If stats from Saturday's kick-off of a month-long enforcement initiative to raise safety awareness on a deadly stretch of Route 539 in Ocean County are any indication, the campaign is working.

Route 539 initiative
Photo credit: Ocean County Prosecutor's Office
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Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, released figures from September 15, 2015 based on vehicles pulled over by law enforcement officers on the municipal, county and state levels.

A total of 146 stops were made in Little Egg Harbor, Barnegat, Plumsted, Manchester, Lacey and Stafford Townships. Of those stops, 89 summonses were issued.

"That's a tremendous number of contacts, and hopefully with each one of those contacts, they were able to do something to change driving behavior so that people operate safer," said Della Fave.

46 vehicles were stopped for speeding, resulting in 10 summonses being issued.

"We've had a number of other moving-type violations, which would be unsafe lane changes, stop signs, those type of infractions that individuals were stopped for," Della Fave said.

Failure to wear a seat belt was another big infraction, with a dozen tickets issued to people who weren't buckled up.

"A lot of the issues are head-on crashes. If you're not belted in and you're involved in a head-on crash, you have almost zero chance of surviving," cautioned Della Fave.

There has been eleven fatalities on Route 539 since 2013.

Della Fave reiterated a warning that just because police patrols aren't visible doesn't mean they are not patrolling Route 539.

"On Facebook we had one comment that an individual drove 8 miles or ten miles and didn't see a patrol. Well, a big aspect of the initiative is also to have undercover vehicles out there being the eyes of the initiative," he said.

More proof that the safety initiative is working and people are passionate about the issue: positive feedback on social media, according to Della Fave.

"On our Facebook page we posted at the start of the initiative and thought we'd maybe in the typical heavy response get maybe 5,000 people who will check in on the post. Over 90,000 people clicked on the post," Della Fave said. He also noted the post was shared nearly 1,000 times.

"That type of response helps us tremendously, in terms of raising awareness that people need to drive responsibly," Della Fave added.

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