State and local officials gathered in Irondequoit Wednesday to talk about an effort to crack down on drivers who speed through construction zones.
Governor Kathy Hochul and New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez said that speed-tracking cameras last year found three drivers going through a work zone on State Route 104 traveling at speeds which were the fastest recorded by the DOT’s Automated Work Zone Enforcement Program. The three vehicles went through the work zone at speeds of 139, 117 and 110 miles per hour.
Dominguez said that luckily, those vehicles didn’t hit anyone, but she said motorists have to be a lot more careful.
“We’re trying to raise awareness to all of the motorists here in New York state, they’ve got to put their phones down, they’ve got to pay attention, they have to recognize that there are people, members of your community working across the state to keep you safe, and you gotta do that in a work zone, you have to slow down,” said Dominguez.
Gov. Hochul and the DOT said that as a nearly $28 million dollar, two-year road construction project gets underway on Route 104, State Police will be doing extra enforcement, including a program where some officers are dressed as highway maintenance workers to identify and ticket drivers for a number of violations.
The project on Route 104 goes between Ridgeway Avenue in Rochester and Culver Road in Irondequoit.
“We’ve partnered with the New York State Police and local law enforcement around the state where they go in dressed as highway maintenance workers, and are pulling people over for all different kinds of violations,” said Dominguez, “and it has raised awareness significantly about, about this whole issue of speeding through work zones.”
