GOHS THUNDER TASK FORCE

CHECK OUT THE 2008 ROLLING THUNDER PAGE FOR BARTOW AND PAULDING COUNTIES HERE

Last week, the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety announced the roll-out of the newly formed GOHS THUNDER TASKFORCE. The TASKFORCE is a specialized traffic enforcement unit designed to help Georgia communities combat unusually high levels of traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities. The TASKFORCE mission is to help reduce those highway deaths by coordinating an increased law enforcement presence in the high crash corridors.

The THUNDER TASKFORCE Teams are composed of officers from the Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Motor Carrier Compliance Division deployed in joint operations with a specially-qualified contingent of GOHS HEAT Units. Last year, GOHS distributed $4.5-million in HEAT grants, funding nearly ninety traffic enforcement officers in 26 law enforcement agencies around the state to increase safety belt use and reduce speeding and impaired driving crashes.

The TASKFORCE HEAT officers are certified as field sobriety or drug recognition experts, with required training in radar, emergency vehicle operation, pursuit intervention, advanced traffic law, and DUI Breathalyzer equipment operation. Each time it’s deployed, the THUNDER TASKFORCE will work with members of Traffic Enforcement Units from the requesting agency. During this first call-out, THUNDER will work a combined speed and DUI crackdown operation with Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police (SCMPD) and local law enforcement agencies. Savannah area traffic deaths have climbed into the deadly double digits in just the first three months of 2007. Chatham County now ranks fifth in the state for traffic fatalities.

Over a three month period, THUNDER TASKFORCE officers will conduct sobriety roadchecks and concentrated patrols while collecting enforcement data to document their life-saving progress. TASKFORCE Officers from HEAT Units from around the state will make four deployments during the months of April, May and June, to help keep law abiding citizens of Chatham County safe on their highways. The TASKFORCE goal is to show a significant reduction in traffic fatalities and injuries over that three month period. In between THUNDER operations, SCMPD must continue to target high injury and fatality crash locations with their own campaign of concentrated patrols and focused roadchecks.

According to SCMPD, Savannah-Chatham has already experienced fourteen traffic fatalities and eleven serious injury crashes since January of 2007. Six of those incidents were alcohol-related. In 2006, Savannah-Chatham had ten fatalities and twenty serious injuries during the same period. After experiencing a total of 45 traffic deaths in 2006, SCMPD authorities asked GOHS for enforcement support and to be the first THUNDER TASKFORCE operation location to help bring down the number of serious injury and fatality crashes.

On Tuesday, April 3rd, the THUNDER TASKFORCE rolled into Savannah on I-16 at 1pm. GOHS and SCMPD are stepping up enforcement together to drive down highway deaths. Starting in April, the forecast in Savannah calls for THUNDER.

MORE PHOTOS CAN BE FOUND AT HTTP://WWW.GAHIGHWAYSAFETY.ORG/ROLLINGTHUNDER