Wine Country Times

The County of Sonoma’s Department of Transportation and Public Works (TPW) announced that they are working on improving safety measures in the community, by the name of “W2F!” or “Way 2 FAST!” as well as “Slow Down Sonoma County.”

The new safety measures are part of an overall education campaign which endeavors to improve the awareness of issues such as distracted, impaired and aggressive drivers and the impacts that these factors can have on others. 

Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Board of Supervisors of TPW, said that the new campaign is a much-needed initiative. 

“Combined with efforts in traffic engineering and our partnership with law enforcement, we hope residents take notice and take care to safeguard themselves and one another when traveling our roads,” Hopkins said. 

Over 200 speed zones have been recertified by TPW since January 2005 and over 80 new speed zones have been put into place by the Board of Supervisors last January to help enforce adherence to speed limits. 

The new campaign will help support Sonoma County’s Vision Zero Program. The goal of Vision Zero is to reduce fatalities and serious injuries to zero.

According to Sonoma County Transportation Authority, the Vision Zero program has received a grant of $660,000 to help improve those odds. The program has developed a data dashboard to exhibit the patterns in crash data as well as to give context for what is causing or influencing crashes. 

Among the dashboard’s findings are an overall rise in crashes of the severe category for the last decade, higher risk for pedestrians and bicyclists, intoxicated drivers being the largest cause of fatalities and greater severity in nighttime crashes. 

With more information, the Sonoma County officials will be better able to address the concerns for drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and other travelers.

Over 7,900 speeding tickets were issued in Sonoma County in 2020.