Dec. 27, 2018 — Statesman.com — Traffic citations issued by Austin police took a notable dip this year compared with 2017, a drop that seems to fit a downward trend in the past few years, police data show.
The exact reasons for the decrease are unclear, but police believe several factors could have contributed, including changes in a law enforcement grant that required officers to issue citations, the temporary removal of hundreds of police vehicles from patrol for repairs and a lower rate of crashes in the city. Police wrote about 68,300 citations from January through November, 30 percent fewer than in the same period in 2017, according to data from the Austin Municipal Court.
The number of citations decreased steadily through the past four years, though not as sharply as in the past 12 months. Citations dropped 13.1 percent from 2015 to 2016 and 10.9 percent from 2016 to 2017. Several things happened in the past two years that might have caused the latest dip, but “you can’t put your finger on just one thing,” said Austin police Cmdr. Eric Miesse, who oversees highway enforcement.
The state’s Selective Traffic Enforcement Program grant, which previously required Austin police officers working certain overtime shifts to stop and cite someone once every 20 minutes, eliminated the citation requirement last year and now only asks officers to stop someone once every 20 minutes, Miesse said. As a result, he said, traffic warnings went up while citations went down.
Another possible reason for the decrease, Miesse said, was that Austin police took a third of their vehicles off the streets in the summer of 2017 when carbon monoxide leaks in some Ford Interceptor SUVs sent some officers to the hospital. Instead of each officer having his or her own vehicle, as they usually do, traffic enforcement officers were traveling in pairs while the defective vehicles were inspected and repaired. All cars were fixed and back on the road earlier this year, police said.
In addition, so-called reportable crashes — those in which police report more than $100,000 worth of damage, someone is in pain or the car has to be towed — were down 4 percent this year, Miesse said.
Traffic deaths are also down in Austin in 2018. They reached a peak in 2015 with 102 deaths — or 11.3 deaths per 100,000 people — slightly surpassing the national rate. That number dropped to about 8 per 100,000 people in both 2016 and 2017. This year, 71 people have died on Austin’s roads, making the year-to-date rate 7.3 deaths per 100,000.
In 2016, the city launched a program to address the record level of traffic fatalities. The Vision Zero Action Plan pushed for more no-refusal periods, during which Austin police officers can more easily obtain intoxication test results from anyone they suspect to be driving under the influence. It also has tried to promote better driver behavior by increasing marketing campaigns on TV, radio and highway signs, officials have said.
