It is that time of year again! The time when more motorcyclists are out on Idaho roads. May is Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month and to mark the occasion the Idaho Coalition for Motorcycle Safety (ICMS) is hosting a Motorcycle Awareness Rally on May 4.
Motorcycle riders are invited to join ICMS, the Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS), and partners for the event on Saturday, May 4, 2024, at Sandy Point in Lucky Peak State Park, 9723 ID-21, Boise, ID 83716. Motorcyclists can meet in the park starting at 10 a.m. An escorted ride from Sandy Point to the Idaho State Capitol starts at 1 p.m. Following the ride, the Christian Motorcycle Association is hosting a barbeque at Ann Morrison Park, 1000 S Americana Blvd, Boise, ID 83706.
“We want to remind the drivers out there that they are sharing the road with motorcyclists, who are more exposed than people in cars. Looking twice for motorcycles can save someone’s life,” explained ICMS rally organizer Lane Triplett.
According to OHS data, in 2022 there were 529 motorcycle-related crashes, and 29 motorcyclists were killed. Most fatalities that year were clustered in the months of June, July, and August. Drivers can help protect motorcyclists by:
Checking your blind spots. Motorcycles are small compared to other vehicles, so don’t rely on mirrors alone.
Always use your turn signals. Signaling helps motorcyclists anticipate traffic flow.
Look twice. Sun and rain glare can make motorcycles hard to see. Snow, rain, and fog can obscure your vision too. Always check twice for bikes.
Motorcyclists can protect themselves in the following ways:
Wear brightly colored, reflective clothing.
Ride with headlights on.
Establish lane positions that increase visibility – don’t ride in blind spots.
Enhance your skills. Idaho STAR (Skills Training Advantage for Riders) has classes across the state and for all experience levels.
North Idaho is a special place – pristine lakes, snowcapped mountains, and lush forests make it a destination for thrill seekers and those who love the outdoors. Fine restaurants, spas, and resorts bring in tourists and celebrities from around the world. Rugged refinement makes Idaho’s Panhandle one of the most unique places to live or visit in the state.
The combination of freedom-loving locals and visitors who come to let their hair down has a definite appeal, but it also has a dark side. In 2017, the biggest city in the region, Coeur d’Alene, was given the designation as the “Drunkest City in Idaho.” All too often, bad decisions in the region’s restaurants, bars, and breweries were turning into bad decisions on its roads.
Over the next two years, two very high-profile tragedies struck the panhandle community. The first came in 2017 when a Kootenai County Sheriff’s Deputy’s son was killed on Interstate 90 after being broadsided by a drunk driver. The second occurred in 2019 when the Allen family was returning home on US-95 when they were struck by a drunk driver. 39-year-old Ryan Allen, who lived a majority of his life confined to a wheelchair after having been paralyzed in a previous DUI crash at the age of 11, was killed. These incidents, coupled with the not-so-glamorous claim of being the booziest community in the state, served as a catalyst for change.
Outraged by the proliferation of overconsumption, flippant disregard for safety and heartbreaking, preventable losses, public safety agencies across northern Idaho banded together to take a collaborative approach to moving the needle on statistics when it came to serious injury and fatality impaired driving crashes in Kootenai County.
Agency leaders from the Idaho State Police, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, and four city police departments responded with the creation of the North Idaho DUI Task Force in 2019. The team’s inaugural enforcement operation kicked off on St. Patrick’s Day weekend and included a public briefing ceremony, local media coverage, and allowed officers the ability to work outside of their primary jurisdictions over the holiday weekend to target saturated enforcement efforts on the highest risk areas like the bar districts in cities across Kootenai County.
Since then, the DUI Task Force has grown to include 15 city, county, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies and has planned and executed similar enforcement operations surrounding major holidays and local events annually over the past five years. In that time, the team also recognized that in order to instigate a cultural shift toward sober driving, they also had to deploy a strategy for targeted education and engagement with the community.
“We realized this wasn’t a problem we were going to arrest our way out of,” said ISP Sergeant Justin Scotch. With that understanding, coupled with a healthy dose of support from the Office of Highway Safety, and armed with Idaho Transportation Department’s District 1 Public Information Officer as a liaison for community outreach, the team has become a buzzworthy presence on social media and at regional community events to engage with the public on the importance of safe decisions and sober driving.
Outreach efforts have built a following of over 4,500 people across all platforms, and in 2024 these outreach efforts consistently reach nearly a quarter million people from around the region.
Recognizing the success of the team’s innovative approach to targeted outreach, OHS has played a key role in supporting ongoing communication efforts by coordinating resources available through grants and partnership with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) to fund digital billboards, dynamic messaging signs on highways, electronic jukebox advertisements inside bars, and paid ad campaigns for social media. They also provide grant opportunities to law enforcement agencies that help to supplement overtime costs for additional officers during mobilizations throughout the year targeted not only at impaired driving, but also to enhance enforcement of behaviors like aggressive driving, distracted driving and seat belt use.
When it comes to the metric for measuring the success of this team, it’s difficult to pinpoint based on the theoretical value of the work that they do. No one will ever know who is living among us today because someone made the right choice to not drive impaired. However, when looking at statistics this data would suggest that the ongoing efforts and coordinated outreach by the DUI Task Force has inevitably made a positive impact on the local community and continues to drive behavioral changes.
Since the task force’s inception, District 1 has experienced an overall downward trend in the number of impairment crash deaths, while also experiencing a decrease in the number of DUI arrests being made collectively by police agencies.
Between 2022 and 2023, North Idaho (District 1) experienced an overall 8% increase in the total number of fatality crashes, regardless of the cause. However, during that same timeframe, North Idaho saw a 15% reduction in impairment-related crashes, a 33% reduction in the number of impairment-relatedfatality crashes, and a 38% reduction in deaths due to impairment related crashes.
While the total number of crashes, fatal crashes, and deaths due to impairment related factors was also on the decline across the state from 2022 to 2023, North Idaho experienced a reduction in those numbers at over twice the rate (based on preliminary data from the Office of Highway Safety).
The growing presence of this team, coupled with its apparent success, has caught the eye of other regional public safety entities, not only within Idaho, but in other states. In February, members of ITD and ISP were invited by the Oregon Transportation Department to join forces and provide training in eastern Oregon for regional police, safety and community partners aimed at aiding them in replicating a model of the DUI Task Force of their own.
In its early days, the Task Force was primarily enforcement-based and arrest-focused, but has since recognized the greater value in proactive education to help shape and shift social norms surrounding impaired driving.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but being relentless in the use of our collective voice to shift social norms is something that’s entirely possible,” said PIO Heather McDaniel. “If you were to tell someone from 30 years ago that one day the thought of smoking in an airport or a restaurant would be completely taboo, they’d laugh in your face,” she said. “But look at us now! That’s the shift in mindset we are trying to create toward impaired driving.”
The saying goes that it takes a village, and over the years this team has learned time and again that holds true! When it comes to saving lives it’s not just law enforcement who is responsible for affecting change. From transportation, corrections, and judicial agencies to the healthcare community, education system, private enterprise, and even you and me, we all play a role in shaping the safety of our future.
By committing to the principles of partnership and taking a collaborative approach to combating the impaired driving epidemic, we are all one step closer to getting there.
ITD District 1 PIO Heather McDaniel delivering a presentation
Electronic messaging boards activated with safe driving messages on Idaho highways
Fair-goers in North Idaho participating in impairment simulation demonstrations.
Public briefing event in Coeur d’Alene in summer of 2023
2023 recipients of the Kootenai County Substance Abuse “Top Cop” challenge award for DUI enforcement
Law enforcement officers record a public safety announcement commercial for TV
Tires wearing out early on commercial vehicles can be dangerous for the driver and other vehicles on the road. Conventional wisdom is to inflate a truck’s inside and outside tires to the same pressure. However, when the tires have equal pressure, it puts more weight on the inside tire leading to uneven wear and issues with braking, fuel mileage, and handling.
The Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) Port of Entry (POE) team has six new split platform portable scales that will be used to demonstrate the weight difference between the inside and outside dual tires. They’ll demonstrate this issue to industry members in ITD’s six districts and to ITD’s teams. This can save companies and the state money on tire replacements, fuel, brakes, and suspension parts. The POE will start reaching out to industry partners in April.
Check out this video for a demonstration of the split scales and the effect of tire pressure on weight distribution.
From speeding, to weaving, to failing to yield there’s more to aggressive driving than just road rage. From March 19-30, the Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS) is teaming up with law enforcement partners across the state for targeted aggressive driving enforcement. Expect to see more officers on the road to stop aggressive driving behavior.
Preliminary data from OHS shows that in 2023 there were nearly 14,000* aggressive driving crashes in Idaho and 103* people died.
Contributing factors used by OHS to identify aggressive driving include speeding, driving too fast for conditions, following too closely, failing to yield, and failing to obey a stop sign or signal.
“Aggressive driving is a choice, which means it’s within our power to change,” explained Highway Safety Manager Josephine Middleton. “Choosing to drive engaged and safely may save your life or someone else’s.”
It is incredibly important for parents to talk to their teens about the dangers of aggressive driving because teens are overrepresented in aggressive driving crashes. OHS found that in 2022, drivers ages 19 and younger were four times as likely to be involved in aggressive driving crashes as all other drivers. Drivers under the age of 25 represent more than one-third (35%) of the drivers involved in aggressive driving crashes that year.
While the term aggressive driving leads many people to think of road rage, many behaviors are considered aggressive driving. Road rage is a violent criminal act that falls on the extreme end of aggressive driving.
If you encounter an aggressive or violent driver do not engage. Safely get out of their way as soon as possible. If you can get a vehicle description, license number, and location report the information to law enforcement.
With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, it’s important that everyone celebrate safely, and get a sober ride home. Expect more police on the roads looking to stop drunk driving. The Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS) is working with law enforcement to increase patrols during the holiday weekend to keep impaired drivers off the road.
“If you are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a pint or two, don’t rely on luck to get home safely. Plan ahead for a ride home with a sober driver, and remember, always wear your seatbelt,” advised Impaired Driving Program Specialist Lisa Losness.
OHS data shows that in 2022, 51% of all fatalities on Idaho roads were the result of impaired driving. Only 23% of the people killed in those crashes were wearing seat belts. If you celebrate this weekend, keep your community and yourself safe by using a rideshare, cab or designated driver.
Teen drivers are 2.6 times more likely to be involved in a crash than any other age group. For the Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS) reaching teens is more important than ever. They are a hard group to connect with. Tabitha Smith (pictured below on podcast), OHS’s occupant protection and teen driver safety program manager has been making those connections and getting them excited about traffic safety.
Tabitha worked with, Sam Walker and Ella Cornett (pictured above, right to left), two students at One Stone who created the “Backseat Driver’s Manual.” It’s an activity book designed to teach kids about safe driving and spark conversations among families. The students recognized Tabitha for her mentorship and guidance at One Stone’s annual fundraising dinner.
During the dinner presentation, Cornett said, “Tabitha empowered us to step outside of our comfort zones. Her steadfast support and positive energy gave us the confidence we needed to positively impact our state.”
Tabitha at the One Stone annual dinner.
Kuna School District is also getting energized about safe driving. Kuna Superintendent Wendy Johnson invited Tabitha to the “Together We Can” podcast to talk about teen driver safety. They talked about unsafe driving behaviors common to teens, advice for parents, Parent-Student Driving Contracts, Alive at 25, and more. You can listen to the podcast on YouTube.
Tabitha’s dedication to promoting safe driving among young drivers is truly admirable. Through her partnerships with Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), Alliance Highway Safety, and the Idaho High School Activities Association (IHSAA), as well as her leadership in managing the Alive at 25 defensive driving program, she’s making a real impact.
If you know an Idaho teenager who could benefit from getting involved or learning more about these programs, don’t hesitate to reach out to Tabitha. You can contact her via email at tabitha.smith@itd.idaho.gov. It’s heartening to see individuals like Tabitha leading the charge for safer roads and empowered young drivers.
The 2024 Aviation Safety Stand Down for the thousands of pilots and aviation enthusiasts, is just around the corner. This FREE event is slated for Saturday, March 9 at the Nampa Civic Center, from 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
This year, The Idaho Division of Aeronautics (Aero) will focus on backcountry safety, including backcountry medical care. Since most accidents occur in the flight pattern, we have sessions on ways to reduce loss-of-control accidents. This will include a stall/spin refresher and a discussion of float-plane operations. See the schedule for more details.
This event is sponsored by Aero, which exists to “encourage, foster, and assist in the development of aeronautics in the state.” This includes managing 32 state-owned airports, helping Idaho airports with state and federal grants for maintenance and construction, assisting communities with zoning decisions near airports, promoting aviation safety, inspiring kids to enter careers in aviation, and coordinating aviation search and rescue.
If you are involved in aviation safety and wish to have tablespace at the event, please contact Aero, or simply want more info regarding the event, please email idaho.aeronautics@itd.idaho.gov or call 208-334-8775 for additional information.
Register with your FAA WINGS email address for WINGS Credit.
Got plans for the Big Game this weekend? The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) wants to remind football (and Taylor Swift) fans that plans aren’t complete until they include a sober ride home.
Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS) data shows that during the Big Game weekend in 2022, there were 20 impaired driving crashes in Idaho and one person was killed.
“Some fans are spending a lot of energy figuring out whether Taylor Swift will make it to the big game in time,” said Highway Safety Manager Josephine Middleton. “Don’t let your night turn into one of her songs like “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” spend some time planning how you’re getting home after the game.”
If you’re hosting a party, make sure everyone has a plan to get home safely. That might include a designated driver, calling a rideshare or cab, or offering them a safe place to stay until they are sober.
Idaho students age 5-18 are encouraged to demonstrate their artistic skills under the theme “Careers in Aerospace” in the annual Aviation Art Contest through the Idaho Division of Aeronautics. The contest is open now through April 5, with winners announced May 3.
Age-group winners (categories listed below) received the following awards/recognition:
First place winners:
Invitation to ride in an airplane
Copy of their artwork signed by our Governor
Congratulatory letter
Second place winners:
Receive $25 in art supplies
Congratulatory letter
The rules are as follows:
Submit original artwork
Paper size must be 11” x 17” (Landscape orientation)
Must be two-dimensional watercolor, acrylic or oil, colored pencil, felt-tip marker, ballpoint
pen, pen and ink, and/or crayon
Must have a completed Certificate of Authenticity attached securely to the back of the piece of artwork (see link below for certificate)
No pencil, charcoal, collage, digital, or clip art
Artwork Categories by Age:
Age Group I: 5–6 years old
Age Group II: 7–9 years old
Age Group III: 10–12 years old
Age Group IV: 13–15 years old
Age Group V: 16–18 years old
Winners will also be featured in the 2025 Aviation Art Calendar
See the Entry Form under the “Safety & Education” tab on the Aeronautics webpage at the ITD website or this link.
Winter weather has brought snowy driving conditions to much of Idaho. Unfortunately, the rise in snowy road conditions has also led to a sharp rise in snowplow strikes. Nine Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) plows have been hit so far this winter season. Five strikes happened over the last seven days.
Two of the most recent strikes happened this Wednesday in the Magic Valley, one on I-84 north of Twin Falls, and one on I-84 west of Wendell. Both involved a semi truck rear-ending a plow. The vehicles will be out of service for up to two weeks while they undergo repairs.
“It’s a major impact on maintenance sheds when equipment is taken out of service. We are limited on snowplows,” Jerome Foreman Brian Davidson said. “It makes it more difficult to keep roads clear.”
Another recent strike happened on Tuesday in Nampa. The plow was heading eastbound on I-84 near Karcher Road. A pickup pulling a trailer merged onto the interstate and lost control. The trailer swung out and hit the ITD vehicle’s wing plow. There was no lasting damage to the snowplow.
ITD wants to remind drivers how to be safe around snowplows.
Plows often operate in pairs to clear multiple lanes; never position yourself between tandem plows.
In case of a crash or if you need to stop on the side of the road, stay inside your vehicle for both your safety and that of our plow operators.
Last winter, there were 17 plow strikes, a number ITD does not want to repeat. Please be careful driving and mindful of our plows. Check 511.idaho.gov or the Idaho 511 App for road conditions before traveling. For more winter driving tips, visit itd.idaho.gov/travel.
*For real-time updates and photos of plow strikes, visit ITD’s Facebook or X pages.