With the summer travel season hitting, PennDOT, along with partners from the Crime Victim Center, and the D.C.N.R., held a travel safety event for drivers at the I-90 Pennsylvania Welcome Center near the New York border. 

Drivers were able to take part in various interactive displays, from a driving/impaired driving simulator, to a table showing off various pelts of animals that drivers can see alongside the road this summer. 

"So things that we see annually that we continue to have enforcement campaigns and education efforts are impaired driving, people getting behind the wheel under the influence of drugs and alcohol," said Saxon Daugherty, PennDOT District 1 Safety Press Officer. 

"Distracted driving, whether that be cell phones, talking to other passengers, adjusting music, we'll see a lot of aggressive driving behaviors, speeding, tailgating, illegal passing, things like that. So there's a long list of of dangerous driving behaviors that we see on the road and our job is to grow and educate people ahead of time, you know why what they're doing is not safe and hopefully we'll reduce the crashes that we're seen."

Drivers passing through say it's a great way to re-familiarize themselves with road safety ahead of the travel season. 

"This guy is starting to drive," said Diane Johnson, referring to her grandson, who along with the rest of her family, she's travelling across the country with. "And I have several older [grandkids] and, you know, grandma is always worried. And so it's like OK this is a huge deal, I mean people die on the highways all the time. Either the drivers or the workers or whatever, so I love stuff like this to make them more aware of it."

But it's not just safety on the road that travellers should be aware of - it's also about safety when you're stopped at travel centers like the one on I-90.

Amy Blackman, Co-assistant Director and Director of Prevention Education at the Crime Victim Center, explains.

"Human trafficking is one of the things that people are aware of and people moving through the highways and through the travel centers and stations here," said Blackman. "But also just general things like scams and being aware of what sort of technology messages come to you through your phones or other technologies as you're traveling."

PennDOT's event also featured a memorial to those who lost their lives while working near traffic.

It's something that Adele Burnett-Giles, who lost her husband, firefighter Shawn Giles, to a roadside accident last August, appreciates. 

Now, she's raising awareness for distracted driving so that no one else meets the same fate. 

"We're very distracted, we're easily distracted," said Burnett-Giles. "It's the reminder, the making people, keeping it in their forefront of their mind, so that they remember to be careful, to pay attention, those kinds of things."