CHP cites 40 drivers during pedestrian safety operation in Santa Cruz County

During a pedestrian safety operation on Wednesday California Highway Patrol cited 40 drivers, mostly who failed to yield to people crossing the street.

Officers chose three locations to set up their operation. A decoy officer would cross the street, while officers in patrol cars would wait for cars who did not stop for him. “During that time around 40 citation, most of which were for violating Pedestrian in right-of-way in a crosswalk. We identified several locations within the county that were based upon collision data as well as community feedback,” says Sgt. Grant Boles.

Operations were set up at Soquel Drive & Hardin Way, Soquel Drive and Robertson Street and Portola Drive and 36th Avenue.

This comes a few months after a woman was struck and killed by a speeding driver on Soquel Drive. Sgt Boles says, “we are going to be hitting it pretty hard while we are enforcing pedestrian violations simply because we have had an increase in fatality collision in Santa Cruz County as well as injury accidents.”

Boles says CHP wants to send a clear message to drivers, “the most common excuse we are hearing from people is I didn’t see them or I thought I had enough time to stop or I thought it was too dangerous to stop. It’s just a good reminder to people with all of the distractions your eyes really have to be on the road because there’s nothing there to protect the pedestrian.”

Kellen Rice who lives off of Soquel Drive says as a pedestrian you can’t count on anyone stopping for you, even if it’s the law. “The pedestrian walk areas can be a little sketchy. I think that most of the pedestrians kind of just go on the assumption that you really have to make sure that the people in traffic are seeing you and just time it out versus just stepping out.”

As for what the county can do, Jenna Keating says she thinks blinking crosswalk signs could go a long way, “I mean for me as a driver and I always seem to pay better attention when something is blinking, especially now that they have the crosswalk that have the blinking signs and it really grabs my attention.”

CHP just received a grant they plan on putting towards more operations like these, they say they plan on holding the operations monthly in hopes of making it safer for everyone.