The Nebraska State Patrol has kicked off its annual “Be Here for the Holidays” campaign, designed to encourage driver safety through voluntary compliance with all traffic safety laws.
Superintendent Colonel David Sankey says the Patrol wants everyone to put travel safety at the top of their holiday season list because the increased traffic and the potential for quickly changing weather conditions require extra attention from drivers.
Lt Lance Rogers of the Panhandle’s Scottbluff-based Troop E says Be Here for the Holidays isn’t a specific event, but rather an awareness campaign that gives drivers plenty of warning for specific enforcement activities by posting their times and locations on the State Patrol website.
The campaign includes at least one traffic safety enforcement operation somewhere in the state almost every day.
The start of Be Here for the Holidays coincides with the latest edition of the national Click It or Ticket seat belt campaig, which runs through the end of the Thanksgiving weekend on Sunday.
The Nebraska Office of Highway Safety has awarded $180,000 in grants to 55 agencies to cover the costs of overtime to put more officers on the road. The grants went to 27 sheriff’s offices, 26 city police departments, the UNL campus police, and the Nebraska State Patrol.
Five Panhandle agencies received grants…4 local police departments – Scottsbluff $3,000…Gering $2,670…Kimball $1,500…and Chadron $1,379.96…while the Scotts Bluff County Sheriff’s Office received $3,000. Lt Rogers says Troop E got a share of the Patrol’s more than $28,000 grant as well.
The heavy holiday traffic isn’t the only hazard that Thanksgiving drivers in the Panhandle need to pay attention to, there’s still the matter of deer on the highways…which reinforces the importance of wearing a seatbelt.
The State Patrol handled two car-deer accidents early last evening in which the vehicles sustained heavy damage while the drivers escaped essentially unharmed because they were belted in.
One occurred about 5:30 on Highway 71 about 2 miles north of Kimball where 41-year old Michael Wagoner of Gering struck a deer and had his car suffer $10,000 damage.
The other was about 45 minutes later on Highway 27 about 4 miles north of Gordon. 15-year old Rhett Conroy of Gordon managed to miss that deer, but in swerving to avoid it he overcorrected and his car rolled 1-1/2 times. The car was listed as totaled.