By Kayla Tucker
mlive.com
MUSKEGON, Mich. — A new software powered by data-collecting artificial intelligence is giving Muskegon police more insight on speeding within the city.
AI software Urban SDK collects traffic data to give police a better insight into where drivers are speeding, where accidents are happening and where traffic may be congested.
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The city of Muskegon has signed on for a three-year contract with Urban SDK for an annual fee of $26,742. The police department has been using the tool for five months now.
The software pulls data from vehicles 2007 and newer, as well as Michigan Department of Transportation traffic data, translating it into general estimates of vehicle speeds by measuring travel time and distance along road segments within the city.
Public Safety Director Tim Kozal said the program has been a “wonderful” assist to the job, in both verifying speeding complaints and targeting specific times and locations to deploy officers where speeding is occurring.
The program does not read license plates or track cell phone data, Kozal said, and does not provide any personal driver data to the department.
Instead, the program may show that a segment of drivers are speeding during a specific four-hour time window.
An officer can be directed to monitor traffic during that specific time window at a location in the city, “instead of throwing darts at the wall and trying to figure out what time I need to have an officer out there,” said Lt. Casey Bringedahl , who oversees the AI tool within the department.
It also allows officers to look proactively at seasonal traffic trends.
The data does not differentiate between vehicle types like cars, semi-trucks and motorcycles.
“This is merely a guide,” Bringedahl said. “It’s not the be all, end all. I can’t say that at 8 p.m. on a Saturday I had a vehicle going through the intersection at 96 miles an hour, but it’s a tool that we can use to identify those areas and make targeted enforcement.”
The data can also help the city’s roads department when measuring traffic volume in areas slated for construction and determining different types of traffic lights and traffic control devices.
Traffic volume can also help the planning and zoning department when working with a potential new business looking to enter the city.
The city receives regular speeding complaints, primarily on Lakeshore Drive in the Nims and Lakeside neighborhoods.
Looking at the data, the officers said most drivers are going 35 miles per hour or less in that area, which matches the speed limit.
“You might get your one-off that goes through there at 42 – it’s not saying that that doesn’t happen, but it’s saying overwhelmingly, yeah, people are going less than 35,” Bringedahl said, adding that a pedestrian standing next to a road may perceive cars as going faster than they actually are.
“It is certainly intimidating… If you see a vehicle that is actually doing 25 or 30 or 35 and you’re right up by the roadway, that’s a lot faster than it looks when you’re that close to the vehicle. So this kind of helps us to determine: Do we need to put officers out there? Or not, it’s just a one-off complaint.”
Some of the city’s high-traffic areas include sections of Apple Avenue , Getty Street and Sherman Avenue .
Muskegon police are typically pulling over drivers going more than 5 to 10 miles per hour over the speed limit and it’s at the officer’s discretion to issue a warning or a ticket.
In Muskegon County, speeders can face ticket costs between $125 to $210, depending on how fast above the speed limit the driver was going and if it was on a road or interstate.
The department is not fully staffed, so Kozal said he can’t often take officers off of patrolling and station them at areas where potential speeding is taking place.
Right now, there are 50 patrol officers, including detectives, and 17 command staff, which includes lieutenants, sergeants, captains and the director.
The department is currently looking to hire two recruits in the police academy, but there are also two upcoming retirements. Kozal said the department needs “good quality candidates” to apply and hopes to have five to six more recruits in the next academy round.
With more officers, there can be more efforts put into patrolling the road for speeding, community-based policing and establishing a K-9 unit.
“We want to be more proactive than reactive to the complaints,” Kozal said.
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