Submitted on behalf of the Bedford Police Department
The Bedford Police Department attended a presentation by criminal justice students at Middlesex Community College on motor vehicle violations last week, which concluded with recommendations on how to improve safety on town roads and intersections, announced Chief Robert Bongiorno.
Several members of the department visited the MCC campus on Dec. 11 to hear from students in the introduction to criminal justice course who conducted on-site research of traffic violations in Bedford.
“The partnership between Middlesex Community College and the Bedford Police Department yields critical, service-learning experience for our students, working side by side with law enforcement as we try to help address quality of life issues that affect our extended Bedford community,” said MCC criminal justice professor Ronald Brevard. “This is the type of experiential learning that you can’t get in a classroom.”
Twenty-six students outlined statistics from 18 days of field observations made at five heavily trafficked areas. Each participant used a form prepared by Lt. James Graham that required them to focus on two specific criteria at each intersection: the total number of vehicles passing through the intersection and total number of moving violations.
The intersections were:
- Concord Road at Great Road
- North Road at Chelmsford Road
- Page Road at Old Billerica Road
- Pine Hill Road at North Road
- Park Row at Concord Road
Students recorded 7,393 moving vehicles in the five areas of observation and noted 2,677 moving violations, including stop sign violations, yield sign violations, running a red light and failure to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk. Each student spent one to two hours collecting data in the mornings and afternoons.
To decrease moving violations and improve safety in town, students outlined several recommendations to the police department:
- Increase short-term strategies to prevent moving violations during rush hour, such as having a police officer direct traffic, have police cruisers around busy intersections and make more signs.
- Periodically using strategies like having undercover officers near busy intersections to see which drivers violate the law and radio into another officer down the road.
- A long-term strategy that can help prevent crashes at or near intersections would be redesigning certain intersections.
- Park Row at Concord Road: Put a rotary or signal lights in. Alternative recommendations would include painting a stop sign on the surface of the road or moving the stop sign to a more visible location.
- Page Road at Old Billerica Road: Install signal lights.
- Concord Road at Great Road: Yield sign should be changed to stop sign.
- Pinehill Road at North Road: Add more signs to indicate the stop sign.
- North Road at Chelmsford Road: Install a “Warning: Dangerous Intersection” sign.
“This was a well-researched project that provided the Bedford Police Department with valuable information that we can now use for targeted safety improvements on our town roads,” Bongiorno said. “I want to commend the students for their dedication and thank Lt. Graham for coordinating this project. We’re always happy to assist students interested in learning about and pursuing a field in criminal justice.”
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