The Highway Patrol Issues Holiday Traffic Wrap-Up Report

ZANESVILLE, Ohio- This past Labor Day Weekend, the Ohio State Highway Patrol has been ensuring our roads are safe and laws are enforced. 

During the Labor Day reporting period which ran from Friday to Monday, there were over 18,000 tickets issued with 2,465 seatbelt violations and 420 drivers arrested for an OVI across the buckeye state. Locally those numbers from the Zanesville Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol were typical from any normal year pre-COVID.  

“We had 520 tickets issued, 93 of those were for seatbelts, 10 were for OVI, and we handled 12 crashes,” Russell Pasqualetti, Lieutenant Post Commander of the Zanesville OSHP Post stated.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol stresses that safety in every regard is important. Not only should you have a designated driver and drive distraction-free, but you should also wear your seatbelt in a car and a helmet in a motorcycle to prevent any holiday from being your last.

“Across the state we had 12 fatalities, seven of those were in cars and five were on motorcycles. Just over half the people in the cars that were killed were not wearing seatbelts and three of the five killed on the motorcycle crashes were not wearing helmets,” Pasqualetti said.

As we head into the holiday season this Fall, the highway patrol wants people to be aware of the lane changes that will be going on throughout the I-70 corridor in Zanesville as traffic flow will be changing periodically. They also state there is no excuse to be drinking and driving and to always have a designated driver.