May 15, 2008
Thomasville-- Trooper first class Craig Singletary regularly patrols U.S. highway 19, also called Georgia state highway 300. "300 is a very busy highway," he said. "Its extremely busy as far as day in and day out traffic. With that, the increased speeds make it a more high risk highway."
Another factor contributing to the highway's "high risk" classification: the sheer number of accidents they work on this road. "There's a lot of fatal crashes in this area and it is a lot of times due to high speeding and DUI drivers," Singletary explained. Troopers decided to crack down on the area by stepping up their day to day enforcement with what they call a concentrated patrol.
"It started in the early morning hours of May 5th and it pretty much went until midnight of that particular night," said Thomasville Post Commander, Sergeant Ronald Warren. Twenty-one troopers from the Thomasville and Albany posts worked together to patrol the stretch of highway between the 2 cities.
"We're trying to target the aggressive drivers, the speeders, those who are changing lanes improperly, and those who are just being a little bit careless," said Warren. In the 16 straight hours of patrolling, troopers wrote 180 tickets, 70 warnings, made 1 DUI arrest, and slowed countless others down without ever pulling them over.
"Concentrating on one area, it tends to slow people down. It's not all about writing tickets and citations its about just being visible and slowing traffic down to make the highway a safer place to travel," said Singletary. That, they say, is their top priority.
Georgia State Patrol conducts a concentrated patrol somewhere in the state every month to crack down on high risk drivers.
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