State troopers say they’re stopping a lot more speeders after instructions from top brass

SALT LAKE CITY – It wasn’t just a lot of tough talk.  State troopers say they’re pulling over a lot more people now that they’ve been told to crack down on drivers going just over the limit, especially in bad weather.

Thursday morning, KSL 5’s Jed Boal did a ride-along with UHP Trooper AJ Nelson.  By 11 a.m., Nelson had already pulled over a dozen drivers, and wrote tickets for most of them.  Nelson says, most of the drivers he pulled over are people that he wouldn’t have cited in the past, since he was mainly focused on spotting drivers going roughly 10 miles over the limit.

Nelson says pulling drivers over gets people talking.

“There’s a ripple effect.  They’ll be like, ‘That jerk cop pulled me over for five over.’  Then, their friends are going to think, ‘OK,’” Nelson says.

The vast majority of people Nelson stopped had read the news that troopers were instructed to crack down on speeders.

He says, “I hope we’re not scaring them into it.  I hope they read the article and learned about it, but, if it is scaring them into it, I’m glad they’re slowing down.”

Troopers won’t always give tickets.  Lieutenant Danny Allen says they may just let speeders off with a warning.  However, he says they’ll do whatever they need to do to ensure they don’t see the kinds of traffic problems we had during the last storm.

Allen says, “If you’re going over 70 in the Salt Lake Valley, we’re going to stop you and we’re going to have a little chat.”

Allen says their main goal is just to convince drivers to slow down.

“Whether it’s a snowy road, or debris in the road, or a deer jumps out in front of you, the slower you go, the more time you’re going to have to react,” Allen says.