LANCASTER, S.C. (CN2 NEWS) — South Carolina receives around three million dollars each year from a national safety grant and this year, the city of Lancaster will receive around $130,000 from that money.
Chief Scott Grant says some of that money will be used towards a salary for a full time traffic enforcement officer. The remainder will go towards paying for training and equipment. Grant says as traffic accidents continue to rise, the city needs someone to give their full attention to the problem.
“We’re really a city of 6 square miles, and we only have two streets that have speed limits of 45 miles per hour, the rest of the city is lower than that,” Grant said. “Yet, every year we have over a hundred injury traffic collisions.”
Grant says the Lancaster Police Department has a strong traffic safety program, and officers issued around 1,400 traffic citations so far this year. But Grant says they don’t have someone devoting their full attention at a time it is needed.
Grant says from January until August 2019, Lancaster had 393 traffic collisions, which is a 10 percent increase from this time last year. Grant says 110 of those collisions had either an injury or a death.
“It affects a lot of people and we just want to do everything we can to make a difference,” Grant said, who is going through a list of candidates now. He’s hoping to have the position filled by October.
Grant says he also plans to bring a driver awareness program called Alive at 25 to schools within the city limits of Lancaster. The program targets younger drivers in high schools.
