Driving Safety | Middlesex County NJ

Car side

Impaired Driving

Distracted Driving

What is Distracted Driving? There are three main types of distraction: visual, manual, and cognitive. Visual refers to removing your eyes from the road. Manual refers to actions that remove your hands from the wheel of the vehicle. Cognitive refers to any instance in which your mind is not focused on driving. While all distractions can endanger a driver's safety, texting is the most alarming because it involves all three types of distractions.

Other Distractions include:

Using a cell phone
Eating and drinking
Using a PDA or GPS
Changing the radio station, CD, or Mp3 player
Talking to passengers

Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over

Click It or Ticket

Seat belts have been proven to be a major factor in improving survivability and reducing severity in motor vehicle crashes. They are also the best defense occupants have against an impaired driver. Middlesex County's seat belt usage declined from 2008 to 2009 according to the "National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS)" conducted in August 2009.

Click it or Ticket campaign logo Click It or Ticket is a highly publicized law enforcement effort that gives people more of a reason to buckle up: the increased threat of a traffic ticket. Most people buckle up for safety, but for some people, it is the threat of the ticket that spurs them to put on a safety belt. In Click It Or Ticket programs, law enforcement agencies are asked to focus on safety belt violations and publicize the stepped-up effort through news media and advertising. Click It Or Ticket campaigns and similar efforts have increased safety belt use in cities, states and even in an entire region of the country.

Resources

Division of Highway Traffic Safety Impaired Driving Information

Division of Highway Traffic Safety Distracted Driving

D.R.I.V.E. Program

The Driver Response Impaired Vision Exercise (D.R.I.V.E) Program enlightens students to the pitfalls of driving while under the influence through the use of fatal vision goggles that mimics the effects of being intoxicated. Through physical application, students are able to realize the dangers of driving while intoxicated. Middlesex County's Driver Response Impaired Vision Exercise (D.R.I.V.E.) program utilizes golf carts and sight-impairing fatal vision goggles to create a hands-on impaired driving experience for the driver. NJ State Police designed a course utilizing road cones, safety barriers and traffic signs that can be set up in parking lot areas of high schools.

3D: Don't Drive Dangerously PSA Contest

This year is the 26^th annual PSA Awards Contest for Middlesex County’s high schools. The program was developed in 2000 initially as the “Middlesex County Don’t Drink and Drive PSA Video Contest”, with the goal of reducing alcohol related fatalities among teens, specifically targeting prom and graduation season. It has now expanded to include all forms of dangerous driving such as impaired and distracted driving, now titled “Middlesex County’s 3D – Don’t Drive Dangerously PSA Contest”.

The contest is open to high school students in all public and non-public Middlesex County high schools. Each high school is invited to submit an English and/or Spanish 60-second student-produced video public service announcement (PSA) or 30-second audio PSA, that focuses on the consequences of driving dangerously. A maximum of five students per youth-led team can collaborate to change the social climate of their community through the use of compelling PSAs that depict impaired and dangerous driving as unacceptable behavior.

The program culminates with an award’s day coupled with a traffic safety symposium, where guest speakers offer various blocks of instruction, and the DRIVE program is administered by the New Jersey State Police. The event is co-sponsored by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners, Robert Wood Johnson Injury Prevention, Middlesex County Superintendent of Schools, Wellspring Center for Prevention, MADD-NJ, and NJ Division of Highway Traffic Safety. Through this program teens become positive role models, empowering their peers to make healthy decisions and resist negative peer pressure.

Congratulations to the winners of Middlesex County’s 25^th annual 3D – Don’t Drive Dangerously PSA Contest.

Video Winners:

1^st place: South Plainfield High School
2^nd place: North Brunswick High School
3^rd place: Monroe High School

Audio Winners:

1^st place: Woodbridge Academy Magnet School
2^nd place: St. Joseph High School
3^rd place: South Plainfield High School