The California Highway Patrol is stomping on the gas pedal in its efforts to combat speeding on state highways, announcing a federal grant to boost its efforts.
“Speeding and aggressive driving are ongoing challenges on California roadways,” reads a news release from CHP in Sacramento. “The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has been awarded $2.6 million in federal funding for the ‘Speed Prevention, Education, and Enforcement Deterrence’ (SPEED III) grant to implement safety measures to reduce dangerous driving behaviors statewide.”
Aggressive, speeding drivers, “are a significant danger to people traveling on California roads,” the CHP said. “In the federal fiscal year of 2022-2023, speed was a factor in approximately 39% of all fatal and injury crashes in California. During this period, there were 28,781 speed-related crashes, over 390 deaths, and 28,383 injuries to others.”
CHP Commissioner, Sean Duryee, said, “Securing this federal grant is a vital step in our commitment to making California’s roads safer for everyone. With these funds, we can implement targeted safety measures to reduce dangerous driving behaviors like speeding and aggressive driving, which put countless lives at risk.”
California drivers might expect a blitz of advertising or have their phones blow up with this campaign. The CHP, “will leverage these funds to enhance enforcement and public awareness campaigns statewide to decrease fatal and injury-related crashes associated with speeding, as well as lower the number of victims killed and injured in such incidents.”
Speeding in California appears to be a big problem getting worse with the high performance abilities of today’s vehicles. “From Jan. 1, 2023, to July 31, 2024,” the release said, “the CHP used federal funding to enhance speed enforcement on state routes with rising speed-related incidents. Officers issued over 30,508 citations for speeds over 100 mph and partnered with law enforcement agencies to post anti-speeding and aggressive driving messages on social media.”
Funding for the program comes from a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety via the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
