Tennessee traffic fatalities down slightly

The state lowered the minimum blood-alcohol content to 0.08 percent for drunken driving offenses in 2003 and a year later started allowing police officers to pull over motorists who weren?t wearing seat belts.

Both were expected to have an impact on the number of fatalities on Tennessee roads each year. The state has had a 6 percent decrease since 2004, from 1,339 fatalities that year down to 1,259 people in 2006.

?The bottom line is we?ve still got work to do,? said Kendell Poole, director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Office. ?One fatality is too many.?

Krystal Waters, 17, and her mother, Lisa, both of the Antioch area of Nashville, survived after their car plummeted 45 feet into a river in 2005, flipping three times before resting upside down.

After kicking out a broken window, Krystal and her mother escaped the accident relatively unharmed.

?The only thing that happened was I had a fractured toe and she had a scrape on her head,? Waters said. ?It would have been a completely fatal accident if we hadn?t been wearing seat belts.?

Waters joined the Tennessee Highway Patrol in a speaking tour of several elementary and high schools to tell students about her accident and encourage them to buckle up.

Other statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration illustrate that Tennessee motorists are safer after the passage of these laws, Poole said.

Seat belt usage has increased slightly every year since 2004. In 2006, 78.6 percent of Tennesseans were estimated to use seat belts, based on roadside observations by University of Tennessee researchers.

The percentage of alcohol-related fatalities has been reduced from 40 percent of all fatal wrecks in 2004 to 19 percent in 2006.