Speeding on La Center Road is not a smart move
In case you missed it, the La Center Police Department has greatly increased efforts the past couple of years to crack down on speeding, even expanding its patrol area to include a treacherous Northwest La Center Road that is known for its share of traffic fatalities. Their efforts have paid off as reporter Patty Hastings noted in a story last month with chief Marc Denney pointing out that there hasn’t been a fatality on that road in some time.
At the time the story ran, we had some data but not enough to map out the spots where police most frequently pull people over for speeding. We got that data later and this week, after some wrangling with addresses, we’ve put together this map showing the top 10 locations where police have cited people for speeding from 2010 to July 2013.
The red pushpins signify the biggest so-called speed traps and as you can see the police are indeed focused on slowing people down on La Center Road. Most of the infractions occurred in 2012 when police first ramped up efforts, and it does seem to be working because overall in La Center the number of citations are down this year. If we project this year’s citations out to the end of the year, there should be a total of about 233 speeding infractions, about a 40% drop from the 389 stops in 2012. To see some more numbers, check out our chart below.
John Hill
John is the web and photo editor at The Columbian, where he has worked since 1995 in various roles. A journalist for the past 25 years, he's a fan of good storytelling, data, graphics and still likes to read an actual newspaper. Twitter: @hilljohng