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Utah troopers respond to more than 100 crashes amid winter weather Sunday

Posted at 5:40 PM, Mar 04, 2018
and last updated 2018-03-04 19:40:38-05

SALT LAKE CITY – If you woke up to decent roads Sunday morning, you probably slept in.

By Sunday afternoon the roads were mostly dry, though with some lingering pockets of slush.

But while its duration may have been brief, the storm still made its presence felt. Utah Highway Patrol reports they responded to 135 crashes in Salt Lake and Utah counties since midnight Sunday.

“Mostly speed; a lot of it was just people really being reckless, not taking into consideration the amount of slush that was on the roads," Sgt. Jalaine Hawkes said of the cause of those crashes.

She says bad tires and bad driving affects others.

“You’re impacting the people that you either caused a crash, you're impacting the people that you might crash into, and you're impacting me and my people because you're putting us out there on the roadways in unsafe conditions," Hawkes said.

No one hit a trooper this storm, but they did hit plows.

Many  people slowed down.

“I’m heavily overly cautious. I'm always the slow driver in the right lane when it's snowing out” said Zack Franzoni.

Others did not. Sunday's head-scratcher is a car in a ditch, on a golf course—a couple hundred yards off the street.

Sgt. Hawkes said that besides the usual problems with excessive speed, she saw a lot of bad tire issues Sunday. She said tire tread is really important when the road is wet or slushy.