Independence Day brings one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
AAA projects nearly 71 million people across the U.S. will travel ahead of and over the holiday, including more than 180,000 Delawareans taking to the roads.
Delaware State Police hope a new Highway Safety Unit can help cut down on auto accidents, while educating the public on driving safety.
In collaboration with the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security and DelDOT, the eleven-person unit is tasked with promoting safety on First State roadways and their efforts will focus on specific high-density areas, such as Route 1 and I-95.
State Police Sgt. Lloyd McCann says Delaware’s accident numbers spurred the move to create a special unit.
“There’s obviously been an increase in motor vehicle collisions, as well as fatal collisions,” McCann said. “So, it’s kind of two-fold, you know – obviously, we want to make the roads safer, in general, but we also want to reduce the number of collisions – specifically, fatal collisions.”
Sgt. McCann adds the success and effectiveness of the Highway Safety Unit will be judged using the state’s crash report data.
“So there’s a database that we can actually look at and see the numbers in real-time,” McCann said. “The way to measure that is, do we actually start to see a decrease in those crashes, or do we start to see a decrease in fatals. Things like that would be the gauge – and if not, well why not – then we need to readdress some things.”