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The Ohio Department of Transportation wants increased traffic enforcement on Interstate 75 between Piqua and Sidney because of too many accidents in highway work zones.
ODOT said Thursday that it’s working with the Ohio Department of Public Safety and the Ohio State Highway Patrol on the effort. It said that extra patrols are part of the state’s Work Zone Enforcement Program. The program “allows for increased patrols in critical work zones on Ohio interstates.”
ODOT said it requested extra funding for the patrols after numerous crashes in that work zone that were a result of speed and improper lane changes. The increased patrols should help lower accident rates, ODOT said.
“Our crash rates have gone down significantly with the program, in addition to overall speed,” ODOT District 7 Transportation Engineer Josh Bowman said. “The funding has to be solely utilized for officers to patrol and provide strict enforcement in the work zone, so basically in lieu of an officer having to cover 20 miles of I-75, they would only cover the work zone for the entire shift,” said Bowman.
The posted speed in highway work zones around Dayton is 45 mph.
ODOT said that work zones are analyzed each year to determine which qualify for the increased enforcement.
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