Untitled Document

Summit offers law enforcement officials
highway safety education, tools

Summit breakout sessions

• Teen Driver’s Panel
Mark Cowley, Bingham County Sheriff’s Office
Robert Massey, Lewiston Police Department
Eric Simunich, Boise Police Department
Andy Hitt, Idaho State Police

• Fighting the Battle Against Impaired Driving (2 sessions)
Chuck Hayes, International Chief of Police Association

• TOPS-Traffic Occupant Protection Strategies
Kyle Wills, Boise Police Department, Law Enforcement Liaison
Ted Piche, Lewiston Police Department, Law Enforcement Liaison

• Testifying in Court (2 sessions)
Jared Olson, Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor
Ted Piche, Lewiston Police Department, Law Enforcement Liaison

• Radar Refresher
Cameron Stanford, Madison County Sheriff’s Office, Law Enforcement Liaison
Chad Morgan, Bingham County Sheriff’s Office, Law Enforcement Liaison

• WebCars
Kelly Campbell and Steve Rich, ITD Office of Highway Operations and Safety Principal Analysts

• Black Box and Crash Reconstruction
Det. Thomas Potter, Salt Lake City Police Department, Accident Reconstructionist

Progress in the battle against impaired driving and initiatives to protect teenage drivers were among the many highway safety topics covered during the 2009 Highway Safety Summit held recently in Boise.

Nearly 200 law enforcement officers and highway safety professionals turned out for the annual event hosted by ITD’s Office of Highway Operations and Safety.

“Despite the reduction in traffic deaths recently, it is important to remember that each and every death leaves families forever changed,” said ITD Director Pamela Lowe in her welcome to summit participants. “When a family member dies, or receives serious or incapacitating injuries, the rest of the family struggles to pick up the pieces.”

“The purpose of the summit is to provide information to law enforcement officers and other highway safety partners to help them be more effective with efforts to reduce traffic deaths and injuries on Idaho’s roads,” said Highway Safety Manager Mary Hunter.

“Our traffic safety mission is to reduce traffic deaths, injuries and economic losses,” she told the group. “We want to keep families whole. We want to make sure that at the end of the day everyone arrives home safely.”

Lt. Carl McDonald, National Law Enforcement Initiative Manager from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), presented the organization’s campaign to eliminate drunk driving during his keynote speech. He is a 20-year veteran of the Wyoming State Highway Patrol.

The campaign supports high-visibility law enforcement, maximizing use of existing technology like ignition interlocks, encouraging voluntary manufacturer innovations that eventually would make vehicles inoperable by drunk drivers, and increasing public support for the elimination of drunk driving.

“High-visibility enforcement is not about arresting people, but raising the public expectation that one will be arrested,” McDonald said.

He added that ignition interlocks reduce recidivism by an average of 68 percent for repeat and first-time offenders.

Over the next 10 years, McDonald said he hopes to see motor vehicle manufacturers adopt advanced technology that allows a car or truck to independently evaluate the sobriety of the driver.

He said that for this kind of technology to be accepted it will need to be transparent to the sober driver, be set at the illegal Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) limit, and be reliable and accurate. The technology needs also to be reasonably priced, durable and unobtrusive.

McDonald’s 5-year-old daughter, Carlie, was killed by a drunk driver in 1998 near Green River, Wyo. Since then, he has spoken at victim impact panels and serves on the Wyoming Governor’s Council on Impaired Driving, as a member of MADD’s National Panel on Child Endangerment and on the board of the Wyoming Children’s Trust Fund.

Other morning speakers at the Safety Summit were Lynn Hightower, communications director for the Boise Police Department, and Jared Olson, Idaho Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor.

Hightower talked about media relations and told participants the public wants three things from law enforcement officers – trust, credibility and empathy.

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” she said.

Olson discussed recent court decisions affecting Idaho’s DUI laws.

Afternoon breakout sessions featured a variety of safety topics that summit participants could attend, including a popular session about teen drivers. Other sessions offered advice on testifying in court, tips for fighting the battle against impaired driving, traffic occupant protection strategies, an inside look at the WebCars system, a radar refresher, and a session on black box data and crash reconstruction.

Three Idaho law enforcement officers received OHOS’ new “Beyond the Traffic Stop” awards for work performed above and beyond the traffic stop.

Josh Kagarice, Idaho State Police Region 1
Dennis Clark, Jerome Police Department
Kipton Wills, Boise Police Department

“It’s going to take all of us working together to create a significant dent in reducing these preventable deaths. This can be achieved through education, enforcement and our partnerships,” said Hunter as she thanked participants for their efforts to reduce traffic deaths in their communities.