Fed up with reckless drivers
Complaints come in from all over the city about crashes, speeders
Justin Smith doesn’t drive — he doesn’t even own a car — but he is as alarmed as anyone by the reckless drivers in his Riverwest neighborhood.
“No matter the time of day, drivers regularly speed down my street around 40 to 50 mph,” said Smith, who lives in the 2700 block of North Booth Street.
“I wish I was exaggerating that speed, but I am not.” We asked readers to tell us about bad driving in Milwaukee, and dozens responded. We heard complaints from all over the city about drivers blowing through red lights, being involved in hit-and-run accidents and speeding through intersections with little regard for drivers or pedestrians. Readers told us they witnessed people passing illegally on the right, turning in front of buses and weaving in and out of traffic.
They are concerned for their children, and many believe that driving in Milwaukee is more dangerous than other cities they’ve lived in. They want stricter law enforcement — some advocated for the use of traffic cameras.
In short, they are fed up.
Reckless driving has become a top concern for residents throughout southeastern Wisconsin, according to law enforcement officials.
The heightened concern about bad driving has led the Milwaukee Police Department, Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputies and the State Highway Patrol to beef up patrols in areas of the city most affected, and a task force, led by Milwaukee Ald. Michael Murphy, to look for best practices to combat bad driving.
Cars often run a stop sign near where kids play
On Smith’s tree-lined street a block east of Center and Holton, homeowners were sitting on their porches one recent afternoon while children rode their bikes and two kids played with their puppy on their front porch. Down the block, a boy in a Chicago Bears jersey was tossing a football in the air as he walked to a friend’s house.
Just a block away, meantime, cars zipped along Center Street well above the posted speed limit. At the four-way stop at Hadley and Booth streets, cars did rolling stops or failed to stop at all.
“It just makes you angry,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of impatient people who don’t care.”
Smith has almost been hit, and he worries that it’s only a matter of time before one of the many children playing outside is hurt. “I’m trying to stop that from happening.”
Disregarding stop signs and speeding are the two most common violations Smith sees while walking his Black Mouth Cur to the dog park.
Smith, 33, was so fed up he sent an email to Milwaukee Ald. Milele Coggs recently to complain about how dangerous things had become in her district.
“I don’t really know what the answer is,” he said. “Maybe it’s speed bumps. I’m not really sure. I would like to see more police. I think that would be a way to change the behavior.”
When he moved from Chicago seven years ago, Smith was surprised to see how dependent people in Milwaukee were on their cars. He owned a car for about two months after moving to the city but ditched it for public transportation. Now, he walks or takes an Uber.
He doesn’t miss driving.
Uber driver: ‘The Autobahn’
Maggie McDaniel, 51, who also lives in the 2700 block of North Booth, said her 2011 Nissan Altima was struck by a hitand-run driver several years ago while parked in front of her house.
“I hardly ever park on the front now. I usually just park my new car in the back,” she said.
McDaniel, a special education teacher at Barack Obama School and an Uber driver, said she has watched Milwaukee’s driving habits deteriorate in recent years. There are parts of town she won’t go for an Uber pickup at night because of reckless driving. One such area: Capitol Drive. “That’s the Autobahn,” she said.
What needs to happen? Start with the basics, McDaniel said. Make sure everyone on the road is legally allowed to drive.
“It all starts with that. But you have to get them off the roads first, and then we have to address the kids stealing cars and crashing,” she said.
‘They know they can get away with it’
Murphy said the Carjacking and Reckless Driving Task Force is looking at three broad areas: Education, re-engineering roads and prevention. The group includes law enforcement officials, community members, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Maxine White, district attorneys, and youth council members.
One idea: using drones to monitor streets, although that worries people concerned about government surveillance. Engineering solutions might include pavement narrowing, radar speed signs, roundabouts, rumble strips, or centipede enforcement, in which traffic officers set up a few miles apart to stop drivers who think it’s safe to speed after they pass an officer.
Murphy would like more discussion of the Milwaukee Police Department’s chase policy, which has been the subject of debate for years.
The policy allows officers to chase vehicles linked to violent crime but they also are allowed to pursue cars tied to drug dealing or reckless driving. Police Chief Alfonso Morales said he has no plans to change the policy. Before the policy change in 2017, officers were allowed to chase a vehicle only if they had probable cause that it, or the people inside, was involved in a violent felony.
Car chases are among the most dangerous things police do. Nationwide, a person a day was killed in a police chase from 1979 through 2013, according to an analysis from the USA TODAY. In June 2018, Milwaukee Officer Charles Irvine Jr. died when the squad car in which he was a passenger crashed on the city’s northwest side while in pursuit of a reckless driver.
Members of the public often lobby for high-visibility enforcement. McDaniel, for one, would like to see that — and the installation of traffic cameras that automatically issue a ticket when someone speeds or runs a red light.
People who run lights and stop signs will change their behavior when they get a ticket mailed to them, she believes. “The follow-up, if they don’t pay is to take their license,” she said.
What we heard from other drivers
❚ Beth Davis, 52, of Glendale, said she doesn’t believe citations are enough to change bad driving behavior because people simply won’t pay the fines. Davis was involved in a hit-and-run accident on I-94 eastbound, when a driver collided with her on her driver side, accelerated and exited at the 35th Street exit. “He knew he hit me. I was scared but lucky that I could get over to the side. I knew there would be no consequences for the other driver, but I wanted to report it, so it would add to the statistics,” Davis said. She was lucky. She only suffered a sore shoulder from the accident. But she was out $250 for her deductible, lost a day of work and the cost of a rental car that her insurance company didn’t fully cover.
❚ Gregory Johnson, 71, of Milwaukee, a retired mail carrier, said he has seen a lot of bad driving over the years. Watching bad drivers run red lights and weave in and out of traffic is a common sight. “I really hate to see when they speed through construction zones because they put too many people’s lives in danger,” Johnson said.
A litany of reckless driving
Here are a few of the more serious accidents reported in recent days:
❚ A two-car crash at 3:15 a.m. Thursday sent one person to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, the Milwaukee Police Department said. The vehicles collided at the intersection of West Highland Avenue and North 24th Street. The other driver remained on the scene and was cooperating with the investigation.
❚ A high-speed chase ended in a three-car crash on North 58th Street and West Capitol Drive at 7:19 p.m. Friday, according to Brookfield police. A Brookfield officer spotted a stolen black Equinox in the 12700 block of West Capitol and attempted to make a stop. The SUV sped off. A chase ensued and the SUV crashed. The driver of the stolen SUV and a person in another car were taken to the hospital. The crash occurred just two blocks from where Milwaukee Police Officer Kou Her was killed in a hit-and-run crash at 60th Street and Capitol Drive last month.
❚ On Friday, Nathaniel Omar Johnson, 20, was charged for stealing a car from a Fox Point driveway at 1 a.m. June 24. Glendale police spotted Johnson in the stolen car on southbound I-43 near Good Hope Road. A chase ensued, and when the officers tried to stop Johnson the cars collided. Johnson got out of the car and ran but was found with the help of a police dog at the bank of the Milwaukee River. Johnson was convicted of operating a vehicle without the owner’s consent in July 2016.
❚ On Thursday, a 46-yearold man was cited for his ninth OWI after the car he was driving crashed into a concrete wall near I-41 North at Prospect Avenue in Winnebago County. He was transported to the Theda Clark Hospital in Neenah.
❚ One man was killed and two people were injured when a car ran a stop sign and hit a car at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Town of Cedarburg. Glenn Lewis, 56, later died. A 19-year-old driver, Adam Gertz, was cited for failing to stop at a stop sign and causing great bodily harm.
❚ A 45-year-old Racine man was killed at 3 a.m. Wednesday near Chicago Street and Spring Street in Racine after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. The man died at the scene.