KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Law enforcement agencies are focusing on a problem area where accidents just keep happening in the northland.
According to Kansas City Police, the area of Interstate 29 and NW Barry Road has experienced 263 crashes between March 2017 to March 2018.
To curb crashes, Kansas City Police, the Platte County Sheriff’s Office and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are stationed along the corridor cracking down on drivers breaking the law.
The enforcement started on Monday and is ramping up as the holiday weekend gets underway.
The operation happening in the congested area is based on data.
“We’re going to take up some proactive enforcement activities in order to try to look at the environment see what’s going on see if we can come up with a logical reason why there have been so many accidents around the intersection of Barry and I-29,” said Captain Todd Marckx with KCPD’s North Patrol Division.
On Friday, 41 Action News rode along with MSHP Trooper Carl Taibi. The trooper has patrolled the Northland for the last eight years.
He notes that as more people have moved into this area, there is more traffic and that produces more crashes.
During this enforcement operation, he’s watching out for people who are driving distracted, those who aren’t wearing their seatbelts and drivers not using their turn signal while changing lanes.
When he does pull over someone, the impact is two-fold.
“When you’re stopping someone you’re directly interacting with them about that specific violation but also when you’re on the traffic stop and people see the car stopped on the shoulder you got hundreds of cars that drive by and they’re indirectly maybe putting their seat belt on if they didn’t have it on," Taibi said. "They’re making sure they’re not driving over the speed limit, it’s a reminder."
While there are similar enforcement operations happening across the metro during the Memorial Day weekend, this particular one is expected to last for several months.
