Grant to fund traffic safety in South Tahoe
The South Lake Tahoe Police Department has been awarded a $33,200 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety for a year-long program aimed to improve traffic safety.
The grant will assist in efforts to deal with traffic safety problems and to reduce the number of people killed and injured in traffic collisions. While traffic deaths from all causes declined by nearly 39 percent between 2006 and 2010 in California, they rose by 2.6 percent in 2011. State and federal officials anticipate that figures will show another rise for 2012.
DUI deaths remain the largest sector, at nearly 30 percent of traffic fatalities. Recent trends show increases in two new categories – distracted driving and drug-impaired driving.
Activities the grant will fund include:
· Specialized DUI and drugged driving training such as standardized field sobriety testing, advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement, and drug recognition evaluator.
· DUI saturation patrols.
· Motorcycle safety enforcement.
· Distracted driving enforcement.
· Seat belt and child safety seat enforcement.
· Speed, red light and stop sign enforcement.
· Pedestrian safety.
If you calculate the $33,000 at a fully loaded cost per hour for a police department employee, this works out to about 500 hours for the year or 42 hours per month. If you spread it out over the 7 agendas identified above it works out to about 1.4 hours per agenda per week.
It’s better than nothing but it is your State taxes being redistributed back to the City at a very low rate.