Published on Friday, December 23, 2005
in the Lakeland Ledger

A Warning for The Season

The Florida Highway Patrol will have a Christmas present for Polk County motorists this holiday weekend. A spokesman said the county's 37 troopers will have help from an additional 13 on patrol looking for drunken and aggressive drivers, speeders and other violators. The additional patrols will also be on the roads during New Year's weekend.

FHP spokesman Trooper Larry Coggins told the Orlando Sentinel that during the 2004 holiday season, 33 people died on Florida highways.

Some of those lives would have been saved if Florida had a mandatory seat belt law for motorists. The Legislature has refused to pass one, and instead opts to have "secondary enforcement status" for seat belts: law-enforcement officers must witness another traffic violation before issuing a ticket for failure to wear a seat belt.

Last year, the Legislature took a small step forward, requiring all passengers under the age of 18 to wear seat belts. Failure to do so is a primary violation.

So while the national average for seat-belt use is 82 percent of motorists, Florida's use last year was 73.9 percent because of the state's lax application of the seat belt law.

State Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, who has championed a stronger safety belt law, said the state isn't doing a very good job of promoting seat belt use or patrolling the state's highways. "We're not doing a good job on either part," Slosberg told The Palm Beach Post. "I keep pounding the table, but no one is listening."

As a result, while the number of motorists on Florida's highways has increased in the past several years, the number of FHP troopers has remained frozen in time.

There are just over 1,600 troopers working in Florida, a ratio of one trooper for every 1,000 residents. A recent report by the Council of State Governments and Eastern Kentucky University said Florida was one of three states with the fewest sworn state police officers. (The other two were Wisconsin and Georgia.)

Florida, said Slosberg, ranks 49th in spending in the nation on its highway patrol.

Properly funding law enforcement can have tremendous returns -- and for more than just safety on the highways. In 2002, the Florida Highway Patrol added 15 troopers to Pasco County in order to determine what would happen when a county was fully staffed in accordance with standards set by the Northwestern University Transportation Institute.

FHP Director Christopher A. Knight said the pilot project lowered the mileage death rate for the county. But there also was a 417 percent increase in drug arrests; a 68 percent increase in DUI arrests; a 150 percent increase in felony arrests; and a 300 percent increase in commercial motor vehicle citations. Citations for seat-belt violations, aggressive driving and speeding were all nearly doubled.

To bring the state up to the level of enforcement recommended by the Northwestern University Transportation Institute, Florida needs to add more than 500 additional troopers.

Hiring more FHP troopers would cost the state money, but pilot projects around the nation have demonstrated that the returns in safer highways -- along with other benefits -- far outweigh the costs.

And here's a change that would cost nothing, but would save an estimated 200 lives each year in Florida: Make not wearing a seat belt a primary violation so officers can hand out tickets for that offense alone.

If the Legislature refuses to take that step -- at no cost -- is there really any hope that Tallahassee will properly fund the Florida Highway Patrol?