This story was originally published on YachatsNews.com and is used with permission.
Benton County Sheriff Lt. Toby Bottorff’s patrol SUV sits in a wide spot along U.S. Highway 20 just a few hundred yards west of the Blodgett store.
The traffic officer has an unobstructed view of cars and trucks barreling east and his radar beeps constantly as they speed downhill along the busy highway linking the central Oregon coast to the Willamette Valley.
The posted speed limit is 55 mph. Few drivers do that on a stretch of the highway that has seen a record nine fatalities this year.
“70 is too fast in a 55,” Bottorff tells a reporter tagging along for a few hours of his special, overtime patrol. “You can write tickets for that all day. But realistically, 73 and higher – you’re going to get a ticket.”
And that he does to drivers who don’t spot his black SUV soon enough to slow down before reaching the Blodget store, where there’s a dangerous mix of parking lots, occasional congestion and Highway 180 leading off into the hills to the north.
Highway 20 from the Lincoln County line to Philomath has been a focus for the Benton County Sheriff’s Office this year because of the spike in driver deaths. The agency is using special state grants to pay overtime to deputies to work the highway to try to get traffic to slow down.
The patrol deputies issued 589 tickets through November, 546 of those for speeding – a 36 percent increase in tickets over the number issued in 2023 with a month left in the year. The fastest ticketed speed was 114 miles per hour.
That doesn’t include the warnings, which often make up half of the traffic stops.
“Generally, if I think a warning will work, I will do that,” Bottorff says. “We have discretion. But tickets change behavior more than warnings.”
Why crashes happen
Nine people died in Highway 20 crashes this year – more than triple the usual number.
An analysis this summer by YachatsNews indicates deaths on the 50 miles between Newport and Philomath are related to a combustible mix of issues including:
- The nature of the highway, which is a combination of narrow, twisting two-lane pavement, two wide lanes with an occasional third passing lane, and then sometimes four lanes with two going in either direction;
- State highway projects that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to straighten and widen it;
- Increased vehicle speeds as the road improved;
- A 30 percent increase in the number of cars and trucks the last nine years to 7,200 a day in 2023 and traffic that can spike to 10,000 a day on a summer weekend;
- The lack of barriers between east- and westbound lanes in the wider stretches of the highway, which could prevent drivers crossing over into oncoming traffic and causing a head-on collision – a factor in seven of the nine fatalities this year.
Bottorff says the big increase in Highway 20’s fatalities brought more attention to the stretch from Philomath to the Lincoln County line just west of Blodgett.
But not so much for Oregon State Police or the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
State police rely on two troopers who live in Philomath but work out of the Newport office to check the road on their trips to and from home. Lincoln County Sheriff Curtis Landers says his office is too understaffed and would require mandatory deputy overtime to patrol the highway.
“We’ve taken more of the lead because we’re staffed up and have the grants,” Bottorff said.
The grants come from the Oregon Department of Transportation, which hands out money to agencies who apply to tackle such issues as speeding, distracted or drunken driving, seat belt use, or pedestrian safety.
Because it is fully staffed, the Benton County Sheriff’s Office applied and received four grants this year. That makes it easier, Bottorff says, to find deputies and even higher-ranking officers willing to take on the four-hour overtime shifts to conduct the extra patrols.
“Even the sheriff could be out here on overtime,” Bottorff says. “They (ODOT) want people on the road.”
How ODOT grants work
ODOT has a transportation safety office that implements a highway safety plan and related programs and oversees millions in safety-related grants.
“Our main responsibility is to improve the safety of all roadway users, and all modes of travel in Oregon through education and outreach,” ODOT regional spokeswoman Mindy McCartt told YachatsNews. “The overall goal is to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries on Oregon’s roadways.”
ODOT grant funds come primarily from the federal government and focus on speed, distracted driving, seatbelt/child safety seat use, bike/pedestrian safety, motorcycle safety, impaired driving, work zone safety, and other smaller programs.
For city and county law enforcement agency high-visibility enforcement grants, for example, agencies must detail the problem they are trying to address with traffic statistics, crash data, and existing strategies addressing the issue, McCartt said.
The high visibility enforcement grants, she said, are designed to find, cite and educate dangerous drivers but also increase police visibility of such operations as a warning to others.
“Their focus is exclusively on the behavioral side of transportation not on infrastructure or equipment,” McCartt said.
In fiscal 2024, ODOT awarded $3.05 million to 74 city police departments and $1.37 million to 22 sheriff’s offices across the state. For just speed enforcement, the agency awarded $610,000 to city and county agencies; Oregon State Police got another $125,000.
Safety mission
The Benton County Sheriff’s Office is also working with ODOT to help fund a full-time traffic safety deputy, who would focus exclusively on the five types of driving behaviors that contribute the most to fatalities.
The sheriff also has ODOT money available through January for extra patrols to deal with speed, impaired and distracted driving, seatbelt use and pedestrian safety. Bottorff doesn’t think the agency will have any trouble filling the shifts, even those around Christmas and New Years.
“We have a bunch of hungry deputies who believe in the mission to keep the roads safe,” Bottorff said. “And when they sign up for speed patrol, they go out west because they know they can write a lot of tickets.”
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