Almost every night this summer, Carole Barnabas could step onto her back porch and hear cars drag racing along Route 104 in Webster.
"First I'll hear the one car, and it'll be loud and fast, and then another car right after it, and they go zooming down the highway," she said, adding that she avoided going out between 9:30 and 10 p.m., when the roaring engines usually started up.
When she is on the road, Barnabas is wary of other drivers' aggressive behavior, and it makes her nervous. She said she sometimes has to pull over because other cars are traveling well beyond the speed limit.
"And I'm not the only one," she said, "I mean, people talk about it ... like you almost have to speed to get somewhere."
And the problem isn't just on the expressways. Rochester Mayor Malik Evans thinks dangerous drivers are affecting the quality of life in the city, too.
"It is absolutely ridiculous, the number of drivers that now drive erratically," he said. "You're seeing people that are sometimes worried about crossing the street because they know that someone's going to run a red light."
Monroe County Legislator John Baynes thinks there's a video game mentality with some drivers whose only goal seems to be to cut through traffic as quickly as possible.
"Maybe no one's taken physics," said Baynes, D-East Rochester, "because they're moving these vehicles ... they're two-ton objects ... right on the bumpers of people, and they cannot stop if there's an incident."
Bring up the topic of risky driving, and almost everyone has a story about what they've seen on local roads. But do these perceptions reflect reality?
According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, more than half of drivers in the U.S. do admit to sometimes engaging in risky behaviors like speeding, going through red lights, and abruptly switching lanes.
And it's dangerous.
In 2022, New York had 1,175 traffic fatalities, the highest number in a decade. In fact, motor vehicle deaths have been rising sharply since 2019, reversing years of decline before the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, law enforcement agencies have been handing out fewer traffic tickets.
In Monroe County, there was a 23% drop in tickets issued by state troopers between 2018 and 2023. Across that same five-year period, Rochester police wrote 60% fewer tickets for moving violations, and Monroe County Sheriff's deputies wrote about half as many tickets as they did in 2018.
The sharp decline in stops and tickets aligns with the pandemic, also a time of some high-profile traffic stops gone awry and widespread protests aimed at police. Numbers have been slow to rebound since, which often is attributed to staffing shortages.
Sheriff Todd Baxter said there are competing demands on his deputies' time.
"We've got violence occurring in the city of Rochester. Do we help out with that? Or do we do traffic enforcement? Those are decisions we make every day in staffing," he said.
When it comes to traffic detail with limited resources, Baxter prefers a more strategic approach, including issuing warning tickets.
"We don't want to writing tickets for the sake of generating revenue for the state, or for the sake of just getting a stat that makes everybody feel good," he said. "We're trying to be specific with it and also prioritize our resources."
Baynes agrees a balance must be reached between under-policing and over-policing, but he also believes a visible police presence can deter problem driving. That's why he voted to spend $7.3 million to add 41 road patrol deputies to the sheriff's budget in June of last year.
Baxter said half of that class recently graduated from the police academy, and the rest will follow in June. He hopes this will lead to less dangerous driving.
"You look at the average person driving down the street, they're paying their insurance, they're paying their registration, then you've got 50 motorcyclists going (onto ) the street ... (they) haven't paid a thing, and are causing havoc," he said. "And people get frustrated with that. We understand the frustration."
Advocates for traffic safety often cite factors beyond policing and personal behaviors when it comes to reckless driving, such as road and vehicle design.
Both the city of Rochester and Monroe County have taken notice, adopting plans aimed at improving traffic safety.
In Rochester, police have taken a different tactic, it would appear, as records show officers are issuing more tickets per stop, on average. Within those numbers, however, is a steady increase in police pursuits — rising from 18 in 2019 to 85 last year amid a spike in Kia and other vehicle thefts, according to police.
There still is an overall drop in both stops and tickets in the city. And the department has dozens of vacant patrol officer positions.
On a Sunday in late September, the city began receiving 911 calls about ATVs and dirt bikes clogging traffic on Monroe Avenue and reportedly doing stunts and wheelies. But police did not respond. A department spokesperson later explained that "officers monitored the situation via the blue light (surveillance) cameras however officers were diverted to other calls for service throughout the city."
New York is one of 22 states that allow camera enforcement of red light running, speed and school bus stop violations.
Rochester had a red light camera program from 2010 until canceling it at the end of 2016, facing backlash that it disproportionately affected the city's most impoverished residents. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently extended red light camera programs across the state. But nationally, the popularity of these programs is waning, down from a peak of 533 community programs in 2012 to 340 today, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Speed cameras require state approval before tickets can be issued. The state has done so in New York City and Albany, for example, but limited those to school zones.
For Carole Barnabas, safer roads can't come soon enough. She called the State Police in late August to report the nightly drag races near her home in Webster. She said the highway was quieter for a week or two, then the racing engines could be heard again.
"Whatever is happening out there is getting worse," Barnabas said. "It's just a question of time before somebody is killed or hurt badly."
Includes reporting by investigations and enterprise editor Brian Sharp.
