CLEVELAND (WJW) — The FOX 8 I-Team captured state troopers and police carrying out a traffic blitz on one of the area’s busiest and most dangerous highways, and what they found is chilling.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol and Bratenahl Police ran a special operation this month on an 8-mile stretch of the Shoreway considered especially dangerous.
That area has started getting special enforcement, and we saw why.
The highway patrol clocked speeders from the air with troopers and officers chasing on the ground.
They stopped one motorcycle rider barreling through at 114 miles per hour.
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A trooper asked that rider, “Did you happen to look down at your motorcycle and see what speed you were at? At any point?”
The rider shook his head to indicate he had not.
The trooper then followed up with, “You were checked at 114 miles an hour.”
The crackdown is taking place on the Shoreway from East 55 in Cleveland to East 260 in Euclid. The area has become known for wrong-way drivers and deadly crashes, including a hit-and-run that killed a Cleveland firefighter as he worked at the scene of a crash.
In two hours, the traffic blitz resulted in 25 drivers ticketed for speeding. And, some also received citations for not wearing a seatbelt, driving with a suspended license and more.
We found another driver pulled over doing 97 miles per hour. A trooper asked how fast the driver thought he was going. The driver answered, “85.” The trooper reminded him the speed was even higher.
This traffic enforcement blitz happened as a sign showed only seven days had passed since the last serious crash in that section of the Shoreway.
Not too long ago, the Ohio Department of Transportation analyzed crashes on the Shoreway and found the majority happen during daylight hours with dry pavement.
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Sergeant Bridget Matt said, “Especially when it is nice. people just enjoy the weather, get in the zone”
Matt says, Monday, troopers in the air even caught three drivers all speeding near each other at once.
Records show, in the first full month of that area being called a Safety Corridor. Investigators, still, saw a fatal accident. And, the total number of crashes nearly matched the number of crashes for the same time period a year ago.
“This is something that’s going to be an ongoing initiative,” Matt said. “It’s not something that’s gonna come and go. It’s going to be here long-term.”
Investigators are not sure why that specific section of the Shoreway has become so dangerous, but they find a lot of drivers speeding, following too closely behind other vehicles, and not wearing seatbelts.
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