It isn’t just young drivers who are involved in highway wrecks. In 2015, the average age of a person killed in a Hall County fatal crash was 54, according to authorities.

“That’s a demographic that traditionally we have just not looked at before,” said Lt. Bonner Burton of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office.

Last year, fatal crashes in Hall County were up 45 percent from 2014, more than double the statewide increase of 18 percent.

Burton said the “staggering number” has pushed the department to look at different ways to educate drivers on distracted driving and try to curb incidents.

One such example on the enforcement angle has been four-hour windows of increased patrol presence. Officers issued 47 citations on Interstate 985 in one such time span Feb. 7, with 45 of those citations considered under the “Super Speeder Law.”

“With that kind of number, you’ve got to expect to see us a little bit more,” Burton said.

The “Super Speeder Law” in Georgia is a driver “convicted of speeding at 75 (miles per hour) or more on a two-lane road or at 65 (miles per hour) and above on any road or highway,” according to the Department of Driver Services. Georgia DDS is then responsible for the administration and collection of the $200 fee.

At this point last year, Hall County authorities had documented seven fatalities. There have been four deaths so far in 2016, with one fatality in the last 60 days.

“We feel like our efforts are making an impact with drivers but we want to continue to stress that distracted driving is still a problem we have to focus on,” Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Nicole Bailes said.

Distracted driving, Burton said, is not just limited to cellphone usage but activity that prevents drivers from focusing on the road ahead.

“A lot of times for whatever the circumstances are, drivers are distracted and do not realize that they are speeding, resulting in the issuance of a speeding citation and not a distracted driving citation,” Bailes said.

Burton said the department is trying to hone in on older drivers as they learn how to curb these numbers. An outlet that more and more officers are looking to be certified in is CarFit, a senior educational program sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons and other groups.

“It’s specifically directed towards 50-and-older drivers, and it really is designed to help orient them to their specific car,” Burton said.

The focus is on drivers reaching the pedals, if they are sitting close enough to the steering wheel and whether they generally can operate the vehicle.

“I think we’ve got people that are buying technology in cars and they don’t necessarily totally understand what that technology really does for them,” Burton said.

In the city, Gainesville Police saw five fatalities last year on city roads. Three of the five were related to alcohol; only one was linked to alcohol in the county.

Burton praised the Hall County DUI Court, an accountability program through the court system in its 13th year.

“I hope that through that program that we’re reforming drivers,” Burton said.

Gainesville Police Sgt. Kevin Holbrook said 46 citations and an unspecified number of warnings were issued in the department’s first and only use of plain-clothes officers looking for and targeting distracted driving. Officers standing at the intersection of E.E. Butler and Jesse Jewell parkways held signs Jan. 26 indicating their search for distracted driving while uniformed patrol waited for the radio calls.

The majority of the citations centered around seat belt violations, while forms of distracted driving like cellphone use and child car seat violations also ranked high.

The Sheriff’s Office has posted areas of higher enforcement on its social media. January’s focus was on Candler Highway, Athens Highway and Poplar Springs Road, while February has centered on I-985.

Bailes said two accidents were reported on Athens Highway in January since the department’s efforts.

“We’ve plotted them and looked at that, and they’re pretty much spread all over. They cover the whole county,” Burton said of the crash data.

To step up education, Burton said traffic officers will write articles and send them out through social media to teach drivers about a specific safety topic. Past issues have included following too closely, handling four-way intersections and driving too fast for conditions, especially with winter weather and heavy rain in the past weeks.

“At one point, they were working five or six accidents just in the area of exit 8 (on Interstate 985), so that made me realize that we need to have a conversation about too fast for conditions,” Burton said of crashes Wednesday morning.

So far through the month of February, Holbrook said the department has seen 182 crashes.

“Typically when we’ve had a great deal of rainfall, we do tend to see higher traffic numbers for the month,” he said.

The point of the data that Burton said goes against prior conceptions is that only one juvenile driver was killed in 2015 fatal crashes. Burton said the number has continued to stay low over the past years in Hall County.

“I don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but it would certainly lend us to believe we’re having an effect on that,” Burton said.