Despite less traffic in the pandemic, Salinas PD expects similar collision figures to last year.

Since shelter-in-place started in March, thousands are working and studying from home in Monterey County. Streets and highways look less congested, but car crashes in Salinas continue as usual.

In 2019, there were 1,028 collisions reported in Salinas. This year, there were 703 reported through October. “The numbers overall are pretty much what we average on a yearly basis,” Salinas Police Department spokesperson Miguel Cabrera says.

Cabrera says educational outreach is challenging due to Covid-19, so SPD has turned to Facebook with safety reminders. In a Nov. 16 post, Traffic Sgt. Robert Hamson wrote excessive speeding has gone up since the start of SIP: “We are seeing changes in driving behavior, and the number of people traveling at excessive and extremely dangerous speeds is alarming.”

In the past month, SPD has received two grants from the California Office of Traffic Safety to support efforts to stop collisions. They got $100,000 for pedestrian and cyclist safety education, and $137,500 toward patrolling for DUI, meant to prevent deaths and injuries on the road.

Pre-pandemic, in February, the city of Salinas launched Vision Zero, an initiative to reduce and prevent collisions. Vision Zero policy is still in the planning stage. Using data from the past 10 years, officials identified intersections that are prone to crashes and have the highest fatalities and injury rates.

Once all data is collected, the Vision Zero team will prioritize high-risk areas. Then, they will implement an action plan, such as doing educational outreach, traffic enforcement or infrastructure improvements such as signage or traffic signals at each location.

Public input is also crucial, says city Traffic Engineer Andrew Easterling: “[They] are really the experts throughout the day-to-day, and might provide feedback that is not captured in the data.” People can provide public comment until Dec. 31 in an online survey or by emailing pubworks@ci.salinas.ca.us.