The Santa Maria Police Department announced on Oct. 12 that it was awarded another grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to improve traffic safety and increase driver and pedestrian awareness in the area.
It’s about the 10th year in a row that Santa Maria police have been awarded an Office of Traffic Safety grant, and this year’s $358,000 will be used to deploy a year-long traffic safety enforcement and education program, according to Traffic Bureau Supervisor Sgt. Duane Schneider.
“We rely on the grant,” Schneider said.
As in past years, Schneider said the grant will be used to promote safe roadway habits among community members, and attempt to deter residents from violating traffic laws.
The grant, which was made available Oct. 1 and lasts until September 2019, will fund DUI checkpoints and saturation patrols, increased policing at intersections with high rates of pedestrian and bike collisions, and improved speeding, red light, and stop sign violation enforcement. Areas with high rates of motorcycle riders and crashes will also likely see increased safety operations, according to the release.
The grant will also help fund the department’s youth and community traffic safety education presentations–which focus on distracted, impaired, and teen driving, and bicycle and pedestrian safety–and specialized training for officers on identifying and apprehending impaired drivers.
Although the department will be doing fewer DUI checkpoints this coming fiscal year, Schneider said police plan to double the number of traffic enforcement operations.
“We just have so many traffic issue in Santa Maria,” Schneider said, adding that locals often speed and fail to stop at four-way stop signs and lights. “So I felt it was important to double that.”
Although the department has used Office of Traffic Safety grants for many years, Schneider said it’s difficult to measure how truly successful those resulting operations have been in improving traffic safety. Vehicle-related deaths and injuries tend to fluctuate from year to year no matter what.
From fiscal year 2016-17 to 2017-18, Schneider said Santa Maria’s traffic fatalities rose by about 33 percent, and injuries by about 16.3 percent. Alcohol-related traffic deaths shot up by more than 100 percent–Schneider said a quadruple fatality played a large role in this year’s increases–but alcohol-related traffic injuries decreased by more than 30 percent.
Still, Schneider said the department made nearly 100 DUI arrests using last year’s grant money alone.
“So how many fatalities and injuries would there have been without that grant?” he asked.
This article appears in Oct 18-25, 2018.