Cops concentrate on corridors to improve traffic safety

Officers involved in the latest one-day “corridor enforcement project” on a stretch of eastern Iowa roadway wrote more than a thousand tickets. Mark Campbell in the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau says the goal’s not just to ruin a driver’s day, but to tackle trouble spots that show up on accident reports. They go through the Traffic Safety Data Service at the state D-O-T and collect reports to find patterns. Campbell says the one-day corridor enforcement programs involve state, county and municipal law-enforcement agencies. The goal is to cut down on the cost of wrecks that happen too often in the targeted areas.The data shows officers where the crashes happen and how often, and talk about a given area’s monetary loss. He says it’s also a cost to society, from insurance and hospitals to employers losing a worker and families that have to replace a car. Campbell says the cost figures come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The latest corridor enforcement project was along Highway 61 from Keokuk to Dubuque, and Campbell says they’re working to identify more target areas.