Arizona Department of Public Safety to Conduct Operation Safe Passage during upcoming Labor Day Holiday Weekend

Operation Safe Passage will be conducted this Friday, September 2^nd, 2011, on Interstates 40, 10 and 8, from California to New Mexico. DPS Highway Patrol Officers will be stationed approximately every ten miles ensuring the interstates are free of traffic incidents while they conduct zero tolerance enforcement. They will target hazardous moving violations including speed, following too close, and unsafe lane usage, as well as impaired driving and occupant restraint violations. Most patrol vehicles will be marked but several unmarked enforcement vehicles will participate.

The Department’s Share the Road patrol officers will also be monitoring traffic looking for violations committed by commercial vehicles and passenger cars committing violations around trucks and buses.

The Department will continue to conduct these operations throughout the year to ensure the motorists of Arizona and those passing through our State can travel safely. “Every passenger car driver and truck driver should feel safe and be deterred against committing violations that cause or contribute to fatal and other crashes on our highways” says Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hegarty of the Arizona Highway Patrol. “Whether passing through the mountains of Flagstaff on Interstate 40, southern Arizona through Tucson, or metropolitan Phoenix, all drivers should be aware we will not tolerate impaired driving, aggressive driving, or non-use of seatbelts as we attempt to experience a fatality-free holiday weekend”.

The goal of Operation Safe Passage is to reduce fatal crashes by demonstrating to drivers that the Highway Patrol is conducting traffic enforcement in a wide variety of areas and that they should obey traffic laws constantly, not just in the vicinity of patrol officers.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration research indicates that a fatal traffic crash costs state taxpayers over one million dollars in emergency response, health care, and other expenses. A reduction in fatal crashes in Arizona on state highways of just 10% could save our state over twenty million dollars per year.

The Arizona Highway Patrol asks drivers to do their part to save lives and reduce crashes by buckling up and obeying traffic laws.