A bit of advice for motorists from the state’s top traffic cop: Don’t follow big rigs too closely and don’t cut them off — and not just because there’s a crackdown coming.
Colorado State Patrol Chief Jim Wolfinbarger said troopers will start ticketing motorists driving passenger vehicles unsafely around trucks on Interstates 25 and 70 in and around Denver as part of the campaign Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks, or TACT.
The aim of the campaign, announced Wednesday, is to reduce crashes involving automobiles and big rigs.
It’s the first high-visibility traffic-enforcement campaign to concentrate solely on passenger vehicles driving aggressively around commercial vehicles, Wolfinbarger said.
In Colorado last year, 31 people died and 161 were injured in car-truck collisions. The accidents were the fault of the drivers of cars 56 percent of the time, he said, and 78 percent of the fatalities were occupants of the passenger vehicles.
Speeding, following too closely and making unsafe lane changes were blamed for 52 percent of all commercial-vehicle-involved crashes from 2007 to 2009, according to State Patrol crash and enforcement data.
“We’ve all seen where people (driving cars) make bad decisions. They drive too fast. They follow too close,” Wolfinbarger said. “Pay attention.”
He said passenger-vehicle drivers can best avoid accidents and injuries by staying visible, not tailgating trucks, not speeding and wearing a safety belt.
Wolfinbarger also advised motorists to avoid cutting sharply in front of a truck. He said the maneuver reduces a truck’s “much-needed braking distance” and restricts the driver from taking evasive action to prevent a collision.
Bill Copley, state program manager for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said that 10 years ago a goal was set to trim the number of fatalities due to commercial-truck accidents by this September. He said that goal has been met. The goal was 0.16 fatalities per million miles traveled. By the end of fiscal 2008, the rate was 0.152 per million miles.
That achievement has saved an estimated 500 lives, Copley said.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
You’d better look out
Colorado State Patrol officers and police from Westminster and Denver will be on the lookout for people driving dangerously around big trucks on Interstates 25 and 70 on July 19-23, Aug. 23-27 and Sept. 20-24.
