Personnel from law enforcement agencies throughout the County of San Mateo will provide staffing for the Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) funded Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) that will be focused in the Town of Atherton and the City of Menlo Park on Friday, September 12, 2014 from 8AM to 4PM.
The purpose of this enforcement is to increase traffic safety in problem areas and intersections through saturated enforcement utilizing the combined resources of traffic units assigned to the team. The focus of this deployment is distracted driving. This deployment will conduct distracted driving enforcement and education in both jurisdictions.
While the most common behaviors of distracted driving include talking on non-hands free cell phones and texting, other distracting driving actions are reading maps, books, and newspapers, eating, drinking, using computers, changing CD’s/radio stations, applying make-up, etc.
Essentially, anything that diverts a driver’s attention away from the primary tasks of navigating a vehicle can prove to have devastating consequences. The National Safety Council estimates 1.4 million traffic accidents occur annually due to distracted driving behaviors.
We are committed to seeing a decrease in the number of traffic collisions that are caused by distracted driving. This, however, can only be accomplished through the diligent awareness and cooperation of the public. We are working in conjunction to curtail the senseless loss of lives and injuries caused by distracted driving.
Funding for this program is from a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
