Sheriff Kevin Byars (foreground, left) and Deputy Jason Lane (foreground right) watched a presentation by Erin Eggen with the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety on Monday at the Paducah Police Department.
Safety officials hope familiar faces will encourage motorists to make smart decisions on Kentucky roads.
Local Heroes — an intitiative by the Kentucky Office of Highway Safety — is filming 10 commercials across Kentucky featuring law enforcement officers in those communities. On Monday, officers and deputies from nine western Kentucky agencies met at Paducah Police Department to begin filming safety messages.
Marshall County Sheriff Kevin Byars was on hand, along with Deputy Jason Lane. Byars said Lane will represent his department in segments scheduled to be shot Tuesday in Marshall County.
Byars said Marshall County’s busiest highways continue to be its most dangerous spots.
“As always, it’s the major highways, U.S. Highways 62, 641 and 68,” Byars said. “Those are still the trouble spots. The [Purchase] Parkway and Interstate 24 have been a problem this last year or so because of all the construction going on. There have been a lot of wrecks in that construction zone.”
Byars said the campaign ties in to national Click It or Ticket efforts, while keeping it local. Officers from the Calvert City Police Department are also scheduled to take part in filming.
“It’s doing something a little different, getting our local guys involved instead of a blanket thing coming out of Frankfort that nobody pays attention to,” Byars said. “Instead, they’re going to see Jason Lane and say ‘Hey, I know that guy.'”
Erin Eggen with KOHS said that’s the part of the message that makes these commercials work. Eggen was with the pilot project which the first filmed 10 commercials last year.
“The difference with the ones we’re doing this year is we’re coming to each county,” Eggen said. “The first year, we brought them all to Frankfort and staged a crash scene and did the interviews. We realized we wanted to localize it even more, not just with the officers, but with the setting and show the actual roads where people are getting injured.
“It makes more of an impact when you localize the message. Not only do we have local police officers, we are literally on the streets in your town.”
State-wide, KOHS says about 86.8 percent of motorists wear their seatbelts. And some of those 13.2 are involved in thousands of craches each year across the state.
In Marshall County, the number of crashes was up in 2017. There were 47 more vehicle crashes in Marshall County last year, up to 876 in 2017 from 829 in 2016. There were 837 reported in 2015.
Of Marshall County’s 876 collisions last year, 12 were fatalities, up from five in 2016, but down from 16 in 2015. Marshall trailed two other area participants in the program in total crashes last year — Calloway County had 1,109 and McCracken County 2,403 — but led in crash-related deaths. Calloway County had six fatalities in 2017, while McCracken had 11.
“It’s not just about enforcement, it’s about saving lives,” Eggen said. “They would rather write a ticket rather than make a death notification. This whole campaign gets into why we want you to buckle up. These people in our community, they want to save lives.”
The commercials will begin airing in late May. Social media and radio spots will also be part of the campaign.