April 15

Aurora Traffic Safety patrol catches 677 violations

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Beginning at approximately 7 a.m. and running through the rest of the day on Thursday, April 14, Seattle Police Department and Washington State Patrol officers conducted a major safe driving enforcement patrol along Aurora Ave N.

Over the course of the day patrol officers tracked a total of 677 violations, wrote up 509 citations, clocked 331 speeders and doled out 198 warnings to drivers, according to the SPD Blotter. These numbers include 62 people caught driving while talking on their cell phones, 80 driving without insurance, 23 without a license, and a total of six who were arrested and charged with DUIs. Here’s the breakdown of violations, and subsequent tickets, for the day:

Tickets issued for the following violations:

Aggressive driving – 19
DUI Arrest – 6
Negligent Driving – 2
High speed – 66 in a 40 MPH zone
Cell phone – 62
No insurance – 80
No Operators License – 23
FTY to Pedestrians – 1
FTY Right of Way – 2
Unsafe Lane Change – 21
Follow to close – 2
School zone – 8
School zone (speed van) – 42
Bicycle – 2
Inattention – 2
Defective Equipment – 8
Illegal turns – 16
Signs Obey – 15
No seatbelt – 30
Vehicle License – 5

While SPD did dish out quite a lot of tickets along Aurora yesterday, officers say the primary aim of the patrol was safety. “The overall goal of the Aurora Avenue emphasis patrol is to promote safe driving behavior, not necessarily to write tickets. Tickets are however, a product of traffic law enforcement,” SPD said in a statement.

Some readers disagree however. Ben commented on our previous story about the patrol, saying, “One has to wonder how stupid the police think the public is. Maybe I’m giving the police too much credit but I can’t believe for a second that they honestly believe this has any long term effect. It’s just an excuse to hand out gobs of tickets. After three days of non-police-marshal-law on Aurora things will business as usual.”

QA Res responded, “If they want to make Aurora safer they should focus their safety efforts on what’s happening outside of the car on Aurora.”

What do you think? Did the patrol help remind the public to drive safely along Aurora, which has an extremely high collision incident rate, or was it just an excuse for officers to hand out more tickets in a shorter amount of time? What do you think SPD and the city could do to make Aurora safer?


Tags

Aurora Ave N, Aurora Traffic Safety Patrol, driving citations, driving violations, safe driving, SPD, SPD blotter, tickets, violations


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