The Garden Grove Police Department held an operation the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 26, when a cadet wearing a reflective safety vest walked through a clearly marked crosswalk—only to have dozens of drivers keep right on trucking (and car-ing).
Cops issued 70 citations that afternoon. (The department invites all to view live streaming of the Accident Reduction Team operation on the city’s Facebook).
Just imagine if the boys and girls in blue had been set up a DUI checkpoint and all those motorists were toasted!
Which reminds me: The Santa Ana Police Department holds a DUI/drivers license checkpoint from 9:30 tonight through 2:30 a.m. Saturday in the area of 1500 E. McFadden Ave., where all vehicles that pass through will be checked for possible drunk and/or drugged drivers.
Meanwhile, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department steps up “Bike & Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operations” Saturday and Monday, “with focused enforcement on collision-causing factors involving motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists.”
Deputies mapped out locations from over the past three years where pedestrian and bike collisions have occurred along with the violations that led to those crashes. Extra officers will be on duty patrolling those areas in hopes of lowering deaths and injuries.
Besides keeping eyes peeled on motorists and bikers, deputies will look for pedestrians crossing streets illegally or failing to yield to drivers who have the right of way.
Locally, the sheriff’s department has investigated 759 fatal and injury collisions involving pedestrians and bicyclists during the past three three years.
Funding for the DUI and bicycle and pedestrian safety operations comes from 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.