Des Moines, IOWA — The Iowa State Patrol is stepping up patrol efforts for this holiday weekend. The Fourth of July holiday is one of the busiest summer travel times of the year, and thousands of Iowans are expected to hit the roadways this year. That is why the Iowa State Patrol is reminding motorists to buckle up and obey the laws as they travel.
The Iowa State Patrol will have several extra officers patrolling Iowa’s roadways throughout this week and weekend. Officers will be looking for seat belt violations, speeding violations, impaired and distracted drivers. Officials say wearing your seat belt can increase your chance of survival in a crash by 50 percent.
“Safety is our number one goal. We encourage all Iowans to remember that as they travel this week,” stated Colonel Garrison of the Iowa State Patrol. “If motorists simply buckle-up and obey the speed limit and other laws we can avoid fatal crashes on our roadways this holiday.”
In 2012, there were no traffic fatalities reported over the Fourth of July on Iowa roadways. Fatal traffic crashes are down significantly so far this year in the state. To date, 134 fatalities have resulted from car crashes on our roadways in 2013, down 47 fatalities from this time last year.
“We’d like to keep this trend of fewer traffic related fatalities going especially through this weekend and for the rest of this year,” said Garrison.
The Iowa State Patrol hopes you and your family have a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July holiday.
We are going to celebrate FREEDOM by instituting more jack boots on the ground. Sucka! Suckered again!
In order to be free, we must all shoulder the responsibility of our citizenship. One of which is to obey laws. As a consequence, we appoint people to enforce those laws.
If everyone would follow the law, might there be a need for law enforcement? Yet sometimes people are selective in what laws they want to obey. Then, those same people feel ill used when they are caught?
@Observer- they all think the laws are for everyone else and they won’t get caught. Then they whine and cry like Iberra when they do.
Why do they always throw seat belt violations in with drunk driving and speeding? If I speed or drive while impaired I could injure you or someone else. If I don’t wear my seat belt, I’m only hurting myself. Seat belts are a great invention and they do save lives – but a law to make me wear one? Can you say “Nanny State”?
if you don’t want the seat belt law then you must be willing to not collect any money for injury of yourself and must not be able to sue the driver of the other vehicle for your injuries when you are involved in an accident. The law isn’t there to keep you safe. It is there to save insurance companies billions of dollars a year.
Then lets make it illegal to swim within 1 hour of eating or to go up and down stairs without using the hand rail. Lets have a helmet law, not only for motorcyclists, but for bicyclists, skaters and skate boarders too. Maybe we should have laws about how hot we can have our water heaters or that we must wear eye and ear protection as well as steel-toed shoes when mowing our lawn. Heck, the first thing we should probably do is outlaw cigarettes! (that will never happen because of the tax revenue)
He wasn’t the one driving. How hard is that to understand?
This applies to everyone except our governor. And don’t tell me he wasn’t the one driving. He certainly knew the driver was way over the speed limit.