Law enforcement leaders are embarking on a project that is proven to decrease traffic crashes.
They hope that by focusing community attention on a 30-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 101, fewer people will be injured or killed in vehicle collisions.
“Obviously, what’s happened since the first of the year on the Peninsula shows how big of a problem this is,” Jim Borte, project coordinator of the Clallam County DUI Task Force, said Thursday.
Fifteen people have been killed on North Olympic Peninsula roads since Jan. 1.
But those deaths aren’t what’s driving the proposed Corridor Safety Project, coordinated by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.
Instead, it’s based in part on a state Department of Transportation analysis of data from 2000 to 2002 showing more than half of “societal costs” from collisions on Highway 101 occurred in the stretch from Clallam County’s eastern border to the western city limit of Port Angeles.
$1 million cost estimated
Societal costs estimate each fatality at about $1 million, taking into account everything from loss of life and the cost of investigating the death to the fee for repainting roads or replacing guardrails, Borte said.
Washington State Patrol Lt. Clint Casebolt, assistant commander of the patrol’s District 8 that includes the Peninsula, approached DOT and the Traffic Safety Commission earlier this year and found that the stretch of U.S. 101 qualified for the corridor project, Borte said.
Around the state, other corridor projects have decreased crashes by as much as 30 percent, Borte said.
“We hope that we can do better than that,” he said.
“We’ve had a rough year so far.”