August 11 at the Paintsville Ramada Inn, the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety held a press conference to promote the 2016 Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over Enforcement Campaign. The campaign will run from August 19 to September 5 and drivers will see increased enforcement between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m., which data found to be peak hours for crashes in Kentucky. During the campaign, checkpoints will be increased and there will be zero tolerance for seat belt and child restraint violations.  According to the highways safety office, data collected from 2013 to 2015 showed Floyd and Pike Counties to be in the Top 40 Kentucky counties for overall impaired collisions. The Kentucky Office of Highway Safety encourages law enforcement agencies with grant funding for overtime hours to use it during the campaign period for maximum enforcement effort and said “people make the right decision about drinking and driving when they perceive aggressive enforcement.”

The briefing also provided information on spring’s Click it or Ticket enforcement and found there to be some drop from last year in citations concerning seatbelts, speeding, and license suspensions/revocations, while areas of impaired driving and child restraints had a slight increase. Parents are to be reminded that children under 8 years of age or shorter than 57 inches should be placed in a booster seat. For more information, you can visit www.highwaysafety.ky.gov.

-Kevin Horn reporting for WQHY