Highway Safety Officials Offering CMV Training To Honor Nursing Students

November 12, 2015

Following multiple fatal crashes involving commercial trucks and passenger vehicles this year, the Georgia Department of Public Safety and Governor’s Office of Highway Safety have announced a free training class that will give law enforcement officers additional instruction in commercial motor vehicle citations, crash investigations and crash prevention. The training is being offered tomorrow, Nov. 12, to mark the six-month anniversary of the I-16 crash that killed five Georgia Southern University nursing students when they were involved in a collision with a tractor trailer.

The class is offered in partnership with Georgia Southern at the university’s Shooting Sports Education Center and coincides with the recent launch of the yearlong Stop The Threatcampaign, which is a high visibility enforcement program by the Georgia State Patrol and Motor Carrier Compliance Division to target the unsafe driving practices of CMV drivers.

“Education and enforcement go hand-in-hand to promote traffic safety on our state’s roadways,” Georgia Department of Public Safety Commissioner Colonel Mark W McDonough said.  “These classes will help law enforcement officers identify the common contributing factors in commercial vehicle crashes and what actions they can take to correct the driving infraction before a crash occurs.”

From 2008 to 2014, Georgia averaged 100 large truck crashes per year with an average of almost 113 fatalities each year. That means that for the last seven years, at least one person has died in every large truck collision. That is the kind of deadly math Georgia does not want motorists to learn.

“The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety plans to make this training available to as many officers as possible through our traffic enforcement networks,” GOHS Director Harris Blackwood said. “This is another tool we can use in our effort to reduce injuries and fatalities on Georgia roads.”

Law enforcement statewide were invited to pre-register for today’s training class, which is being offered in both a morning and afternoon session. Interim Georgia Southern President Jean Bartels, who was the Provost of the GS nursing school at the time of the students’ death, is scheduled to address the class.