To raise awareness about safety, June is designated as National Safety Month by the National Safety Council. It’s an effort to reduce leading causes of injury and death at work, on the road and anywhere else in communities.
In Mississippi, two out of three people killed in motor vehicle crashes are not buckled up. Teens were cited as being the least likely to wear their seat belts, the Mississippi Department of Transportation states. According to a release from MDOT, 107 of the 170 teenage motor vehicle deaths in a single year were not buckled up.
Also, the MDOT release states that America has more drunk drivers than most countries have people. Each year, more than 10,000 people die as a result of drunk driving, which according to the MDOT website, is equivalent to 20 jumbo jet crashes each year.
Distracted driving and texting while driving creates a risk 23 times worse than if not distracted. MDOT’s website states that sending or receiving a text takes a driver’s eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, which, driving at a speed of 55 mph, is the same as traveling the length of an entire football field while blind.
Also, drivers who use hand-held devices are four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.
Violent crimes are another danger. According to Sperling’s Best Places, a website that gathers data from analysis made by the U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Uniform Crime Reports National Climatic Data Center, two types of crime rates are measured, property and violent crimes. The crime index is measured on a scale from 1 to 100, one being the least amount of crime.
The national averages are 38.1 property crime rate and 31.1 violent crime rate. In Pearl River County, both the property (41.9) and violent (43.7) crime rates are above the national average. In the Picayune metro area, the property crime rate is 54.7 and the violent crime rate is 55.2. These statistics measure the actual amount of crime reported in those given areas, not the chance of being victim or involved in a crime.