This morning at the Madison County Courthouse, County Judge Reagan Taylor joined members of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, Kentucky State Police Post 7, and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. The press conference was to roll out information on a new multi-agency, 12-month initiative being dubbed “High Five.”
The program aims at identifying Kentucky counties that have higher than normal accidents rates. Madison County is one of the five initial counties to be focused on, because of its higher-than-normal accident and fatality rates.
The program focuses on three tenets over the next year in Madison County, education, engineering, and enforcement.
The program aims to drive home the point that your chance of surviving a traffic crash is 45% higher when you wear your seatbelt. Although statistics say Kentucky’s statewide seatbelt usage is around 90%, that still leaves over 100,000 Kentucky drivers along with 20,000 passengers unbelted on Kentucky’s roadways every day.
Part of the High Five initiative is also to identify problematic areas in the county prone to accidents and even fatalities. The Kentucky Transportation cabinet will be focusing on such areas with high crash history’s and identify solutions like increased road signage, caution lights, or other identifiers that will help drivers identify the problem areas better.
The High Five initiative is a one year program made possible through a contract with NHSTA, will also help pay law-enforcement with overtime and additional patrols to help enforce safety in such areas.
Madison County joins Perry, Knot, Bourbon and Grayson as the initial “High Five” accident rate counties for the pilot program.
We will have more on this today on our LIVE at FIVE newscasts on channel 9.
