The Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) has received a nearly $100,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) to further the department’s mission of reducing deaths and injuries on Beverly Hills roads.
According to data compiled by OTS, traffic fatalities in California decreased 5% from 2018 to 2019, from 3,798 to 3,606. Over the same time period, the state saw alcohol-impaired driving fatalities go down by 4.5%. Pedestrian fatalities remained mostly unchanged from 2018 to 2019, decreasing by less than one percent, but bicycle fatalities decreased 19.5%.
Though COVID-19 radically reduced traffic in 2020, preliminary data reported by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation indicated that 238 people died in collisions last year–down from 246 in 2019. Put in other terms, even with significantly less driving–by as much as 70% at the peak of sheltering at home–cars still killed roughly the same number of people.
The funds will go towards supporting a variety of traffic safety programs that try and curb unsafe driving behavior and promote safer alternatives, including: patrols with emphasis on alcohol and drug-impaired driving prevention; patrols with emphasis on awareness and education of California’s hands-free cell phone law; patrols with emphasis on education of traffic rights for bicyclists and pedestrians; patrols with emphasis on awareness and education of primary causes of crashes: excess speed, failure to yield, failure to stop at stop signs/signals, improper turning/lane changes; and community education presentations on traffic safety issues such as distracted driving, DUI, speed, bicycle and pedestrian safety.
