They can go 15 miles per hour over the speed limit, even up to 135 miles per hour, and leave their vehicles idling for hours.
You may not have done that, but the people who own state cars have – and you paid the price.
New GPS tracking technology recorded that information.
NBC CT Investigates filed a records request to obtain some of the new data from the fourth quarter of 2023 (October to December).
Let’s start with some good news about state employees’ state vehicle driving habits.
According to GPS technology currently installed in vehicles owned by the Department of CT, the use of seat belts, one of the most proven and practical ways to stay safe, will be on state-owned vehicles by the fourth quarter of 2023. This was done in 96% of cases. Administrative Services (DAS).
“That’s OK. Maybe 100. [percent]” said Sincela Mickens of Hartford.
State Sen. Tony Fann (R-Fairfield) added, “If we’re talking about reducing speeding and distracted driving, as a state agency, the officials who are promulgating these policies need to do more and more. We need to make sure that the policy is followed,” he added. , more detailed than the average person. Because if the state government is telling us to do something and we’re not doing it, why tell the public? ”
GPS tracks many metrics. For starters, I only asked for a tiny slice.
One was people driving state vehicles over 85 miles per hour. The state said there were about 56,000 such incidents in the last quarter of 2023.
The Connecticut State Police is not included in this data. The agency operates its own fleet of vehicles.
The state wasn’t going to give anyone to explain all of this on camera. But the email said multiple times that employees over the age of 85 work for the Department of Corrections, Encon Police Department, Department of Transportation and other state law enforcement agencies and are often rushed to the scene of emergencies. .
Every time you went over 85 mph, went below 85 mph, and then went over 85 mph again in the same case, it was counted as two separate events.
“I understand if you’re driving to an emergency situation, but you’re still creating a dangerous situation for other people on the road,” said South Windsor resident Jennifer Godea.
We also checked for normal garden-variety speeding, going more than 15 miles per hour over the limit.
From October of last year to the end of December, state vehicles were tracked almost 934,000 times, or about 3.4% of the time they were on the road.
Ashley Alexis, a Bristol resident, expressed displeasure that just a few state employees were doing this.
“If we’re talking about getting a 40 out of 25, what if kids were playing in that area?” Alexis said.
Another statistic that caught our attention was the amount of time a vehicle spends idling, burning fuel but not going anywhere.
GPS data obtained by NBC CT Investigates shows state vehicles were idle 30% of the time they were in service in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The state noted that this particular area of data often involves people on patrol or working in the field 24/7. They’re filling out reports in their cars, and sometimes they’re just trying to stay warm or cool.
“There’s a lot of paperwork to go through,” said Gentry Stewart, a Simsbury resident. “I can understand why police leave their cars idling during storms or rainy days.”
As for statistics on state vehicles traveling over 135 mph, they account for less than 0.5 percent of the total number of state vehicle miles driven that are monitored.
