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Park City drivers pulled over at speeds well above posted limits

Park City residents have long been concerned with speeding drivers, including along the S.R. 224 entryway, shown. The Park City Police Department last week stopped drivers in a variety of locations. Some of the drivers were traveling at speeds well above the posted limit.
Tanzi Propst/Park Record

The Park City Police Department last week pulled over drivers traveling at well above the posted speed limit, a series of cases that illustrated the department’s long-running efforts to combat speeding in a place where traffic violations remain a top concern of the community.

The Police Department’s public logs note each traffic stop made by the officers, but the logs do not always show the speed. In some of the cases last week, though, the logs identified speeds that were 20 mph or faster than the posted speed limit.

In one unconfirmed case, reported to the police by another driver rather than by an officer who pulled someone over, the vehicle may have been approaching 100 mph. The report was logged at 11:28 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 13, on S.R. 248. The police were told a red car was traveling “over 90 mph,” an especially high speed for a report to the police. The red car nearly hit the bumper of the vehicle of the person who contacted the department, police logs showed. The public logs did not provide details.



Some of the other speeding cases or other sorts of traffic violations reported to the Police Department last week included:

• on Sunday, Sept. 16, at a little bit before 9 a.m., an officer stopped a driver at or close to the intersection of Deer Valley Drive and Bonanza Drive after watching the vehicle travel at 55 mph in a location where the posted speed limit is 35 mph.



• on Friday, Sept. 14 at 6:15 p.m., an officer pulled over a driver who the police say was traveling 65 mph in a location at or close to the intersection of Deer Valley Drive and Park Avenue, where the posted speed limit is 40 mph.

• on Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 8:35 p.m., a driver was stopped at or close to the intersection of Park Avenue and Iron Horse Drive after the vehicle was clocked at 52 mph in a location where the posted speed limit is 40 mph.

It was not clear how many of the drivers were warned rather than cited. The Police Department typically warns drivers on a first offense, but repeat violators often receive tickets, and a driver seen traveling at an excessively high rate may receive a ticket on a first offense.

Phil Kirk, a Police Department captain, said the cases last week stemmed from regular patrols rather than special enforcement. Speeds as high as some of those reported create a “very dangerous situation,” he said.

The Police Department last week also dealt with other reports of traffic issues unrelated to speeding. A vehicle reportedly traveled through a blinking red light at a crosswalk on Kearns Boulevard on Sept. 16 at 7:30 a.m., drawing a verbal warning. A vehicle on Thursday, Sept. 13, at 10:38 p.m. was seen “swerving all over the road” and making “erratic lane changes,” the police were told.

Traffic patrols have long been a priority for the Police Department. The agency has officers dedicated to traffic patrols while other officers oftentimes conduct traffic patrols when they are not responding to a case. The department in 2017 logged 5,605 traffic offenses, an average of 15 per day. The 5,605 were the most since the 6,525 offenses reported in 2014.


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