SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — Buddy Lewis, Director of the Tennessee Highway Safety Office, said Shelby County law enforcement officers joined Operation Hands Free for National Distracted Driver's Awareness Month.
Three thousand people die each year from distracted driving, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"These fatality numbers aren't just numbers. They're people. They're people who have been killed on our roadways,” said Lewis.
ABC24 got a chance to ride along with law enforcement in Shelby County for a campaign called “Operation Hands Free” on Monday, April 1.
The Tennessee Highway Safety Office is partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Tennessee Department of Transportation and local law enforcement.
Agencies rode on a MATA bus, looking for distracted drivers. Then, they contacted patrols to pull them over.
This comes as a new law went into effect in January that adds more points to your driver's license if you get caught distracted behind the wheel. Chief Deputy Anthony Bucker with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office supports the law because he said too many drivers in Shelby County don’t pay attention behind the wheel.
"We're seeing more and more crashes. We're writing more and more citations for distracted driving. A lot of our rear end collisions, when we investigate them, we determine were due to distracted driving,” said Chief Deputy Buckner.
According to the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security, a crash involves a distracted driver in our state every 27 minutes and 20 seconds in Tennessee. Lewis said this is why the initiative was important.
But law enforcement was also able to find other suspects during the bus tour, including a wanted sex offender in Millington.
The overall goal was to help make the roadways safer.
ABC24 was not able to get the exact number of people cited during the bus tour, but crews saw over a dozen people get pulled over, mostly for distracted driving or not wearing a seat belt.
The operation happened in the state’s four largest cities at the same time: Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville.