AnonymousSource: Santa Barbara Police Department
A new statewide initiative encourages drivers to “slow the fast down” and understand the dangers of speeding.
The Santa Barbara Police Department supports efforts by the California Office of Traffic Safety to address an emerging traffic safety issue: speeding.
“We are seeing changes in driving behavior, and the number of people traveling at excessive and extremely dangerous speeds is alarming,” Santa Barbara Police Sergeant Michael Brown said. “COVID-19 puts the value of protecting lives in perspective, and practicing safe driving is one simple way everyone can keep themselves and others safe.”
“Through education about shared responsibility and behavior changes, we hope to create an environment that is safe and equitable for all road users in our community,” Sergeant Brown added. Shared responsibility is a key component of the City of Santa Barbara’s Vision Zero strategy, which aims to eliminate all serious and fatal collisions from City Streets. Education and enforcement actions are an integral part of the four-pronged approach to Vision Zero, which focuses resources on Evaluation, Education, Enforcement and Engineering to prevent traffic-related serious injury or death in our City.
Excessive speeding went way up during the beginning of stay-at-home orders in March. Between March 19 and April 30, CHP officers issued 4,000 citations for speeding over 100 miles per hour, more than double (113%) from last year despite a steep decline in traffic volume. Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 31 of this year, CHP officers issued 4,851 citations for speeding in excess of 100 miles per hour, a 93% increase when compared to the same period last year.
“The road is not a racetrack,” Sgt. Brown said. “The freeway is not the Autobahn. Follow a safe, legal speed.”
Speeding remains one of the main causes of crashes: in federal fiscal year 2017-18, speed was a factor in approximately 31% of all fatal and injury crashes in California.
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Good luck getting people to slow down. Maybe set up speed cameras on the sides of the roads and highways to photograph them and issue tickets if you want to make an impact on that one.
This article references the autobahn as if it’s a bad thing. The autobahn is safer than our freeways despite much of it having no speed limit. There are many reasons for that, providing a great opportunity for us to improve highway safety. For one thing, the autobahn is built to a higher standard than our freeways. We should embark on a nationwide infrastructure project to expand and improve our freeways. There is no reason our country cannot have the best freeways in the world. This would provide a much needed stimulus to our economy, reduce traffic congestion and travel time, and perhaps most importantly it would save lives. Another important factor in autobahn safety is lane discipline. While we obsess over speed limits, the Germans obsess over lane discipline and orderly traffic flow. We need to add a dollar amount to all those “slower traffic keep right” signs along our freeways. Instead of having clumps of traffic, vast empty spaces in between, and frustrated drivers weaving through the lanes to pass, we could achieve a safer and more efficient traffic flow by enforcing lane discipline. If you drive slowly in the left lane, you are breaking the law and contributing to causing traffic accidents. I believe that by improving our freeways and re-allocating the resources dedicated to speed enforcement to to lane discipline, we could improve safety and simultaneously reduce congestion and travel time.
Chip, you’re spot on. I was in France recently, and they also practice lane discipline. Everyone drives on the right lanes, only using the left lanes to pass. It’s a pleasure to drive in many parts of Europe because they are very good drivers.
Chip, I don’t know how old you are, but think back to the way the freeways worked when you first started driving. Then think of the congestion that was occurring right before the pandemic when the 101 was slowing to a crawl in both directions during the afternoon commute. Then think of the 101 in 20 yrs with additional population. Do you really think you can build your way out of that mess?
The simple solution to this problem would be to build a world class rail system with double tracks and grade separated crossings all across this nation. 1) You could help the environment and climate change by using that system to transport goods intercity, and 2) It is much more efficient at moving large numbers of people to their destination. I’d never drive to LA and sit in traffic for hours again if I had any chance of reliably getting there on a train. But this can’t happen with our current 3rd world rail system.
Either we are going to get serious about climate change, or we are going to be buried in our electric hummers. What a coffin that will be.
Public transportation is filthy. Particularly in the age of COVID, being cooped up with a bunch of strangers, unable to social distance and breathing recycled air for long periods of time seems like a terrible idea. There’s a high probability that another new virus is just around the corner, so I think all future plans should keep this in mind.
They all know better!
I couldn’t agree more Pitmix (goodness..that sounds weird to say)! What we need is more regional rail lines and options! Instead of adding another lane on the freeway, we need another train track. And no, not the bullet train from LA to SF. Just good consistent options for regional travel. Locally, we need a run that goes consistently and conveniently from Camarillo to SB/Goleta (sure the 5am option is nice…but it’s just impractical for huge swaths of travelers/workers).
It’s a great point. Living on the Pass for most of my life I would say that the slow/clueless drivers are as big of a problem as the fast drivers. Start giving tickets for people going dangerously slow.
The train idea is a little harder to do with most West Coast cities compared to the stack and packed East Coast. Most commuters would need two cars to make the rail work on our sprawling cities. One to drive to the station and after the train ride one to drive to the final destination. Besides how’s California’s over due, over budget rail to nowhere and Hawaii’s own version doing?
Chip could not be more correct. Lane discipline is for some reason not used in California. Other states have just as much traffic and move it along speedily and at generally higher speeds than we do with just two lanes due to left-lane-passing-only laws, enforcement, and adherence. People who drive 65 in the fast lane, or 60 in the middle… or when people pace the car in the lane next to them, making it impossible to pass should be held responsible for creating unsafe driving conditions and traffic. If you’re not passing, move over!
What helps the autobahn system work well is that they have adaptive speed limits. They actively monitor traffic, and broadcast real-time settings to speed limit signs suspended over the lanes, slowing traffic before it comes to a screeching, accident causing halt up ahead. The automatic ticketing systems there and on the autostrada in Italy are great.
Sail, who are the biggest employers in SB? Cottage and UCSB, right? If they ran shuttle services from their local stations, wouldn’t that save a bunch of gas, pollution, and stress? CSF, if we are looking forward to a future of never-ending pandemics, the human race is doomed anyway. Gotta plan for a future where vaccines protect us and we need to help our environment.