Tailgaters in Flashing Spotlight

The California Highway Patrol has new words of warning for aggressive drivers: We’re coming after you like never before.

A program aimed at drivers whose maneuvers threaten others on the road, which began in December at the CHP’s San Juan Capistrano office, expanded statewide beginning Thursday. The program pays for officers dedicated solely to nabbing reckless drivers, said Officer Nanci Kramer, a spokeswoman for the CHP’s Sacramento headquarters.

“They’ll do nothing but look for people speeding, tailgating and making aggressive lane changes,” Kramer said.

The average CHP officer, forced to respond to everything from crashes to disabled motorists to debris strewn across the highway, has limited time to simply patrol the roads and look for drivers with the aggressive habits that frequently result in accidents.

Similar to the program that pays for officers to monitor exclusively for carpool-lane violations, the new aggressive-driver program will provide funding for dedicated enforcement through the end of 1999.

A $714,000 grant from the state office of traffic safety also will fund a public-education program and billboards urging drivers to exercise caution on the road, Kramer said.

The CHP’s San Juan Capistrano office, which patrols from Lake Forest to San Clemente, has the dubious distinction of issuing more speeding tickets than any other in the state. The office established the aggressive-driver program in December after noticing a rise from nine driving fatalities per year to 19 in its area over the last three years.

“For us, that’s too high,” said Officer Joan Rivas, a CHP spokeswoman. “We don’t want to see any, period. Once you see a trend where there’s more fatalities than we’ve seen in previous years, we need to do something.”

Officers in San Juan Capistrano found that they could be startlingly effective once freed of normal beat responsibilities. An officer dedicated to nabbing aggressive drivers typically can issue more than 10 tickets per four-hour shift, compared to half that for a regular officer with other duties, Rivas said.

CHP offices in Santa Ana and Westminster joined the program early this year and agency officials decided soon thereafter to make the San Juan Capistrano program into a model for the entire state.

The enforcement effort that began Thursday includes Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties. Elsewhere in the state, aggressive drivers will be targeted in CHP divisions covering the nine Bay Area counties and the Central Valley.

The CHP will evaluate the enforcement program in three months to determine if the campaign should be extended to other areas.

So far, CHP officials have no statistics to illustrate the program’s effectiveness. But a focused enforcement effort will make a difference over the long term, said Steve Kohler, another CHP spokesman. “When people realize that this driving behavior will not be tolerated, we believe they will change.”

CHP officials noted that aggressive drivers are not generally hardened criminals--they are simply motorists in a hurry.

“The problem is so many commuters, so little time,” Kramer said. “Our message is that we understand you’re overbooked, you’re over-scheduled. Our point is that it’s no excuse for breaking the law.”

Times correspondent Crystal Carreon contributed to this report.