With 250 accidents, Carson City Sheriff’s Department cracks down on speeding

For this year as of June, the Carson City Sheriff’s Department has seen 250 automobile accidents, compared to the 200 that occurred at this time last year, so as a way to reduce this number deputies focused resources on pulling over speeding drivers Tuesday.

The Carson City Sheriff’s Department, in conjunction with the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department, conducted a speeding event as a part of their Joining Forces program. Joining Forces is a multi jurisdictional law enforcement program that promotes statewide enforcement with traffic issues such as impaired driving, speeding and pedestrian safety. This month was focused on speeding drivers because by a good majority of crashes have been caused from drivers speeding, said Sgt. Scott McDaniel.

The officers mainly focused on College Parkway, Goni Road, Arrowhead Drive, Carson Street and Highway 50 because those are their biggest problem areas for speeders. On Highway 50, the Carson City Sheriff’s Department patrolled to the county line where the Lyon officers then took over the patrol.

“Speed has been really picking up and we have been getting a lot of complaints,” McDaniel said. “Lyon has deputies on their side of 50 so that we are cooperating to get traffic to slow down on this corridor.”

Traffic enforcement has been increased on Highway 50 near Dump Hill because of the amount of head on crashes the officers had seen in previous years.

“The big part is to get people to slow down and reduce those crashes,” McDaniel said.

Tuesday, Carson had five deputies out specifically looking for traffic enforcement, and nearly every person pulled over for speeding got a ticket. The sheriff’s office doesn’t have funds specifically for traffic enforcement. Their officers double between taking calls for service and traffic, but with the Joining Forces events, they get money from the government to use officers just for traffic enforcement and that means they need to see an increased number of citations being given to show the officers are using the money as it’s intended.

McDaniel said the program is successful and often by the end of the day the amount of people speeding in the target areas start to slow down and deputies produce less citations. This is the third speeding program Carson City has done, and McDaniel said a decrease in speeding in the days after the event is seen.

“Once we hit a place people slow down and that’s what we want is people slowing down and watching the speed limit,” said McDaniel.