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Published on Saturday, February 21, 2004
in the Palm Beach Post
En route to a news conference Friday to address the problem of deadly road debris, Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Pat Santangelo drove through a hail of newspapers, cardboard and other trash.
"This huge trailer truck was just spewing stuff," Santangelo said.
He stopped the trucker, who left a trail of garbage from Winter Park to suburban Delray Beach, made him secure his load and gave him a $47 ticket.
The stop illustrates all that is wrong with the way the state deals with road debris, said lawmakers who participated in the news conference.
Lax laws and a dearth of officers to enforce them contribute to accidents such as the one Tuesday on Interstate 95 just south of Linton Boulevard that left a Pompano Beach woman fighting for her life at Delray Medical Center. Claudia Avila, 43, was critically injured when a 34-pound steel plate crashed through her windshield.
A $47 fine isn't enough to persuade motorists to make sure a couch, ladder or piece of lumber is tied down before they pull out on the highway, said state Reps. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, and Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach.
Both vowed to push the legislature to increase the fine and to reclassify the offense so violators get points on their driver license.
But the lawmakers said an increased fine won't help if no one enforces it.
The Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Transportation say they constantly lose officers looking for better pay.
The patrol has 200 vacancies on its 1,775-member force, said spokesman Lt. Col. Ken Howes. In Palm Beach County, the 79-member force assigned to patrol I-95 has 13 vacancies.
The DOT vehicle compliance office also is short. "At any given time we might only have one officer in the county," said Lt. Terry Gartner, who oversees 10 officers in the five-county region including Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast.
Both lawmakers said they would push to get the agencies more money.
The patrol is asking for $3.39 million to make troopers' pay competitive, Howes said. A trooper with 12 years' experience makes $36,500 but would make $48,900 as a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy, he said.