STAY ALERT TONIGHT

PAY ATTENTION.

Inattentiveness usually causes the majority of traffic accidents in the area over the holidays.

This year has been no exception. In Cape Girardeau and Scott counties, eight people have been killed in crashes since the weekend before Christmas. Most of the accidents can be blamed on a driver not paying attention.

""We had a real bad weekend on the 20th," said Tim Meyer, communications director for the Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop E headquarters.

"The majority of our accidents are one-vehicle accidents, inattentiveness for whatever reason."

Troop E reported 16 fatal accidents in the zone in December. The majority of those accidents occurred on county roads instead of Interstate 55.

The Cape Girardeau Police Department has handled one fatal accident this holiday season, but overall the number of accidents in the city is down slightly from the same time last year.

"Beginning 5 o'clock Christmas Eve and running through midnight Sunday, we didn't have a single injury accident," Cape Girardeau Police Sgt. J.R. Davis said. "We've been hitting it pretty hard trying to make sure we're good and visible."

Eighteen traffic accidents were reported during that time period, all of them entailing some property damage. Last year, 21 accidents were reported over the Christmas holiday, one of them resulting in two injuries.

Last New Year's Eve, Cape Girardeau police worked six accidents. Seven people were injured in those crashes. Five of those accidents were caused by inattentiveness of some kind, Davis said, and only one was alcohol related.

"We'll have additional officers out there looking just for drunk drivers," Davis said. "Hopefully that will reduce our accidents and keep our drinkers off the streets."

Statewide, 70 traffic accidents were worked by the highway patrol from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day, and 36 of those produced injuries.

The 16 fatal accidents reported by Troop E in December is second only to the 21 reported by Troop C in St. Louis. So far this year, 13 people have been killed on Scott County roads and nine in Cape Girardeau County traffic accidents, according to Lt. Ron Beck, assistant director of the highway patrol public information department.

"We were down by 12 up until weekend before last, when we had those 18 people killed on a three-day period in Missouri. That just took the total and skyrocketed it," Beck said of the total number of people killed this year on Missouri roads. "We're up considerably, like 16 over last year and all within the last week and a half."

Beck said the fatal accidents had no single definitive cause. Three of the 18 killed that weekend were wearing seat belts.

"We've got all kinds of different circumstances where people were just running off the road," he said. "Losing control on a curve, flipping over, being ejected, rolled over on by their vehicle or killed while they were ejected. There was no set pattern, they were just doing everything.

"Inattentiveness is the number one cause of crashes in the state of Missouri," he said.

Beck doesn't know what kind of impact this year's higher speed limits will have on the number of fatal accidents in the state. In 1993 the highway patrol recorded 949 fatalities in Missouri accidents. In 1994 that number was 1,089 and in 1995 it was 1,109.

"We've had an increase in fatalities for the last three years under the old speed limit," he said. "We don't know what's going to happen by the end of this year but it looks like its up by about 16 and we've got a couple days to go.

"That's kind of scary."

The highway patrol and the Cape Girardeau Police Department don't have plans to establish random sobriety-check road blocks tonight. Both departments are increasing the number of officers they'll have working the roads.

Two additional Cape Girardeau units will be patrolling the streets looking specifically for drunk drivers.

"Our experience has been on New Year's Eves past we actually make less arrests for DWIs," said Sgt. Carl Kinnison, a spokesman for the Cape Girardeau Police Department. "I think primarily because so many people are thinking in terms of designated drivers and making sure they get from one place to another safely.

"There is a tremendous amount of awareness about drinking and driving, especially on New Year's Eve."