Sheriff's Office To Set Up Checkpoints

The Stafford Sheriff’s Office next week will begin a year-long campaign to improve driver behavior in identified hot spots.

The first three enforcement details is will run back to back weeks at highly traveled areas:

• March 1 on Mountain View Road.

• March 8 on Courthouse Road.

• March 15 on River Road in southern Stafford.

The “Survive the Drive” campaign will include notices at the locations as well as public service announcements, said Bill Kennedy, sheriff’s office spokesman. Sign boards will be set up at targeted roadways with information about the looming enforcement details.

Such operations include:

• Directed patrols with enhanced enforcement at identified locations.

• Checking details, which are aimed at “removing unsafe vehicles and unlicensed drivers from the roadways.”

• DUI patrols and checkpoints.

• Enforcement waves, in which deputies saturate areas looking for speeders and other traffic violators.

• Neighborhood speed watch, where “traffic volunteers” watch for speeders in subdivisions; those seen speeding will be sent “administrative” letters from the sheriff’s office.

• Speed monitoring and awareness trailers, which are set up to notify drivers whether they are speeding and to collect data for analysis.

Such analysis is used to identify roadways that may need additional enforcement, according to Kennedy. The sheriff’s office also will use crash data, traffic counts, road design and information from citizen complaints to target roadways.

“The goal of Survive the Drive is to change driver behavior, not to give out tickets,” Sheriff Charles Jett said in a release.

The sheriff’s office program is funded by a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles grant. Kennedy did not have the figure on the amount of the grant’s total, which will cover the expenses of using additional deputies to handle the education and enforcement campaign. The DMV website has Stafford down for a $70,400 selective enforcement grant for 2011.