CONROE, Texas – Montgomery County officials are urging safety on our roads and online—especially for teenagers—ahead of the 100 deadliest days, a time between Memorial Day and Labor Day when fatalities on our roads tend to increase.
The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office along with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Mother’s Against Drunk Driving and other local law enforcement agencies held a press conference in front of the medical examiner’s office on Thursday morning.
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Brett Ligon, the district attorney, said the purpose of the press conference is to stay ahead of the curve.
“Some of our focuses today have been on intoxicated driving, reckless driving, but another part of the focus that you heard from our chief of Children’s Safe Harbor, dealt with the fact that oftentimes, kids are unsupervised, and so they’re online quite a bit,” said Ligon.
Ligon said during the summer, the county sees an increase in child abuse reports as well as driving while under the influence reports.
“It’s the most avoidable crime," said Ligon. “There’s nothing more traumatic than a traffic accident. The injuries that someone suffers that lead to a fatality, they’re just brutal. Usually you’re dealing with some type of internal decapitation, blunt force trauma.”
In Montgomery County, Ligon said officials have a more proactive approach when it comes to tackling the DWI problem.
“What we do is we tell people where we’re going to be. We tell them where our units are going to the traffic. We have them in marked vehicles. So, there are marked vehicles with overhead lights. We advertise in the newspapers," said Ligon. “If we can get everybody home, get them safe, what we talk about for the summer is, what we want is them to have their freedom. We don’t wanna be attending their funerals."
So far this year, MCSO reports 22 traffic deaths. This time last year, that number was 12.
There have also been 48 cases of DWI so far this year. This time last year, it was 68.
