A warning to speeders in the Southeast this week: slow down.

Speeding motorists are being targeted by law enforcement in five southeastern states during a weeklong initiative to reduce traffic fatalities.

"Operation Southern Shield" started Monday, and local law enforcement in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee will be on high alert, looking for speeders and distracted drivers through the week.

“We will focus on particular roads during the week, such as I-20 from Florence, South Carolina, to the Mississippi line; I-75 from the Kentucky/Tennessee border all the way down to south Florida (and) I-95 from Virginia down to the Miami, Florida, area,” Harris Blackwood, director of Georgia Governor’s Office for Highway Safety, said at a news conference in Atlanta on Monday. Local police and sheriffs offices in other states “share our concerns and want to bring down the number of fatalities we’ve had in this region.”

The number of traffic fatalities in Georgia nearly doubled from 2012 to 2015. Last year, 1,561 people were killed on Georgia roads. As of Tuesday, the state’s traffic fatality county for 2017 was 796.

This story was originally published July 18, 2017 at 6:08 PM with the headline "A warning to speeders in the Southeast this week: slow down.."