speeding 15 M hour over the limit even hitting 85 letting your vehicle run idle for hours you might not do that but people are with State vehicles that you pay for new GPS tracking technology has that information in it Chief investigator Len bestto filed a records request to get them let's start with some good news about the driving habits of state employees in most of our state Vehicles the use of seat belts one of the most tried and ways to stay safe is done 96% of the time in state Vehicles a
ccording to the GPS technology now in place this sounds okay um it could be 100 we as a state agency need to ensure that the employees that we want to promulgate these policies follow it to a a much more finer detail than the general public the GPS tracks a lot of metrics we just asked for a small slice for starters one was people driving a state vehicle over 85 mph in the last quarter of 2023 the state says this happened almost 56,000 times I mean I understand if they're driving to an emergency
but it still creates unsafe situations for other people on the roads if state government who's telling us to do it aren't doing it then what right do we have to tell the general public Connecticut State Police are not included in this data they have their own vehicle Fleet the state wouldn't give us anyone on cash camera to explain all of this via email it said a lot of times folks going over 85 are either in the Department of Correction Encon Police Department of Motor Vehicles or other state
law enforcement that in many cases are rushing to the scene of an emergency and also consider this for every time they go over 85 and in the same instance go under 85 and then back over 85 again that counts as two separate events we also checked out plain Garden variety speeding 15 m mph or more over the limit State Vehicles were tracked doing this almost 934 th000 times between October and the end of December last year or about 3.4% of the time they were on the roads if you're talking you know
doing 40 and a 25 what if there's kids playing in that area another stat that got our attention was time Vehicles spent idling burning fuel but not going anywhere the GPS data obtained by NBC Connecticut investigates indicates State vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2023 were idling 30% of the time State Vehicles were operating the state points out for this particular data set this includes people who are out on the roads doing Patrol work or just don't even have an office and they're on the roa
d 247 365 they're either in their vehicle riding reports or in their vehicle sometimes just trying to stay warm or stay cool there's a lot of paperwork involved and I would totally understand like a police officer like during a storm like a rainy day or something you know they're leaving their car idling this data delivery system for State Vehicles just got up and running as for the stats of State Vehicles going over 85 mph that comes out to less than half a percent of all the miles driven with
State Vehicles monitor Len bestof NBC Connecticut investigates
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