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Cuyahoga County Has Highest Crash Rates in Ohio
As Ohio’s most populous county, with a population of 1.3 million, it is no surprise that Cuyahoga County has one of the state’s highest crash rates. Funded by a grant from the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Governor’s Highway Safety Office (ODPS/GHSO) and led by University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, the Greater Cleveland Safe Communities Coalition is a cooperative effort of more than 200 community partner agencies and organizations—including law enforcement, prosecutors, local governments, health care personnel, educators, and other interested parties—that work together to achieve safer, healthier communities in Northeast Ohio and to reduce the costs associated with traffic-related injuries and fatalities.
While enforcement is a cornerstone of any traffic safety program, the state’s initial efforts to improve traffic safety in Cuyahoga County were hampered by a demographically and geographically diverse collection of police departments in 59 political subdivisions that largely worked in isolation. Since its founding in 2002, the Greater Cleveland Safe Communities Coalition’s Speed, Reckless & Aggressive Driving/DUI Reduction Task Force has been highly successful in forging partnerships and creating an unprecedented level of cooperation and camaraderie among the 45 member police departments. Where once there was little or no communication or cooperation between agencies, these 45 departments now readily share information, resources, and expertise and have been tremendously successful in planning and carrying out coordinated, countywide efforts to reduce DUI and aggressive driving and increase compliance with the state’s restraint laws.
In 2005, the Task Force was recognized by NHTSA as one of the best DUI deterrence programs in the country.
In 2007, for the third year in a row, the Task Force placed first in the multi-jurisdictional category of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s National Law Enforcement Challenge. Stopping dangerous or impaired driving involves more than just issuing citations, however—it also requires a judicial system that takes issues like restraint use and impaired driving seriously and holds violators accountable for their actions.
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