to go out of control. What you need to do is take a firm grip on the wheel, take your foot off the accelerator and ride the shoulder for a little while and gradually get back on the road."
Most other traffic problems are spread throughout the county, Coates said.
But some areas of the most concentrated traffic crashes include the base of the bridge between Palatka and East Palatka, south from U.S. 17 at the Quality Inn to State Road 207, he said. County Road 315 has a high incidence rate of overcorrecting, which also contributes to crashes, Coates said.
"We're a small, rural county with a lot of two-lane roads, and that accounts for some fluctuation of numbers," Coates said.
The county's other major programs include Buckle Up Florida!, which aims to educate drivers for increased seatbelt use; Celebrate Safely, a program running from Thanksgiving to New Years that provides drivers with incentives for choosing a designated driver; You Drink, You Drive, You Lose, an education and enforcement campaign against drunk driving; and Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day, a safe driving enforcement campaign on Oct. 10 designed to eliminate all traffic deaths during that day.
Other programs target child seat safety and the FHP's Battle of the Belts Challenge will bring area high schools to compete against one another for the highest rates of seatbelt use during specific months.
FHP Trooper Justin Asbury said the highway patrol's safety efficiency improves consistently.
"Our investigations and our ability to handle crashes is always getting better because we're handling new needs and changing laws and circumstances," Asbury said Tuesday. "We're always adapting. The highway patrol and the sheriff's office and the police department are always getting more educated and more experienced as you go so we can be better as a department and do better investigating."
He said higher frequencies of serious crashes happen in outlying areas including U.S. 17 north and south, State Road 21 North and State Road 19 South.
"Those roads are wide open and less populated, so they're less patrolled," Asbury said.
He said one of the hardest parts of dealing with a serious traffic injury or death is informing the victim's family members.
"The number one thing family members want to know is, 'Was it their fault?' and exactly how it happened, whether there was anything else responsible," Asbury said.
Troopers have to strike a balance between their duty to inform a victim's relatives and their responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation, he said. "I have to be an investigator, a counselor and a rescuer all in one."
"In half the cases involved with other people, you have to be as honest as you can, but sometimes you have to be restrictive because you don't want emotions getting in the way when there's another person involved," Asbury said.
He said he could empathize with relatives of a person killed in a traffic accident because a stepbrother of his died in a traffic crash soon after Asbury became a highway patrol trooper.
"Sometimes people say they understand and they really don't. I do, and it helps me communicate with people," he said. "It motivates me to relate to families and relay the information that's important to them. The best information you'll ever get is personal experience."
He said the worst traffic crash he'd ever witnessed involved two brothers from Bostwick who were killed in the wreckage.
"I had to communicate what happened to the families," Asbury said. "...You know they want to know the details that are most critical and, when there's a fatality, these were this person's last moments of life and they weren't with them.
"When the opportunity arises, I can give them a sense of hope sometimes that there is life. Life will go on."