By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – To crack open the new year, Bloomington’s top cop is focusing on traffic enforcement efforts to limit the number of traffic crashes in the city.

According to a news release, there are 1,828 traffic crash incidents, 272 injuries, and at least two deaths per year.

According to Bloomington Police Chief Jamal Simington, That’s too many, who is less than one year into the role.

“You can expect us to continue a high level of traffic enforcement efforts in the city, as well as implementing a traffic safety education campaign for 2022. The enforcement and education will focus around the top five contributory causes for traffic crashes in the city.”

According to Chief Simington, the top five causes for traffic accidents in the city are failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident, failing to yield the right-of-way, lack of driver skills, following too closely, and disregarding traffic signals.

“As part of community education, we added a new tool to our website that allows the community access to traffic crash information through an improved “police activity map” formerly named the Community Crime Map,” added Chief Simington.

Chief Simington said the department’s goal in 2022 is to lower the number of crashes in the city by 10%.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].