Tremonton cops hope crosswalk 'sting' helps drivers see pedestrians

By Dave Archer

October 6, 2008 | TREMONTON -- The Tremonton Police Department is hoping that nearly 60 citations handed out over the past few months will be enough to help drivers remember to be aware of pedestrians crossing the street.

The department recently finished up their participation in the statewide program, focused on promoting awareness and safety for persons crossing the street. The department ran shifts on six different days throughout the summer, which resulted in 58 citations for failure to yield to a pedestrian, six non-pedestrian related citations, 26 warnings for various traffic violations and one arrest on an arrest warrant.

"It's more than I thought we would have, I was surprised at the number of people that we stopped," Tremonton Police Chief Dave Nance said. "They'd kind of pull up there and expect the pedestrians to stop for them, so yeah, it was more than I expected."

Nance said a number of people were upset after being handed a citation, but officers who participated in the shifts set cones up at the legal distance required for vehicles to stop for pedestrians, and never entered the street once a car had passed that point.

"Every time we did it and issued tickets, we had people that were upset," he said. "(But) there were a lot a lot of people that would come down the street and figured, where the guy stopped and looked at them, 'Ok, he sees me coming, so I'm going to keep going' rather than yielding."

Sgt. Kevin Allred, one of the officers who participated in the shifts, said he heard a similar response from many of the drivers that were pulled over.

"There were a lot of people that said, 'I didn't even see him,'" he said. "That's a scary thought."

According to Nance, the majority of the problem areas were on streets with speed limits above 25 mph, like the crosswalk on 300 East.

"It seemed the areas with the higher speed limit, where vehicles were traveling a little faster, we had a few more citations in those areas," he said. "If they were lower speeds, then people had more of a chance to stop. They were already going slow, so they go ahead and stop. But if it was a 40 mph zone, some people wouldn't even touch the brakes as we were coming out into the crosswalk."

Nance said he hopes the program will cause drivers to slow down and be aware of pedestrians waiting to cross the street before a major accident happens.

"I think it's brought some awareness," he said. "We still see a lot of fatalities and pedestrian accidents around the state. We've been pretty lucky up here, but we don't want to have one, either."

As far as future crackdowns are concerned, Nance said residents should be aware that police may be patrolling crosswalks at any time, and participation in a similar program in the future is likely.

"We're watching the school crosswalks pretty closely, we'll do that pretty continuously throughout the school year," he said. "Next summer, we probably will do some more enforcement."

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