KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE POLICE PREPARE FOR SHUTDOWN TRAFFIC
While construction crews will be concentrating on that area for the next 14 months, law enforcement will focus on the interstate detours like I-640. Their mission is to discourage speed and hopefully cut down on crashes. "I drive my personal vehicle on the interstates that everybody else does, and when you're in your own vehicle you see aggressive driving, road rage," Knoxville Police Officer Chyrl Spitzer said.
Officer Chyrl Spitzer has been a patrol officer with KPD for almost 9 years, but for the past 9 months, she's been primarily focused on aggressive driving on and around I-640. Spitzer is now one of four Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Officers with the Knoxville Police Department.
A $220,478 grant from the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration helped pay 2 more officers and bought their cars with the equipment needed for patrol cars. Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Officers or CVE Officers can stop both personal and commercial vehicles. She's looking for speeding or any other aggressive behavior that could lead to a crash.
One common motorist mistake is not moving over for emergency vehicles in the shoulder. The state move-over law protects emergency workers, motorists stopped by officers, and construction workers at sites where officers are posted. Officer Spitzer says it's one of the most important citations she writes to help drivers become aware of the danger they can pose to those on the side of the road.
"Especially since the SmartFIX40 is taking place, you know we've got a lot of construction workers on the interstate, and some of them work very close to the white lines," Spitzer said. Spitzer anticipates chaos around the shutdown while drivers get used to the construction.
"Traffic's going to get pretty bad when they close that down," Spitzer said. "At that point, I think it's going to be even more important to address, you know, those driving issues that cause accidents. People are not going to know where they're going, they'll get off the wrong exit, they'll try to cut over and exit and cut people off.
State troopers are helping KPD CVE Officers patrol the interstates looking for any drivers who may endanger others. Officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol also assist with commercial vehicle stops to look for federal violations that are outside local officers' jurisdictions. CVE Officers can also close down the interstate in case of an accident.
KPD spokesperson Darrell DeBusk says motorists should learn several different routes to work and home just in case there is an accident that closes down I-640 or one of the other detour interstates. "If you get used to one route and we have an incident on the interstate and we have to use your route to re-route traffic from the interstate then your stuck in a situation you don't want to be involved in," DeBusk said.
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