State police will nearly triple their overnight manpower on Route 24 and Interstate 195 beginning tomorrow in hopes of abating a surge of carnage on the highways that has claimed the lives of young and old alike.
And while there’s no denying the Route 24 straightaway linking Greater Boston to Fall River and beyond is a siren call for lead foots, state police Superintendent Col. Timothy P. Alben said today road and traffic conditions have little to do with the problem.
“This is about impaired and inattentive people behind the wheel. For the most part it’s (driver) indifference, and it’s convenience and it’s bad habits,” Alben told the Herald following a press conference at the Route 24 north service plaza in Bridgewater to roll out the enhanced-patrol plan.
Alben said 11 patrol cars will complement the six already on the road between 8 p.m. Fridays and 4 a.m. Saturdays, and from 8 p.m. Saturdays until 4 a.m. Sundays from now through September. The estimated $125,000 in trooper overtime will be paid from the department’s operating budget, spokesman David Procopio said.
Between January 2011 and today, police said there have been 16 major crashes on Route 24 and Interstate 195, 11 of them fatal and five resulting in serious bodily injury. Among the victims this month alone, 12-year-old cheerleader Angel Pina of Norton, who was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown from a pickup truck when a tire blew July 12 on Route 24.
Lisa Banat, 19, of Mansfield and John LaChapelle, 44, of Tiverton, R.I., both died in a wrong-way collision July 15 on Route 24 that police blamed on Banat’s confusion.
Alben, who was commander of field services before his promotion this month to top cop, said when he used to update his troops on accidents, “Sometimes it was like reading casualty reports from the battlefield. They’re all horrific, and you know there are broken hearts all over the state come Monday morning.
“Look,” he said, “we could a put a hundred troopers out here on patrol, but if people aren’t going to put the cellphone down … And what happened to the designated driver message? Seat belts? We’re seeing people ejected out doors, sunroofs, windows … It’s unnecessary.”
Since January 2011, Alben said troopers from the barracks in Middleboro and North Dartmouth have made 714 arrests for drunken driving on the two highways. A full 31 percent of the crashes were blamed on boozing motorists, followed by speed, marked lanes violations and failure to yield at 19 percent each and wrong-way drivers at 7 percent.
Road defects and mechanical malfunction were the least contributing factors to accidents, he said.