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Published on Friday, February 27, 2004
in the Fort Myers News-Press
The Florida Highway Patrol had hundreds of cars and a handful of airplanes and motorcycles monitoring the state’s highways Thursday to stop aggressive drivers in response to growing concerns over road rage.
The effort, which will continue today, will put more patrol cars on the road than any other time in the history of the Florida Highway Patrol, said Lt. Pat Santangelo.
The agency started the program, dubbed “Operation Safe Ride,” after receiving regular complaints about aggressive and angry drivers weaving in and out of lanes, tailgating and speeding, particularly in urban areas.
FHP plans to use 1,500 marked cars, 300 unmarked cars, video cameras, radar and airplanes to track irresponsible drivers on all Florida interstates, Florida’s Turnpike and other major state roads.
In Lee and Collier counties, troopers patrolled Interstate 75 with marked and unmarked cars, looking for aggressive drivers and signs of road rage. Passing in the emergency lane and flashing high-beam headlights were other no-nos troopers in Southwest Florida honed in on.
“We field so many letters and e-mails about aggressive driving,” said FHP Sgt. Dwayne Cooper, who is based in Fort Myers. “We receive at least 10 a day.
“We have to go up there (on the interstate) and affect what’s going on. If they see us, it can be a deterrent.”
But FHP troopers in Lee and Collier counties handed out only about 20 citations in Operation Safe Ride on Thursday, FHP officials said, because troopers had to leave the patrol at various times to work non-related traffic crashes.
“It was kind of a vicious circle,” Cooper said.
Law enforcement officials hope the two-day effort alerts drivers before the roads become crowded next month with families and college students on spring break and motorcyclists in town for Daytona’s Bike Week. March typically has more deaths and auto accidents than any other month in Florida. The program will continue, to a lesser extent, throughout the year.
“In response to all the complaints, we just wanted to focus on those individuals who drive carelessly and who make our roads more dangerous,” said Lt. Bill Leeper.
Last year, aggressive drivers received 6,643 citations, up slightly from the year before. Leeper said judges often will issue higher fines or require an aggressive-driving course for offenders.
Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, said the two-day effort only begins to solve the growing problem of aggressive drivers.
“It’s all over I-95. It’s all over the Turnpike. It’s prevalent everywhere,” said Slosberg, the vice chairman for the House highway safety committee. “This is just two days and after that, everyone’s going to forget it.”
Slosberg said low salaries for Florida Highway Patrol troopers keep too many jobs unfilled and lead to too much turnover. He said 22 percent of graduates from the FHP academy have left the agency in the last two years, possibly to South Florida sheriff’s offices that pay 20 percent to 40 percent more.