With the dramatic increase of fatal crashes in Allen County from 2020 to 2021, local law enforcement agencies say something needs to be done to curb those statistics. Holly Geaman has more about a new initiative to make motorists more aware.
It’s called the “Lima Service Initiative” between the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Lima Police Department. In 2021 there were 24 fatalities in the county with 4 of those within the city of Lima. The two agencies are working together to focus on those areas where crashes occurred.
Sgt. Aaron Rode from the Lima Police Department explains, “Be expecting to see more Lima police officers and more state troopers on your roadways and just remember we’re not out harassing you, we’re not out bugging you, we’re just out trying to get some police work done to try and hopefully reduce traffic collisions on the roadways.”
The Safety Review Team, through the Safe Community Coalition, gathers fatal crash statistics and categorizes them by date, time, location, road conditions, and more. This gives law enforcement a bigger picture of what to focus on and where to concentrate their officers.
Lt. Alec Coil Commander Lima Post, said, “Look at a particular area during a certain time frame for a few days of the month. Then we can be a lot more efficient, a lot more effective, and try to drive down the overall crash number, especially when it comes to injury crashes or especially the fatal crashes.”
By collecting this information, the Safety Review Team can also look at hardscape and education to see if there is something there that can assist in lowering the number of crashes.
Shaunna Basinger Public Outreach and Community Planner of Allen County Regional Planning Commission says, “Looks at every single fatal crash that happens in Allen County and looks at the specifics about what happens what are some we might be able to help prevent this in the future whether it be education on impaired driving and seatbelt usage. Or even is there is something in the infrastructure? Can we put up a guardrail, can we change the speed, how can we prevent this in the future?”
The Lima Service Initiative will start Memorial Day Weekend with increased officers on the roads to help keep you safe.
Sgt. Aaron Rode LPD says, “We run speed, we’ll do radar, lidar, check for stop signs, stop lights, any kind of traffic violations that we can get. Inevitably it will bring down traffic collisions.”
Lt Alec Coil Commander Lima Post adds, "You can pinpoint what days of the week, what days of the month, what times of the day that more crashes happen than the other times. And that allows us to put officers in those locations and then you can detour crashes from happening just by having an officer there."
