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Mary Wisniewski

‘Ghostrider’ efforts could prove useful to Chicago police

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It works in Michigan. What about here?

Going undercover may be one of the better ways to prevent unnecessary traffic fatalities, if we’re to believe a new program coming out of Michigan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, several police departments In Macomb County and Shelby Township have been conducting covert operations to crack down on distracted driving behavior. Among them is a program called Operation Ghostrider, and it’s paying dividends for cops struggling to clearly identify people breaking the law.

As the Journal reports, officers in Macomb County ride in unmarked cars while others roam busy streets disguised as panhandlers, a subversive but effective way to catch distracted drivers in the act of texting or even applying makeup while driving. Stats compiled by the Journal reveal that the Ghostrider op. is responsible for pulling over 140 drivers and issuing more than 100 citations since the start of the campaign. In two four-hour stretches, Shelby Township Police pulled over 93 drivers, all of which received traffic citations.

It’s not just working in Michigan, either. Another program in Tennessee sees officers ride in large buses, a tactic designed to provide a better vantage point when patrolling traffic. And while the buses are marked, the results have typically been the same.

Chicago might take a lesson from Michigan and Tennessee. It wasn’t long ago that Tribune columnist Mary Wisniewski detailed how distracted driving tickets fell precipitously in 2016, down to a few hundred from tens of thousands just a couple years ago. It seems Chicago’s problems stem from less manpower and more bureaucratic red tape.

Those are just two problems. But we’ll have bigger problems if we continue to ignore a deadly trend.

Over the last two years the country has seen a surge in motor-vehicle related fatalities, up six percent in 2015 and up 14 percent compared to 2014. Nearly every expert agrees: distracted driving is one, if not the, primary culprit.

There are differences between rural townships in Michigan and a city like Chicago. But whatever the differences, we can all agree that more needs to be done locally to prevent the city’s downward trend from spiraling further out of control. It doesn’t hurt to look at examples of things that’s proved successful elsewhere.

Distracted driving tickets took a dive in 2016

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From tens of thousands to hundreds

Distracted driving remains a low priority for the Chicago Police Department, a consequence of less manpower and changes to city ordinances, according to Tribune Transportation Columnist Mary Wisniewski.

Wisniewski made appearances on WGN Radio and WBEZ this morning to discuss the huge drop off in the number of citations being doled out by the CPD for things like texting while driving. In 2015, nearly 26,000 distracted driving tickets were written, compared to 46,000 in 2014. In 2016, the CPD wrote just 186 tickets.

“They’ve all but given up on enforcing this particular city ordinance,” Wisniewski said on WGN’s The John Williams Show, prompting host John Williams to ask why. Wisniewski explained:

In 2015, there was a change in the law that made police treat citations under the cell phone ordinance the same as other moving violations, which means that [officers] now have to go to traffic court and appear when the person who’s going up there with their ticket is appearing. [Officers] used to be able to not appear and the tickets could be upheld without them.

Wisniewski also pointed out that the CPD now employs fewer officers and that the department is placing stronger emphasis on other areas of law enforcement, like guns and gang violence. Still, she continued, the CPD hopes to make distracted driving a priority in the future.

The U.S. has experienced an influx of crashes over the last two years, including a 14 percent jump in auto-related fatalities nationally—the highest in almost half a century. Officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration attribute at least some of that to distracted driving.

The people who are experts on this said that people are very complacent about distracted driving. Everyone thinks they can do it safely. Everyone thinks, ‘well, I made it home okay, I must be a great driver.’

One of the ways that we can change that is through technology. One of things I brought up in my article is a technology that a company’s working on called a textalizer, which will be able to look at your phone’s operating system after you’ve been in a crash. You’ll be able to plug in your phone and see if you were just texting or on the phone.

Williams countered by saying that while a textalizer might be a good thing, it still wouldn’t prevent people from doing something bad in the first place, would it?

Do we need stronger penalties?

As we’ve outlined here on the blog, and as Wisniewski illustrated to Williams, the key to prevent distracted driving may be imposing stricter penalties to deter people from doing it at all.

Driving Under the Influence is considered a class A misdemeanor in Illinois for first and second-time offenders. Some instances qualify as a felony, which carries much stiffer penalties, including hefty fines and extended jail time.

Organizations like the Brain Injury Society go as far as to say that texting while driving is the equivalent of drinking four beers, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said that the two are similar as far as the level of distraction. As it stands, Chicago and other cities and states could benefit by qualifying the word “impairment” to cover a much broader scope of infractions. One hopes that doing so would effectively scare people straight.