ST. GEORGE, Utah — Between a driver allegedly going 115 miles per hour with a baby unrestrained, to a drug bust, to a Christmas Eve fatality, there's been a lot of talk about Interstate 15 in southern Utah lately.
“We do get a lot of Salt Lake traffic because no one wants to be in the snow,” said Taj Eldridge, a Utah Highway Patrol trooper based in southern Utah. “They want to come down and play down in St. George, where it's nice and warm, you know? It's 60, 65 degrees ... and traveling through to Las Vegas or California, they come through here.”
Troopers have one big piece of advice as far as staying safe on the I-15 corridor:
Be nice.
“It's a lack of patience and a lack of respect for other people,” Eldridge said. “Some people think, 'Because I'm in a bigger vehicle' or 'Because I think I'm better than someone else that I can just push them off the roadway,' which isn't true.”
While some locals on social media in southern Utah blame rude drivers in big pickups, Eldridge says they’re not alone.
“It's everybody,” he said. “It's someone from a big rig and a semi to a small sedan. It's the person, not the vehicle.”
On Christmas morning, UHP said a man was arrested after the vehicle he was driving between Cedar City and Summit on northbound I-15 was clocked going at 115 miles per hour. They say he didn’t have a driver’s license and a woman in the front seat had an infant on her lap without restraint.
But Eldridge says troopers are not seeing an increase in speeders as much as something else.
“It's the aggressive driving and the road rage that we've seen,” he said.
On Christmas Eve on Old Highway 91 — the alternative route from St. George to Arizona — a woman died three miles from the Utah border when Arizona authorities say a drunk driver going north crossed the center line and slammed into her vehicle.
Many locals complain about how I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge or Old Highway 91 are the only ways to stay on the road to Vegas and beyond. There’s an entire Facebook group, called "Pain in the Gorge," devoted to that.
“There's one way in and one way out,” Eldridge said. “And so that means we have to be courteous with our driving. We have to be safe.”
And then there’s the drug problem. On Dec. 21, a trooper said they trailed a car driving suspiciously just after it passed the Arizona border into Utah, and they arrested a man after they found 100,000 fentanyl pills inside.
“We're in a major corridor with the interstates that we have with 15, 70, 80,” Eldridge said. “And a lot of it comes from the southern area of the United States, and it comes right through here, traveling to Salt Lake and all the way through the country. So it's a huge problem.”
And there's also that one piece of advice you pretty much hear every New Year's Eve, especially those whose party alcohol level is a little high.
“If you're going to drive hammered, you're gonna get nailed, so be careful.,” Eldridge said.
