Hands Across the Border coming to Dillard

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety joins the Rabun County Sheriff’s Office and Northeast Georgia Traffic Enforcement Network to honor Rabun County Detention Center employee Courtney Zajdowicz during the 31st annual Hands Across the Border Impaired Driving Education and Enforcement Campaign stop in Dillard on Tuesday, August 30, 2022, at 6pm at The Dillard House, which is located at 768 Franklin Street in Dillard.  Zajdowicz died last August when her pickup truck was hit head-on by a drunk driver.   After the meeting, state troopers and local law enforcement officers will then conduct sobriety checkpoints in the area, weather permitting.  Rabun County is one of seven areas where law enforcement officers in Georgia and neighboring states will be conducting sobriety checkpoints during the week-long Hands Across the Border campaign.   Hands Across the Border began in 1991 when troopers from the Georgia State Patrol and Florida Highway Patrol met at the Georgia I-95 Welcome Center for a ceremonial handshake as part of an effort by both agencies to reduce the number of drunk driving deaths in the Southeast Georgia and Northeast Florida area.  Within ten years, Hands Across the Border grew into a statewide drunk and drugged driving education and enforcement campaign involving Georgia and neighboring states.   According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 30% of the persons killed in crashes during the Labor Day holiday weekend in Georgia from 2016 to 2020 involved a drunk driver and 63% of those drunk driving crashes in Georgia during the Labor Day holiday weekend involved a driver whose Blood-Alcohol Concentration (BAC) level that was twice the legal limit of .08 in Georgia.  The number of persons killed in alcohol-related crashes in Georgia increased by 13% from 2020 to 2019, and alcohol is a factor in approximately one out of four traffic crashes in Georgia.