The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has a busy Friday set for keeping bicyclists and pedestrians safe and everyone safe from DUI drivers—followed by a Monday dedicated to motorcycle safety.
Deputies from the DUI Enforcement Team blanket streets of Lake Forest and Mission Viejo that are known for drunken driving arrests, crashes and fatalities from 7 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday.
Also today, the OCSD has “Bike & Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operations” set up throughout the county, the deputies announced in a separate advisory. “The department has mapped out locations where pedestrian and bike collisions have occurred over the last three years, along with the violations that led to those crashes,” it reads. “Extra deputies will be on duty patrolling areas where bike and pedestrian traffic and crashes occur in an effort to lower deaths and injuries.”
Deputies will be looking for violations made by drivers, bike riders and pedestrians alike “that can lead to life-changing injuries,” the OCSD adds. “Special attention will be directed toward drivers speeding, making illegal turns, failing to stop for signs and signals, failing to yield to pedestrians in cross walks or any other dangerous violation.”
Monday’s operation follows the same criteria, only what will be targeted are dangerous motorcyclists and those in other vehicles that are dangerous to motorcyclists.
“Motorcycle fatalities in California jumped by more than 28 percent from a decade low of 352 in 2010. In 2013, 453 motorcyclists lost their lives, marking the highest number of fatalities in a five-year period,” the OCSD states in a third release. “California collision data shows the primary causes of motorcycle-involved crashes include speeding, unsafe turning and impairment due to alcohol and other drugs by riders and drivers alike.”
The anti-DUI, bicycle, pedestrian and motorcycle operations are funded by California Office of Traffic Safety grants, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.