Traffic Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order. Call the roll, please.

Good afternoon. Randy Ruby. Here. Todd Horn.

Here.

Ben Nevalier. Here. Bryce Shaneborn.

Here.

Dixie Weidman is remote. Here. Can you hear me, Dixie? Thank you. Yes. Robert. Robert Hahn.

Here.

Jason McMillan.

Here.

Roger Petrick.

Here.

Dennis Worko.

Here.

Timothy Westphal is remote. All are present.

Public comment. Is there any public comment? Anyone online at star six? Don't mute yourself. Don't hear anything. Any communications from committee members? We got the minutes from June the 4th, 2026. What's your pleasure on the minutes? I make a motion to approve the minutes.

Second.

Dixie, that's Dixie. Okay, we got a motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed?

Motion is carried. Chemical Test Section Update, Wisconsin DOT Chemical Testing, Amy Eisler.

Good afternoon, everyone. I was here on the previous TSC meeting, so I think most of you know who I'm with and what I do, but a quick recap. I work for the Chemical Test Section. We deal with just breath alcohol testing. However, we are now delving into oral fluids, which is what I'm mostly going to talk about. Basically, there are six others like me in the state, breath alcohol toxicologists, and we maintain the evidential breath alcohol testing device. There's one here in the jail, and there's one in Park Falls. Along with that, mostly what I do is teach and train law enforcement, and I testify in court, which I have to be in Barron after this. that. So I've been here for 20 years and we have been for the last 10 years been trying to get oral fluids into the law and it is now approved by the governor. A little bit of history on oral fluids. In 2016, they did a project in Dane County where they would gather a person's oral fluid and their blood at the same time, those that were suspected of driving impaired. And they compared those two in relation to Drugs, not alcohol. And they were very, very comparable, both the oral fluid and the blood. So they decided to do another study in 2019 in Manitowoc. And well, guess what happened in 2020? So that was put on hold for quite a while. And then they finished up that study, which was almost identical to the Dane County study. At this point, my administration, along with many other people throughout the state, went to the legislature with all of this, and now the governor has finally passed it, Wisconsin Act 99, which amended the Wisconsin State Statute 343-303. It also amended the ATV, UTV, boat, snowmobile, and off-highway motorcycle laws. So what this means is we can now use oral fluids on the roadside to assist law enforcement in detecting the presence of drugs. However, the oral fluid is going to be in the same administrative code as the PBT's. And what that means is it is not allowed in court as evidence. It is a screening tool for law enforcement at roadside to detect the presence of drugs to help them with their investigation. Where we are now at this point is my administration is now putting together a training program because every officer that's going to use this device must have a permit and be trained to do so. Once that training is in place, I will start reaching out to all of the law enforcement agencies and start conducting that training. In addition, my chief has to approve devices for use in Wisconsin. In other words, law enforcement just can't go out and purchase whatever they want. She will be testing devices and what I've been told is there's only about two of them out there. So there's not a lot of devices. My chief, we were just at the governor's conference on highway safety last week, and my chief does not want a device where the officer has to read a line to decide whether drugs are there or not. These devices will say positive or negative for amphetamine, benzos, cocaine, meth, opiates, THC, only delta-9, and fentanyl. So again, this will assist law enforcement roadside. Unfortunately, these devices are $5,000 apiece. They're not cheap. And there is a cartridge that can be used, and they're $25 a piece of one-time use. We are hoping that there will be grants out there. I've heard, yes, there's money out there. I've heard, no, there's not. So it's a wait and see thing. My hope is that we can at least get one for each county. This is not meant to replace DREs or what we know as drug recognition experts. It's to help assist with that. So again, roadside and officer, if they feel like the person is impaired, then they can ask for the oral fluid. The person can refuse, and there is no violation for doing so, just like the PBT. So that's basically the update on the oral fluids. And hopefully it'll be coming down the pike sometime next year. We don't have an exact date or an exact timeline on when this is all going to happen, but we hope it'll greatly assist law enforcement in their traffic investigations. That's all I have for now. Any questions?

I guess, is there a belief that at some point down the road that this test will become evidentiary?

My opinion is no, it won't in Wisconsin. It is evidentiary in some states, Alabama and New York. They don't actually use the device. They gather oral fluids in what we call a quantisol. It's basically a tube. And then they send it to a laboratory for testing. There are states that do that. I don't know if that will ever happen in Wisconsin. Anything else?

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Amy. Law enforcement reports. Mr. Hahn.

All right. So far, year to date, we are up to 30 OWI arrests thus far. We've had several motor vehicle crashes upon the state highway. Yesterday, I think, it hasn't been reported yet to the state, but we did have a UTV fatality out there on County Road D. It was in our construction zone. But the crash based upon our investigation thus far had nothing to do with our construction zone. Um, and so, you know, we're, we're working with the DNR on that, um, to try to determine what, what caused that crash. But this was outside of the flagging operations that were, were occurring. Um, The highway was doing re-shouldering work. I will say that the shoulder where the UTV went off did not give way. There was no rutting or anything like that. It doesn't appear that the shoulder had anything to do with what caused that wreck. Other than that, the K-9 units have still been out, still been busy. They've made a couple of methamphetamine and other arrests based upon traffic stops. Our rec officer will start focusing more on the UTV, ATV enforcement here coming in the fall once we get through the boating season and he can get his hours and stuff like that for done with that. Did you want to talk about the radio?

Yeah, so I'll jump in on Price County's side. So we brought a resolution to the county board to do a radio study for the county on portables or just our radio system in general, knowing that we're pretty close to end of life. The reason we're bringing it up in this room is the week of the 28th, so September 28th, the TUSA Consulting Services is going to be on site. They're the one's doing the research and the gathering all the information on recommending a new system and what is working out. Part of that on-site visit the week of the 28th, they're asking us to gather stakeholders for discussion on what your current systems are doing, what would work well, what wouldn't work well. Can we team up and have one system that everybody uses radios that would have their own channels, all kinds of options. So, We are going to be inviting the schools with their bus systems and just the schools, all the PDs, the Sheriff's Department, the Highway Department, State Patrol will reach out just if they want to be, they won't have access to what their system is in general, but also invite them, what did I say, schools, Oh, fire departments, EMS, the hospital, so that everybody who has radios and is this a future proofing saying, hey, if we have one large system where people use channels, our parks and rec, buildings and grounds, pretty much if you have radios, we want you in the room to at least discuss what you're using, one, so we don't interfere, and two, to see if there's a long-term solution for the PDs, so you don't have to have your own million-dollar system. You might be able to just deal with radios. So if there's any questions, that's the week of the 28th. That's the start of the project. They're hoping to have all their research and contacts and everything done by end of December, which then at that time the county board would review findings to determine whether or not they want to go to RFP. That'll take three to six months of if they go to RFP, and then after that we would look at a potential build of a system. So we're talking 2028 go live with that system.

All right. Okay, Park Falls PD, Marv.

No, not much to report. Push a button.

Technology. No, we've had a number of OWS, some from crashes. I'm happy to hear the drug because I've, from our department, drug arrests have one up substantially over the last five to ten years. So I think it's going to be a great tool if and when we can afford that, hopefully. But that's all I have.

The Wisconsin State Patrol. Tim? He's online, right? Yep. Okay. There he is.

We can see you, but we can't hear you.

I had heard you earlier when you jumped on. Still can't hear you.

Says you're unmuted. So it's something on your end. How about now? There you go.

There you go. All right. Uh, just a brief personnel update. Um, We were briefly without a trooper assigned to Price County when Trooper Jankowski transferred out to go to Lincoln County. Recently, Trooper Amos Balsas started in Price County. He's relatively new to us. He's been with the State Patrol for about a year, but he is bringing about 20 years of law enforcement experience with him as a investigator from Taylor County. So we're looking forward to him working in the area. And that's all I have.

Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to the Wisconsin DOT law enforcement liaison, Todd.

All right. Just another reminder, if anyone in the room or you know of anyone in your agency that wants to learn how to use community maps, please go to the startup page. We have people online willing to show you how to run the system. Second Monday of each month from noon until one. There's the example of the QR code right there on the screen, as well as the link that you'll get if you go to the startup page for community maps. So just go to your browser and do a search and you can join us. So just taking a look at the crashes in Price County since our last meeting, which was on June 4th, until I ran this a couple days ago. Looks like 43 total crashes are reported, resulted in two fatalities and 19 injuries. Didn't know about the ATV, so that's not in there, of course. Taking a look at our newest addition to community maps and that's Wistar. So now I just, what I did was I'm showing the dots on there for the crashes since our last meeting. And then those kind of blue blotches, you can kind of mistake them for lakes, but those are along your roadways. Those are heat signatures showing, you know, enforcement. So I know we have a couple of agencies in the county involved with that. So that's what you're seeing there. Um, so 164 total enforcement instances resulted in 141 citations and 57 warnings that does not include if someone was pulled over and law enforcement officer just gave him a verbal warning and sent him on their way. This has to do with tracks documents, namely citations, uniform traffic citations and warnings. So. I then did a search. Let's take a look at since the beginning of the year in Price County. Obviously, we have more crashes now. There's 120 crashes resulting in two fatalities and 30 injuries. Now let's throw Wistar over the top again. And then it becomes a little more helpful. So where are your crashes? Where's your enforcement? Are you happy with it? Is it spread out? Well, is it maybe you need improvement in certain areas or you want to get a little heavier coverage in certain areas? That's up for the administrators to decide how they want to do that. But it's a nice tool to see exactly what's going on in your county and how your folks are doing with enforcement. Then I just started looking at some other things. This is impaired crashes since the first of the year. And so a deputy, a trooper, an officer checked, hey, this impairment had something to do with this crash. And there they are. And that's the enforcement heat for impaired. So you can see where your crashes are. You can see where your enforcement is. Sometimes they coincide. Sometimes, you know, you go to a crash and someone gets arrested at the crash scene. So there you are on scene. But just something to look at. And you can do all kinds of searches. It doesn't have to be just impairment. It could be speed. It could be, you know, teen drivers, 65 plus drivers, distracted driving, you name it. So moving on, Wisconsin fatalities as of August 31st. For this year, we're at 311 crashes that involved a fatality or at least fall within that category of fatality with 331 people losing their lives. Last year, we were at 340 crashes and 366. So the numbers seem to have trended down a little bit this year so far. We're not through the summer yet, which is our biggest season, of course. So, I'd like to talk about the 2 fatals that I was aware of and 1st, 1 was county sheriff that investigated it. This occurred on June 7th at 1257 PM on state highway 111 at county J township of harmony. There's a map on the left of the crash area. When you take a look at the right, we had occupant protection, which means someone wasn't wearing a seatbelt. We had a fatality with three injuries. We had a 65-plus driver, two total vehicles, and it was a front-to-side impact accident. Um, there's the diagram that the sheriff's deputy would have completed. And then, uh, I'll read the summary here, except my windows. I got to move this out of the way. Okay. You don't want to fail to stop at stop sign on county road J and entered state highway 111. Uh, unit 2 was traveling south on state highway 111, you know, 1 struck unit 2 in the front passenger corner of unit 2. Unit 1 appeared to spin on the road, ejecting the driver of Unit 1 onto the roadway. Unit 2 entered the ditch, striking the ditch embankment with the front of Unit 2, then spinning around approximately 90 degrees. Unit 2 came to a rest facing northbound. Unit 1 came to a rest facing eastbound. Driver of Unit 1 was pronounced deceased on scene. And there's an overview of the crash scene. That's what Google Maps is showing me, what it looks like. And here's a street view and I wanted to make sure, you know, this is someone failed to stop completely is how I understood it. It wasn't like they stopped and filled the yield. They just simply blew the stop sign. Um, so, you know, 1, there is a warning sign right there saying there's an intersection ahead. At least there was when this picture was taken. So that's good. Um, here's here's the stop sign and the marker showing highway 111 and of course, that's. Kind of a view when you're actually at the stop sign, looking to the right. This is a southbound view for unit 2. So. Roadway conditions, it was dry. We had a curve in the roadway, of course, but it was fairly level. Daylight, clear weather, 55 mile per hour zone, and no roadway factors were identified. Very minimal crash history there. I ran it three, four times to make sure I was doing it right. That's the only crash I show there over the last four or five years. And I don't know if that's possible. That's what I show, so. Again, two vehicle angle crashed. Unit 1 was a 13 town and country. One occupant, that was the deceased, I would call the offending vehicle. And then Unit 2 was a 23 Volkswagen with three occupants. Unit 1 driver was a 73-year-old female, fatal injury, no medical transport, no belt, airbags were deployed, was not trapped, but was ejected totally. No alcohol or drugs were suspected, no tests given by law enforcement, and just simply failed to stop at the intersection. Unit two, you can see kind of how I grouped them together. So the driver was the 57-year-old male. There's a 54-year-old female passenger in the front seat and a 13-year-old male in the back. So the driver had serious injury. The female had serious injury. And the minor in the back had minor injuries. All were transported medically. All had belts on. All had some type of airbag deployment. The two up front were trapped. The one in the back was not. No suspicion of alcohol or drugs. No contributing action to the crash. Bob, do you have anything to add? Does that cover most of it?

Yeah, that covers it.

Okay. Moving on, I have an additional one. This also was investigated by Price Sheriff. June 23rd, 4.20 p.m. This is on State 13, about 1,000 feet north of White Rock Road. And I got to move this out of the way again. We had one fatality. It was a lane departure, no collision with other vehicle and transport. And you can see the diagram completion. Summary, Unit 1 drove southbound around a slight left curve in a 55 mile per hour zone. Unit 1 continued southbound on State Highway 13. They ran off the roadway onto the right, onto the shoulder of the southbound lane. Unit 1 appeared to enter back onto the road, then back onto the shoulder to the right of the road. Unit 1 continued on the shoulder and appeared to start entering the ditch perpendicular to the roadway. You don't want to hit a tree on the driver's side of the ditch and put it to rotate 180 degrees. There's just a Google Maps of the overview. It doesn't help much, but it's a straight road, you can see. To the highway department, this is, I'm sure, an old picture, but it looks like it was a fresh pavement here. I'm assuming that's not how the conditions were at the crash scene.

No, that was paved, what, two years ago now? Last year.

Yeah. The only reason I bring that up is, you know, when you do paving, you remove the signs sometimes. And then, of course, the signs aren't put back. So this isn't probably a very good representation of what the scene was. Uh, so we had dry, dry surface. It was straight level. I mean, they came out of a curve, but after the curve, it was straight. Uh, grade was level daylight, clear 55 mile per hour zone. No roadway factors were identified. Uh, crash history. There's four total crashes in that area over like a five year period. So not a lot. Vehicles on 11 GMC Acadia with one occupant, 41-year-old female, fatal injury, no medical transport, unknown on belt. Airbags were deployed, partially ejected. No alcohol or drugs were suspected and no tests given by law enforcement. Not unsure if they were distracted or what was going on, just simply failed to control the vehicle.

That alcohol was present.

Oh, it was? Yes. Okay. Either I got that wrong or the document didn't have it either way. Thank you for the clarification.

Anything to add at all on that one or besides that? As far as the alcohol goes, so the autopsy report revealed that. So that's probably why the crash report didn't exist.

Absolutely. Makes sense. Yep. Okay, moving on. Just a blurb from Children's Wisconsin Safe Kids. You know, kids learn how to be good drivers from their parents ever since their car seat gets turned around, they see how their parents are behaving. So stressing, buckling up every time, staying calm in traffic, avoiding use of the cell phone and following speed limits. All right, so this has been a lot of discussion throughout the state. Law enforcement in the room, have you seen this before? Does this look familiar at all? Okay, this is a flow chart that is not, it was not created by DOT. They don't necessarily back it or support it. They're not against it either. We're just putting it out there as a tool for you. My understanding is Green Bay Police Department created this document. So it might be kind of hard to see, But the idea behind this is to have some of these electric vehicles that are traveling out in the roadways, oftentimes driven by kids. It allows you to take a look at them and the type of vehicle that you have and to determine how it fits. statutorily how it can be operated on the roadway. So the lower right-hand corner, you can see the green boxes and the blue boxes on top. That's talking about what type of vehicle it is. So it could be an electric vehicle, a motor bicycle, a moped or a motorcycle. Then we move on to license needed. Do you need a license to actually operate that device? Do you need registration? Yes or no. Do you need insurance? Yes or no. And can you get an OWI on that thing? Okay. So what you do is you start up at the very top where that large black, or I'm sorry, large blue square is, and you might look at a device and say, first of all, well, is it electric or gas? And so it sends you on one side of the chart. Does it have pedals? Does it have the capability of going over 28 miles per hour? Does it have a certain wattage for the electric motor? Does it have a certain amount of CCs if it's a gas motor? And so what it does is it helps you kind of figure out what type of vehicle you have and then down below it'll tell you how you can have enforcement options. Um, sometimes people do not leave the vehicles the same. And so all of a sudden someone will have an e-bike and they'll decide to put the second motor on it. And what was an e-bike now goes way faster than ever intended. And a lot of times when you add motors, those are considered just simply motor vehicles because they don't fit under any other category. Uh, Sergeant Westfall at the previous meeting, I'm going to steal kind of your thunder a little bit, but, um, at the last meeting, he mentioned e-moto bikes and these electric dirt bikes. Some of them can go, you know, 40 plus miles an hour. They don't really fit under any of these categories. Um, and they're illegal to operate on the roadway. And I know Vilas County is very proactive in dealing with a lot of these vehicles that are legal. And Sergeant Westfall stated too, that the state patrol is, you know, stopping these people contacting oftentimes the parents having the vehicles towed. So it's really good to familiarize yourself with what's going on, especially municipalities, because I'm sure you see them, and you're probably just going to see that many more now. Sheriff in Florence County said she was down in Milwaukee recently, and she goes, there are so many kids running around with these scooters. It was like street gangs with all these scooters, you know. And if it's there, it's coming everywhere else. But any questions about that at all? Could you send that flowchart? Absolutely. It'll be put in my slides. Okay. Yep, absolutely. Okay. And I mean, by all means, share it with your deputies and officers. So, the topic that I received for this quarter is to discuss the manual on uniform traffic control devices. Highway department is more than familiar with that. But they recently updated the this early this year, and they want us to discuss this at the. So, what is it? Well, it's the national standard for traffic control devices on all roads open to public travel in the United States. And Wisconsin has a state statute that says we must have a manual, and we do, and we just updated it. And why do we have one? Well, it combines state-specific standards and guidelines to follow federal MUTCD language. We want consistency out on the roadways. Where is it? Where can I find it? If you just go to a state of Wisconsin Department of transportation, it's listed there the up to date most recent manual is there for you. So, if you're ever interested in it, or don't know a particular question, it's there much like all type of documents. There's always definitions. And so the highway department here is like every other highway department in the state. You have standards that you have to follow. Those are required or mandatory or specific specifically prohibited. When you build a road, when you sign up, you have to follow the rules. But the document also has simple guidance, which are recommended practices, but some deviation is allowed. They have options, which are statement of practice with no requirement and then support or just an informational statement. Here are some notable changes that have come about with the 11th edition. Signing for right of way at intersections. Some of the verbiage they use now in determining what you're going to do is to use the least restrictive control that provides appropriate levels of safety and efficiency. This is very popular now, and that's the vehicle speed feedback signs. Are there any in the county here? Do we have any set up?

Yeah, we do.

Okay. So you're okay if you have old ones that don't meet this criteria specifically, but I'm just going to tell you going forward, this is what the state wants. So they want black and yellow signage. So you can see that is black and yellow down below the speed limit sign. But you can use orange in work zones or green in school zones if you want to. The plaque design must be installed underneath a regulatory speed limit sign. So they don't want you to put it on a curve ahead sign or a population sign. It should be on a speed limit sign. WisDOT has approved product list created with compliance devices. So if you don't know what to buy, they have a list of really good devices that fit the mark. And also, like I said before, old compliant devices may remain until the end of their useful life. So if you have one already and it's not yellow, don't worry about it. Any questions on that?

What about if it's not on a speed sign?

So where do you have it right now? South end of Phillips. Okay, is it on State Road? Yep. Yeah, you got to get a permit if it's on a state road. So if no one's talking to me about it, you know, this is really going forward. You know what I mean? I by no means carry any authority to say, yes, you can do that. I can assure you of that. Emergency routing signs and plaques. So you can see right now there's alternative, you know, like I-39 that's going away. They're going to move more to these green emergency route two signs. Don't be surprised if you see those. And on the right over here, I saw a bunch of the white Adopt-A-Highway signs. They want to get away from those white regulatory signs, and so those are going to be blue going forward. So that's what you'll see from now on. Six-inch lines used for state roads. We've been doing that for quite a while here, I think, but the locals can still use four- to six-inch markings if they want. Rectangular rapid flashing beacons, if you put any of those up in your jurisdiction, make sure you look into that because there's new requirements for that. On the left, that sign on the far left, that's the old school zone sign. The one on the right is going to be the ones that you're going to see going forward. And if you have any questions about signage, Ryan Myers, the guy down in Madison, that's his contact information. So that would be a good question if you want. Shoot him an email. He's great to talk with. He will help you out with that.

All right. Any questions at all? Thank you.

Thank you, Todd. Traffic safety engineer, Randy.

Okay.

I have some construction updates and then also one operational and safety assessment.

I can't find it. It's here.

There.

Okay, so again, 2026 construction project updates and then an operational and safety assessment. And if you ever want to get updates on construction projects happening in your county, you can always visit 511 Wisconsin. First one here is on County D. It's a 10.3 mile safety improvement in Phillips. I was unable to get an updated construction date. This is still ongoing, though? This project? Does anyone know?

Okay. Yeah, so majority of it is completed. The guardrail is done. So part of it is our project. Part of it is a DOT project. Um, but, uh, so the only thing that's left really after probably Monday will be the line painting, which is supposed to be done on the following Thursday.

Okay.

Yep.

Okay. Thank you. Um, so the next one. I mean, unless you guys want more information, I'll send these slides out. I have gone over these before, but just for an update. No, we can just stay on this one.

That works.

Hills Road bridge replacement estimated construction June 2026. So I'm assuming this bridge has been completed by now or the Squaw Creek Road.

No. So it has not started yet. So Pfeiffer Brothers, to my knowledge, has yet to complete the SIP for this project. And I'm not sure exactly at what point the DOT is going to not let them put this bridge in yet this year because it's getting to be so late. Just because it's asphalt, there's time constraints on when you can place asphalt.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Thanks for the update on that one. You can go to the next slide. And then there's another bridge replacement on Larkin Road from May 2026 to November 2027. Larkin Road will be closed during constructions. Road closure signs will be placed at adjacent intersections and alternative routes are available.

So they just started this week.

Okay.

They just closed it down. So they'll start the project.

Okay.

You can go to the next one. All right, and my one operational and safety assessment, I got a request from the owner of Nine Mile Tavern. I don't know if he has tried to reach out to you guys at all, but he was requesting a pedestrian sign across Wisconsin 70. I did look at the crash history. There was one crash from 2016 to 2026 in this specific area. There's some on each side of the business, but at this specific area he was requesting, it was a run off the road crash. He had to cross the center line and drove into the ditch. And so we did not identify a crash or a pedestrian accident. safety pattern to warrant a crossing sign. And so we will not be placing one there, but I did want to let everyone know that I did get a request for this. There was also, he also requested for pavement to check the pavement markings and possibly move the passing zone. I am not a pavement engineer though, so that request got forwarded to our pavement engineer and I don't believe that they'll be moving the passing zone in that location. Okay. And then that was all I had. Does anyone have any questions or comments that you'd like me to bring back?

Just on that Hills Bridge, is there any way we can just pull on that until next year? Because I currently do have a bus that goes across it every day.

It's not my call.

I thought I'd ask.

If I find out the status of that, I can text Ryan right now and actually see if actually Fiverr Brothers, they've had a number of issues this year, so it is even uncertain whether or not they're going to function much longer.

Thank you, Randy.

School transportation report. Jason? I have nothing to report other than first week of school, so...

Other reports, attorney legal, Bryce? Nothing to report. Citizen member Dixie, do you have anything?

Nothing to report.

Thank you. I have nothing to report. Roger?

I think I pretty much covered everything that we have going on after D and H are completed. The shoulder and painting, we're just going to go back to general maintenance.

Are you guys done on S?

Yes, that's all we're going to do on S for the time being. It's just a little few patches here in the curves to just try to make it a little safer to negotiate the curves.

Yep. No, I just was checking. Thank you.

Thank you, Roger. Next meeting date is December 3rd. Unless somebody has something, we stand adjourned.