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City Receives Grant to Boost Traffic Safety

 

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By Lookout Staff

November 15, 2024 -- The Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) has received a $300,000 grant from the State to help reduce a rising number of serious injuries and deaths on the city's roads, officials announced this week.

The grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) will help pay for ongoing enforcement and education programs that include DUI checkpoints, distracted driving enforcement operations and community presentations.

The grant will help reduce dangerous driving behaviors and prevent crashes "by increasing enforcement of traffic laws and focusing on high-risk areas," police officials said.

The measures include holding DUI checkpoints to stop suspected impaired drivers and staging "high-visibility" enforcement operations that target drivers who violate the State's hands-free cell phone law.

They also include enforcement operations that focus on the main causes of crashes -- speeding, failing to yield, running stop signs and red-lights and improperly turning or changing lanes.

In addition, the grant will help fund officer training and community presentations on "traffic safety issues such as distracted driving, impaired driving, speeding and bicycle and pedestrian safety."

The grant comes as fatal and severe injury crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians in Santa Monica have increased in each of the past three years ("Rising Number of Pedestrians, Cyclists Killed or Seriously Injured in Santa Monica," August 12, 2024).

Last year, 39 people were severely injured or killed in local traffic accidents, the highest number since 43 were reported in 2019 and the second highest since at least 2010, the first year counts were provided, according to the City's Department of Transportation.

In 2023, pedestrians were involved in 16 severe injury crashes and five fatal crashes, while six bicyclists were severely injured and one was killed. One motorist was killed in a car-only crash, while three severe injury crashes involved scooters.

In addition to the ongoing enforcement and education programs, the City Council recently approved an ordinance that sets lower speed limits on 47 stretches of boulevards and major cross streets and near schools during school days ("New Speed Limits Pave Way for Cars, Scooters to Share Some Roads," September 4, 2024).

The City also has engaged in a sweeping re-design of streets that includes the award-winning Safe Streets project near the 17th Street Expo line ("City Wins Award for Safe Streets Project," November 12, 2024).

The City is now gearing up to construct the "Bergamot Area Improvements" that will include adding protected bike lanes, improved lighting, street resurfacing and a new crosswalk.

On November 5, voters overwhelmingly approved Measure K, which will boost public safety spending, including initiatives to make streets safer, by imposing an 8 percent tax hike on private parking lots.

The new tax is expected to generate approximately $6.7 million a year to, among other things, create safe routes to school to protect children and lower the risk of traffic accidents that result and serious injuries and deaths.


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