about traffic safety well how are you good how are you good so we're going to talk a little bit today about the traffic safety what are some of the different categories of traffic safety well traffic issues or there's a number of nodes aggressive driving there's distracted driving there's dui those are probably the best three categories because inside of those categories are all kinds of issues that people need to be aware of so what what is a driving everybody's experience to trust me if you drive on any of our roadways today people that are cutting in and out of traffic on a four lane road to get ahead of one car and you know they're constantly weaving in and out that and he just got impatient so impatient can be aggressive driving he just wasn't interested in waiting for that light to change he was in too much of a hurry and that's a category in itself people there are just too much of a hurry rolling stop signs and things like that is that unusual for them to do that in front of you we were in a more car ok but no no when you're not in there you know if you ever see traffic patterns change when you're driving in a police car like you see people slow down oh yeah if you're in a passing lane in a marked unit people actually get out of your way because they're concerned whether and you have to have your lights on and they may be concerned that you're trying to get through or that you might be looking at them so they want to get out of your way ok aggressive driving correct and how is that different than distracted driving oh distracted driving is a whole problem in itself it's anything that takes the driver's concentration from his driving to whatever else whether he drops a cell phone distracted by a conversation in the car looks back and to discuss something with someone in the back to be happy to get in your car when you've got your window open those are those would be distractions and so which one which you say is more of an issue you hear and hear sound or they both i think those two issues are probably responsible for the majority of our accidents but i would say distractors probably even  more responsive probably has a higher percentage of i should say access i should say crashes pendent now because of crashes accidents are preventable ok crashes should be what's the difference and i never understood it to be honest with you but they just change the terminology yeah ok so but most of our accidents are distracted driving results without talking on cell phone talking on cell phone texting on cell phones big issues big issues it amazing if you put distracted driving in a search engine on your computer the amount of data that comes up let alone some of the the video clips that come up talking about the problems associated with distracted driving what is going on as ground distracted driving and i know you know we hear sometimes about possibly laws about cell phones driving and there's a bill in right now that it's supposed to be prohibiting cell phone use while you're driving a car a lot of states writing and there is one in our legislature now so it's being considered because it is such a big problem in fact i mean just a sister to stick over six thousand deaths a year can be attributed to distracted driving and five hundred thousand injuries while you're distracted driving distracted driving along well do you see distracted driving being more of an issue with any like with teenagers for example or adults or about the same or anybody that's interested in wasting some of their time can stand on any highway or the curb on any highway and take a look and you'll find that it's everybody it doesn't matter what your age is it everybody want to blame kids for stuff like this but it's every age category that's capable of driving so distracted driving what about here piers township what have been some of the things that you've noticed have there been any i do have drivers who use handheld devices while driving are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to result in injury and distracted driving events have gone up from eight percent in two thousand and four to eleven percent in two thousand and eight so is it on the rise nationally yeah it is which makes a lot of sense to me i mean from what i see it i forget what the number is but i another thing i read on this topic the other day was like two hundred  seventy seven million people in this country have cell phones yeah so there's your rise i mean there's i think it's something like eighty nine percent of the population in the last few years so that means there's got to be a heck of a lot of people out there driving with cell phones right and then what about the headset people now use the headsets when they're the bluetooth well you know what it helps it probably reduces the distraction because you're not tying up your hands doing other things but it's still a distraction and there's there's again so much information out there i went to a web site national highway traffic safety site and there's actually and i'm not sure where that software hardware i was trying to determine that before i came here today but i couldn't reach anybody on phone in any of these companies but there's things out there called sow control dial to do drive safely corporation drive drive safe dot l y another site and they all have products that eliminate your ability to use your cell phone in your car that's the car starts in motion you can use it except for emergencies it will still allow you to do emergency calls like nine one one things like that how it works i don't know i just found this this morning and have it at a time to really investigate it but i thought if if parents were interested in trying to make sure their kids were safer while they're driving there are options out there for them to do that without relying on the individual to be responsible for themselves right what options are there for parents to make sure that parents have been and i agree with you there i agree and that's the one thing i mentioned to the some of my officers at the department is when you're research stuff like this it's always talking about teens and as i said earlier it's not just teens it's a dice of every age and we should all be looking at some way and some of the software or software hardware again i'm not sure will not only answer the calls for you in other words i'll ship them to save them for you but they'll read your text messages to you they'll read your e mails to you and there's one in here that will even let you talk back so you can send a reply while you're driving so it's like wow to and i thought that was kind of interesting you know there are options out there to make it safer but still some of these would still be considered a distraction because if you're listening you're not providing full concentration to what's going on in front of you right and that's part of the problem because if you're not you're traveling in that distance is what kills you because you're you're covering distance and then it's your reaction time and your reaction time eats up some more distance so if you're there's not enough distance between you and that person in front of you that reaction time is reduced because it's the distance is shorter right so you can't respond as effectively because your concentration is focused somewhere else right aggressive driving well as i said earlier aggressive driving involves speeding tailgating weaving in and out of traffic to to make up that extra minute to get somewhere quicker and i don't know if anybody's ever tried to really pa themselves and determine what they travel in that time frame you're still caught up traffic them out of what you do you not make any extra time the only thing you're doing is in danger and everybody on the highway but i did bring some statistics with me that we kind of  collect for aaa award that we provide for every year and i think there are surprising and i think they might actually shock some people but from two thousand and five august or september two thousand and five to august two thousand and six we wrote about seventeen hundred fifty nine tags out of that forty eight point six seven percent were for speeding violations wow and that's here and here and it's here in  thousand and six the same time period september two thousand and six to august of two thousand and seven right about thirteen hundred tags the percentage drop to about thirty two percent and then in two thousand  two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight i'm sorry we wrote about twenty two hundred tags three percent jump to ghent fifty two point four four percent were for speeding violations two thousand and eight to two thousand and nine thirty one hundred fifty tags percentage was fifty six point zero eight percent while here's the scary one for this year so far just the three months we've been into this year we've written twelve hundred seventy seven tags we're not counting april  january february march ok ok we should twelve hundred seventy seven traffic citations out of that seven hundred seventy or sixty nine point three percent were for speeding violations wow that's yeah and if we keep the pace we're going at right now with issuing tags will issue over five thousand tags this year which will be a first for us the max we are issues about thirty eight hundred so speeding is without a doubt a problem in our efforts don't seem to be stemming it at all are there certain areas were speeding is more prevalent certain roads well nineteen is one of the roads we concentrate on for speeding to some degree because there are grants out there the national highway traffic safety foundation recognizes aggressive driving is a serious problem throughout the country and based on that they you should grant monies to the states and then the states feed them down to the municipalities for enforcement one of those grants is an aggressive driving grant which we've been involved in now for i think three years and we get about thirteen thousand dollars a year to focus on specific highways were speeding is a problem and accidents it's a of trying to do two things at once hopefully reduce accidents and try and do something about the speeding and they run them in three month periods and we get about three thousand dollars for that three month period to actively go out and work those areas which is nineteen for us and some of the feeder roads like mcmurray used mcmurry west marine water dam valley brook to a certain degree and we've spent a lot of time and  t in those areas ok and are there issues with speeding in areas around children where the bus stops and some of those roads we get speeding complaints from just about every section of the community whether it's residential commercial or whatever we have a serious meeting problem and again everybody's in a big hurry to go nowhere because the kind of speeds they generate aren't really going to get them any quick there any quicker considering the types of roads we have in town right because basically a lot of our roads are old farm trails and they're really windy and highs and lows and bends and it makes it very dangerous because sometimes you can see the traffic coming at it till it's too late because of the and people are just travel too fast and it's really not getting what they want as getting there faster they're just not planning well right right so what are some of the dangers of speeding crashes yeah that's the biggest with both of these that's that's the  the number of crashes we get about one hundred thirty accidents a year so far this year we've had about forty if we keep that pace up will be about one hundred twenty which over the summer that rate usually goes up a little bit because there's more people on the highways with teens out of school and again i'm not blaming them for the accidents but time off and other things as just more people out there so what kind of education do you do for teens about the issues of driving safe driving not speeding driving we have one program called one hundred one i forget what it is but we do a program here at the high school we have officers that come in and  sit in on or go to the driver's ed programs or driver's ed programs themselves but it takes a lot more than that it takes place that individual who's behind that wheel being responsible for their behavior and everybody thinks this is a toy they're driving instead of a mechanism to get them from point a to point b hopefully safely right and they don't they don't take the responsibility for that behavior and they everybody wants to see how fast the car goes or how well it turns or corners and they're just putting too many other people at risk right and what about that we had a really bad winter this year yeah lots and lots of so and i said and did people take the weather into account and this year i would have to say yeah i think this storm this winter scared everybody and right i mean it rightfully so it was really a nasty time but we saw a great reduction in traffic on the highways for a while which was good because we had so many other issues to address right in the township that we didn't need the aggravation and that on top of all the other issues so i got to give people credit this past when they actually use their heads and stayed off the roads when it really got bad what about nighttime nighttimes a whole different ball game because you've got the darkness which adds to the problem especially if you're traveling fast because nobody judges distance well right i don't care who you are your distance between vehicles how far you are from an object those kind of things people don't do it well and at night it makes it even more difficult so again you have to concentrate if if you're not driving defensively you're driving aggressively right ok and by me driving defensively i mean constantly focusing on what you're doing and not your cell phone or talking to somebody in a car or whatever ok it's focused on that one primary function the national highway traffic safety foundation states that when you're driving just driving if you're totally concentrate on what you do your body is doing forty two things at once while so when you throw so phone in and take an appendage away you've got problems you've got a problem most of us don't think of it that way doing that many things that what you know that's what they say i don't know what they all are again i read that and just the other day and doing all this and i didn't have time to get a list of the forty two things and i'm not too sure we might all understand all that right right now but they say forty two things at one time it's important to know it's important to understand how serious driving is we take it for granted we do want to manically it might shock some people realize that gee i'm doing forty two things here and you figure your vision your hearing you know keeping tabs of what's around you being prepared for what's happening in front of you maintaining distances there's all kinds of things that's going on and we we just take that for granted because we get so comfortable driving and we lease tr and ok we're back we're here talking about traffic safety here today one of our character counts program so we've talked a lot a bit about distracted driving and aggressive driving but of course there are other people out on the roads besides the is that in the that's a problem there that's a real problem area for us and it should be of great concern to the parents because kids that go to that school there sidewalks in that area but if the parents whatever just sit over there dismissal time and see what those kids do and we try and have a car an area to discourage it but it doesn't always work out that way because we have so many other things to do but the kids will cross in the middle of the street they're running back and forth across the street they're using the sidewalks the sidewalks all taking the crosswalks we should be using because they will still be able to cross safely they don't do that they're anxious to get to one of the stores or you know in the complex over there and they just are not paying attention to the traffic that exists there we've actually had accidents there involving cars and pedestrians and we've talked to the school we've talked we brought the subject up before and it continues  it's sad we have so many walkers out of that school right because it is a real problem for us over there and it's a problem for them and they want to i'm guessing they want to run across the street to the different stores in the different places to eat they're cross the street first of all to maybe pick up a younger brother coming out of the elementary school right they'll come down on the sidewalk so far and then they want to cross back over i mean there's so many reasons why they see a friend there they're running back and forth across the street it's crazy yeah because there's so much traffic at that time of the day it's a real hazard right so even drivers who are paying close attention it can be a real problem the one accident we had involved a lady who i think was being very conscientious traveling very slow and it still resulted in a pedestrian car collision which is not good for anybody the kid was fine didn't get hurt seriously but it still happened right so even when you're cautious these are going to happen because the kids are darting in and out right and they need to stop and so what should parents do parents it's tough because they're not there at a time when you can tell your kids everything in the world how much they listen you they're you know it's not always the best the best result but they need to have discussions with their kids again their sidewalks in the area they should utilize those sidewalks they should utilize to cross walks they're going to provide them the most safety and crossing that street and the sidewalks are giving them an environment where they can walk safely they should encourage them to use it if they're driving through there and see their kids not they should take some action to make sure the child understands it's for their safety right and i would imagine now the weather getting nicer we're going to have more and more kids out and about well i was thinkin and from what i understand parents consent a note home with their child to say they can walk home with johnny or so is your ability whoever  are they're permitted to do so i would encourage them that if they want child to visit maybe they should take them there and let him take the bus home it's a lot safer for the child right now one of the other issues i know that parents have but i've heard parents complain about as kids walking at night and then not being able to see them because they're wearing dark clothing and for that hard to see we have a lot of issues with kids out at night and they may be wearing dark clothing for other reasons but if they're out  for their health and physical improvement they need to be wearing some kind of reflective clothing there are so many different types of clothing out there and it's reflective to boot that you can wear day or night and still provide something obviously visible to someone that's driving and make them aware of your presence and a reflective stuff is really good i mean it really when light hits it it blows back at you and if that doesn't bring you bring that person to the attention the driver then the drivers distracted right right and the results not going to be good right all right what about bikes we have a number of people that pedal through throughout the community and on the whole lot of them are safe but going back to your snowstorm the monday after that storm i was pulling in the lot there was a guy driving a bike up the street i couldn't believe i live there was someone that was dedicated right smart decision not too sure it was a smart decision but he was out there on his bike on the highway and people forget that bikes or bikes should be considered another vehicle on a work roadway and the kids when you're driving a bike have to realize that they're susceptible to the same laws that a car stop signs speeding as crazy as that sounds weaving in and out of traffic giving people the right away across walks they're responsible for those same laws so if someone is permitting a youth or someone to ride a bike on the roadway they need to understand what the rules of the road are right and a lot of them don't because they're not exposed to that yet because they're not driving age right so again the parents come into play and should be taken to child one they should let him on the highway to be honest with you but there are a lot of them that are on the highways and they don't understand the rules of the road are right now about motorcycles there are so many more motorcycles out there than they used to be if you talk to anybody in fact i was just talking to a friend of mine with the aggressive driving program and motorcycle fatalities are just going through the roof because people are looking for alternative means of travel that are much more cost effective right right and motorcycles provide that but in the same token a lot of these people may have never owned a motorcycle before or may have never been trained properly on a motorcycle and it results in some bad things there is a program that's offered by the state and you can enroll in this program and i think the cost is minimal if there's any and i'm not sure there is any my brother used to be an instructor for this program he was a motorcyclist and he actually took this program and the thing that impressed me the most about that program was my brother had been on a bike probably for fifteen years and he took this program and upon completion he came back and said i never knew that i didn't know how to ride a motorcycle and it impressed him so much he became an instructor that's how much value he put on that program and i think it's important for people to understand something like that because there was a guy that he had a record of a thousand of one runs and nobody's matched yet from what i understand from the make a wish foundation stuff like that so and he died on a bike well so even him being as well trained and skilled as he was right it still took his life right so there's a danger but people need to be trained right you can't just get on a two wheel machine and think you know what to do because it's a whole different operation environment right but we need to to wrap it up is there anything of any anything that you want to say a final word we talked briefly about the different things that parents could look at to avoid cell phone usage in their cars and that stuff can be found at the f c c web site and if they would enter just f c c distracted driving information clearinghouse into a search engine it would take them there and if a page down to about page three it'll provide them with a list of those things under industry and technology and i can forward the e mail address to the the group here and they can probably run that as a trailer somewhere on this program so the press could be advised of that so there are options it's whether people take advantage of them right right well thank you very much we really appreciate your time and thank you