JANESVILLE, Wis. — Janesville police are setting new goals for public safety in a place that affects just about everyone. Newly released this week, the department’s annual report highlighted a trend of increasing danger on the road.
From 2020 to 2021, the department saw a 19% jump in reported crashes, an increase of 23% in injury crashes, and a 16% increase in hit and runs. However, total crashes were still below the department’s five-year average. There were also nine crashes where people died in Janesville, which is nearly triple the department’s five-year average of 3.4.
“From an enforcement perspective, I mean, those are all things that we can have an impact on,” said Janesville Police Chief David Moore. “We have our officers out there working on speeding vehicles, seatbelts, we make probably more than our share of OWI arrests. So we’re addressing those issues because we know they are causes of crashes.”
Looking to limit crashes is something Janesville’s neighbor to the north is familiar with. The city of Madison launched its “Vision Zero” initiative two years ago. Since then, speed limit reductions, improved biking and walking paths, and community engagement efforts have all worked to create safer roadways, cutting traffic-related deaths and severe injuries in madison by 40%.
There’s another traffic matter that links Madison and Janesville: stolen cars. From 2020 to 2021, Janesville saw a 46% increase in vehicle theft. In the same timeframe, Madison reported an increase of 12%.
they’re varying degrees of change but concerning trends regardless, as Janesville’s chief said the comparison between his city and Madison is valuable in helping pave the way to a safer tomorrow.
“We push our officers to always be looking not just within our own community, but let’s look out regionally and what’s going on and what are we doing about it here in Janesville,” Chief Moore said. “We assess these things and make sure that we’re doing the right things here for our citizens.”
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
