WISCONSIN SPEEDERS TARGETED IN 5-MONTH, MOVE-OVER LAW OPERATION

Columbia County Sheriff's Department Lt. Roger Brandner uses a laser speed detector to check the speeds of motorists on the Smokey Hollow bridge south of Poynette over Interstate 39/90/94 on Sept. 14 while Deputy Mike Haverly records information during a Speed Wave enforcement operation. The sheriff's department received a $30,000 grant to pay for overtime for deputies taking part in the exercise aimed at reducing speeding on the interstates.

Roger Brandner has dedicated his career to law enforcement. In 2006, the profession nearly took his life. The Columbia County Sheriff's Department lieutenant was seriously injured when his squad car was struck from behind by a motorist as he responded to a pair of vehicles that were in a ditch along Highway 151 north of Columbus on Dec. 6, 2006, during a snow storm. Brandner's car was totaled and he suffered herniated disks in his neck and back. He was unable to return to active duty for six months. Brandner said he was in his parked squad on the side of the four-lane highway with his emergency lights on when the accident occurred. He said there was no other traffic on the highway at the time.

Wisconsin law requires drivers to move over into an open lane on multi-lane highways when they approach emergency vehicles and requires drivers to slow down if another lane is blocked or not available. "The move-over law is personal to me," Brandner said Sept. 14 as he watched motorists maneuver around a stopped sheriff's department vehicle on the interstate. "It's so important to move over."

A few seconds later, from his vantage point on the Smokey Hollow Road bridge over the interstate south of Poynette, Brandner pointed out a beige Cadillac that failed to move over and radioed in the vehicle's information to dispatchers. The driver didn't get far. Six sheriff's department squad cars were waiting around the next corner to stop the Cadillac and other vehicles found to be breaking traffic laws. The driver was cited for violating move-over requirements and issued a $245 fine.

Brandner was on the bridge with a laser speed finder actively looking for speeders and other offenders on the interstates as part of the final days of Wisconsin's five-month Speed Wave Enforcement Program. More than 1,700 motorists on Interstate 39/90/94 were stopped by the Columbia County Sheriff's Department this summer as part of the program, which resulted in more than 1,800 citations, including 27 move-over law violations.

The program was funded by a $30,000 grant to pay overtime for the deputies, who took part in 24 Speed Wave events in the five-month period and racked up 694 hours of overtime. Most of the events lasted for about four hours, and each deputy would typically make 10 to 15 traffic stops during the operation.

More than 1,600 of the citations were issued for speeding with an average speed of 82.2 mph and many drivers were cited for several violations. The speed limit on the Wisconsin interstate system is 65 mph.

The program also resulted in seat-belt tickets, drunken driving arrests and drug arrests. Brandner said one traffic stop involved a driver who was traveling at 121 mph on the interstate. Ninety-one other vehicles were stopped for driving faster than 90 mph. Sheriff's Deputy Mike Haverly helped Brandner keep all the vehicles straight by calling in the information while Brandner continued to monitor for speeders.

"It's amazing somebody would drive at those speeds," Haverly said. "If someone is driving over 100 mph, they're probably deviating across all three lanes and taking part in some very aggressive driving." Columbia County Sheriff Dennis Richards said at the beginning of the project that one of the purposes of the operation was to reduce speeds on the interstate system.

"The speeds out there are pretty unbelievable," he said.

Deputy Chad Steinle was in one of seven chase cars in the Sept. 14 operation and said many speeders claimed to be "keeping up with the flow of traffic."

"Traffic isn't supposed to move above the speed limit," he said.