As life slows, driving speed, alcohol use up, making Modesto-area roads less safe
Police traffic units around Stanislaus County are noticing a trend in dangerous driving behavior since the state’s stay-at-home order went into effect March 19. Drivers are speeding at much higher rates and, despite the closures of bars and dine-in restaurants, there are still plenty of drunk drivers.
Modesto police regularly conduct saturation patrols on weekends targeting drunk drivers. Typically officers will arrest one or two people, but right now “they are getting between three and five (DUIs) a night during six-hour saturation patrols,” said traffic Sgt. Lance Nicolai.
From March 20 to April 14, Ceres police have arrested 10 people for driving under the influence compared to three during the same period last year.
In Turlock, officers pulled over and arrested 22 people from Feb. 15 to April 14 compared to 16 during the same time last year. Those numbers don’t include DUI crashes, which decreased from 14 in 2019 to 12 during the same two-month period this year.
The California Highway Patrol has seen an overall decrease in DUI arrests in its jurisdiction but Officer Tom Olsen said, “We expected them to be lower.”
“That is the troubling thing; this is a time where we need to come together and do what is right and abide by the stay-at-home order but unfortunately people are still going out there and making bad decisions,” he said.
While there have been more DUI arrests in the county’s three largest cities, Nicolai doesn’t necessarily think there are more people driving drunk. Instead, they are easier to spot because “they are not watered down by all the other traffic” normally on the streets.
Nielsen research firm says alcohol sales up
The market research firm Nielsen reported alcohol sales increased 55 percent in the week ending March 21.
So it seems people are doing more drinking at home, but where are they going or coming from when they are out driving?
For starters, law enforcement is noticing more drunk driving during the daytime.
“It is not like happy hours stuff, they are sporadic throughout the day,” said CHP officer Jerry Gammon.
He said it is common for people to call 911 to report suspected drunk drivers. Dispatchers relay the vehicle information to officers to be on the lookout for those vehicles.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, those calls would usually start coming in around 7 or 8 p.m., after people got off work, went out for dinner and had a few too many drinks.
Now those calls are starting to come in around 2 p.m., Gammon said.
Modesto police made a 10 a.m. DUI arrest
Nicolai said Modesto traffic officers arrested a man on suspicion of DUI last week at 10 a.m.
A witness saw him drink several miniature bottles of vodka at a liquor store then drive to the Save Mart at Oakdale Road and Sylvan Avenue, where he nearly hit a pedestrian in the parking lot.
“He went into Save Mart and got a tri-tip sandwich,” Nicolai said. “He came back out and we got him.”
Early Monday afternoon, traffic officers pulled over a man going 72 mph in a 35 mph zone on McHenry Avenue and subsequently found he’d been drinking. The same thing happened Wednesday when officers pulled over a woman at noon going 40 mph in a 25 mph zone at noon and learned she’d been up all night drinking.
“We are doing our regular traffic operations during the day and getting DUIs,” Nicolai said. “That is not normal.”
Most common right now, officers are encountering people coming home after drinking at a friend’s or relative’s house or people going back out to buy more alcohol.
The latter appears to be what three men were doing Saturday night when the driver crashed on Ninth Street near Coldwell Avenue, killing himself and injuring his passengers.
Beer and vehicle parts were scattered for 830 feet along Ninth, Nicolai said.
“From where he hit (a raised concrete divider) and where (the vehicle) came to rest, was 790 feet,” he said. “A chunk of his rear drive line was 40 feet past that. He was flipping and rolling for 790 feet.”
Investigators are awaiting toxicology results from the driver but Nicolai said DUI will very likely be the primary collision factor with very high speeds as a contributing factor.
Drunk driving was the fifth most common cause of crashes in Modesto in 2019 and speed was No. 1, Nicolai said.
Like with the DUIs, there aren’t necessarily more people speeding, but it is more obvious when they do and the speeds are much higher than normal because there are far fewer vehicles in their way.
Uptick in speeds on Oakdale, Pelandale, Coffee
“We have been seeing a lot of high speeds,” Nicolai said. “Freeway speeds on Oakdale, 101 on Pelandale, 72 on Coffee; we are writing tickets for 50 and 55 on Ninth Street and G and H and D streets downtown.”
Some people tell officers they should be able to go faster when there is less traffic. Others say they didn’t realize how fast they were going.
“Generally when I stop them they don’t notice they are going that fast and it kind of makes sense because there is less traffic on the road so it feels like you’re going slower,” Gammon said.
On average lately, the tickets he is writing on Highway 99 are for speeds above 90 mph.
On Tuesday a man was pulled over for going 110 on I-5 near Stuhr Road.
“Because speeds are a lot higher, we are handling a lot more collisions with injuries,” Gammon said.
Speed was the primary factor in a two-vehicle collision in east Oakdale on March 26 that killed both drivers and tore one car in half.
Not only is speeding and drunk driving putting drivers and other motorists on the road at greater risk for injury or fatal crashes, they are increasing the chance of exposing themselves and first responders to COVID-19, Olsen said.
Even in a DUI arrest without a crash, the suspect might have to be taken to a hospital to have their blood drawn and/or be medically cleared before going to jail.
“We are putting our hands on them, we are putting them into our cars, we are taking them into jail facilities ... and we are tying up Emergency Department staff on someone who just made a bad decision,” Olsen said.
Police departments around the county want to remind everyone they are enforcing all laws, including traffic violations. In fact, traffic units have more time to focus on enforcement because they don’t have many of the same duties they otherwise would have like planning for events such as the Graffiti Parade for Modesto Police or education and outreach programs like Every 15 Minutes for the CHP.
“We are out there a lot and we are actively enforcing the vehicle code because speeds are higher and the crashes are getting more severe,” Nicolai said.
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 10:00 AM.
