After a busy week dealing with the attention focused on the
newly opened portion of Hwy. 101 from Morgan Hill to San Jose,
California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers will be increasing their
vigilance in another area of highway safety over the holiday
weekend.
After a busy week dealing with the attention focused on the newly opened portion of Hwy. 101 from Morgan Hill to San Jose, California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers will be increasing their vigilance in another area of highway safety over the holiday weekend.
An enforcement campaign targeting safety belt violators is expected to save lives over the Memorial Day weekend.
The CHP will maintain four to nine extra officers on duty throughout the weekend as part of the accident-reduction effort and the raising of the terrorism alert nationwide to orange.
According to the American Automobile Association of Northern California, nearly 1 million Bay Area residents will travel more than 50 miles from their homes during the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend, with 80 percent of those using automobiles as their transportation.
In South Valley, weekend events such as the Mushroom Mardi Gras – coupled with the use of local highways by thousands of Bay Area residents flocking to the Central Coast and the Santa Cruz Mountains – is predicted to create slow travel conditions, according the California Highway Patrol.
“We’ll have plenty of officers out there monitoring the situation,” said Terry Mayes, CHP spokesperson. “We expect a lot of traffic this weekend like always on Memorial Day, and with a holiday weekend drinking and driving is always an issue.”
All available officers will be on the road during the holiday’s maximum enforcement period (MEP), which begins at 6 p.m. today and extends through midnight Monday, May 26.
“Our top priority over the long weekend will be safety belt enforcement,” said Capt. Davies, commander of the CHP’s local office. “We’re telling people, ‘Remember. Or be remembered.’ The more motorists we can convince to buckle up, the more lives will be saved.”
Of the 2,764 vehicle occupants killed in California during 2001 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), 1,268 were not wearing a safety belt, Davies said.
Memorial Day weekend 2002 saw 40 people die in vehicle crashes statewide, Davies said.
He urged motorists to buckle up even if they are taking a short trip or the safety belt feels confining.
“Most safety belt violators aren’t scofflaws,” said Davies. “They’re dads making a last-minute grocery run or churchgoers who don’t want to rumple their Sunday clothes.”
The CHP’s $1.5 million safety belt campaign, which will be featured during May and June on billboards, radio and television, targets this segment of the public. The messages include, “Wearing a windshield. Now that’s uncomfortable,” and “The store is just down the street. So’s the jerk running the red light.”
California’s safety belt compliance rate is slightly more than 91 percent, which is among the highest in the nation.
“Even at this high compliance rate, hundreds of deaths could be prevented if motorists used their safety belts,” Davies said.
The Memorial Day MEP is also an Operation CARE (Combined Accident Reduction Effort) holiday. Operation CARE is a joint program of the nation’s highway patrols that places special safety emphasis on interstate highways during holiday periods. CARE highways in California include Interstates 80, 40, 15 (San Bernadino to the Nevado border) and 5 (Bakersfield north to the Oregon line).
Local CHP officers have been focused on the extra lanes on Hwy. 101 and have been inundated with requests from media for ride-alongs and pictures of officers ticketing speeders since the lanes opened Monday.
In both directions, the highway now has three regular traffic lanes and one carpool lane from Morgan Hill to San Jose. Already motorists are enjoying the greater ease of flow, in some cases too much.
The CHP has authorized 500 overtime hours to cover the HOV, or high occupancy vehicle lanes, during this time. Since the southbound lanes opened weeks ago, officers have issued numerous speeding tickets in the 80 to 90 mph range, officers said.
“Once you get to Cochrane Road you’re lucky to find anyone driving under 85 mph from what I can tell,” Gilroy resident and Apple employee Harold Sontag said.
Sontag is one of thousands of motorists who will benefit when a next phase of the Highway 101 improvement project is completed. Sontag uses Highway 85 to get into Cupertino. That freeway and Highway 101 will have their carpool lanes linked by summer 2004.
Currently, carpoolers heading from northbound 101 to northbound 85 must cut across mixed-use lanes to get into a carpool lane on the 85.
