Governor’s Office of Highway Safety set to kick off ‘Hands Across the Border’

ATLANTA — The 27th annual “Hands Across the Border” traffic enforcement campaign kicks off Monday when Georgia law enforcement will join fellow officers, troopers and deputies in Alabama, Florida and Tennessee to conduct joint road checks in their respective states over a five-day period leading up to Memorial Day weekend.

Law enforcement agencies in all four states are expected to work simultaneously to take drivers who are under the influence off the roads as well as issue citations for distracted driving, speeding, being unbuckled — including children in car seats — and other traffic violations.

“We’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years, and we will continue to work with our neighbors to the north, south and west to help bring down traffic fatalities across the Southeast and to get dangerous drivers off the road,” Governor’s Office of Highway Safety Director Harris Blackwood said. “No matter what uniform they wear, our law enforcement and their peers from neighboring states have the same goals, to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities wherever they can.

“This is an important effort as we get ready for Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer.”

Hands Across the Border started in 1991 as a friendly wager between the Georgia State Patrol and Florida Highway Patrol to see which agency could limit the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths in their state during the Labor Day travel period. Within 10 years, the effort grew to all states bordering Georgia holding joint road checks at their state lines on the week before Labor Day with the goal of taking impaired drivers off the roads prior to the final summer holiday travel period of the year.

Beginning last year, the campaign moved to the start of the summer in order to expand the safety message and have the program begin simultaneously with Georgia’s annual 100 Days of Summer H.E.A.T., which stands for Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic.

“Above all else, our primary goal is to get dangerous drivers off the road and to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries,” GOHS Law Enforcement Director Roger Hayes said. “The Southeast has so many great vacation destinations that whether folks are staying in-state, just visiting or passing through on their way to another state, we want them to slow down, buckle up themselves and their children, drive sober and put down the phone.”

In Georgia, 1,549 traffic deaths were reported last year. That’s a slight decrease from 1,561 in 2016 after increases in both 2015 and 2016.

“Hands Across the Border shows all motorists that no matter where they’re from or where they’re going, Georgia and its neighbors care about traffic safety,” Blackwood said. “We’re all fighting the same fight against speeding, distracted driving, impaired driving and being unbelted.

“It does not matter what side of the state line you’re on. We’re all committed to keeping roads safer this summer.”

Hands Across the Border will begin on Monday with road checks near Savannah, followed by stops at the Florida state line near Kingsland and Valdosta, the Alabama state line in Columbus, and the Tennessee state line near Ringgold.

“We certainly hope to curtail some of the fatalities that we are having and get people more into that mindset,” Hayes said. “We also would like to try to educate people prior to our July 1 implementation of the Hands-Free Law. We would like to be able to be out in the public and talking to different people and trying to educate them on what is going to happen on July 1.

“We have the opportunity to face-to-face talk about and share the ideas we have. We already have had several partners ask us about the Hands-Free Law and what it means and what it is going to do. They have got to try to educate their public as well. Then the other things they are doing and we are doing to help curtail impaired driving, keep driving speeds down and things like that and just reducing the fatalities and serious injuries that we all have.”

For more information on Hands Across the Border or other GOHS programs, visit www.gahighwaysafety.org or www.headsupgeorgia.com.