The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
$25,000 grant will help police curb distracted driving
MIDDLETOWN — The city police department was awarded a $25,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation for its efforts to lessen distracted driving in the area.
The Common Council unanimously voted to accept the money during its meeting Monday night. The point of the grant is to fund an extra focus on distracted driving in order to reduce fatalities and injuries caused especially by the use of hand-held devices.
The DOT looked at a number of factors before determining which departments in the state would receive a grant, including statistics on traffic volume and crash rate per population. Officer Peter Botsacos, part of the department’s traffic division, said the problem is not limited to Middletown.
“I think it’s needed all over the state. It’s not just our area,” Botsacos said at the meeting.
He said there are a few potential ways the money can be spent. More officers may be hired, or existing
officers may be sent out on extra patrols. He said the heightened attention to this issue will be organized into two waves: one to take place in the next few weeks, and the other in the spring.
Police Lt. Brain Hubbs provided more details on what these additional efforts will look like. “They alternate between surveillance-based enforcement, and patrolling the area in a cruiser looking for violations,” he said.
Officers working these shifts are required to track their activity and report it so that updated traffic stats can then be sent to the DOT, he added.
Connecticut laws against distracted driving state that “no person shall engage in any activity not related to the actual operation of a motor vehicle that interferes with its safe operation on a highway.” While this encompasses a number of activities, Hubbs said the focus will be on cellphones and texting.
According to AAA, distracted driving kills an average of nine people and injures over 1,000 every day in the United States.
Botsacos explained that statistics are hard to obtain, because motorists who cause an accident often lie about why they were distracted.
This is the second year in a row that Middletown were selected as a recipient of the grant. Botsacos said that last year the department used the same approach with a fall and spring wave of extra surveillance.
During those two efforts in 2020, a total of 459 motor vehicle stops were conducted, he said. “This year we’re hoping to do the same.”
Not all of these stops resulted in an arrest or citation because the main goal is making sure drivers are aware of the law, Botsacos said. “We weren’t just out there trying to enforce and issue tickets. We were trying to educate the public.”
This particular grant is 100 percent reimbursable with no overall financial impact on the city.