OHP Mileage Restriction Still In Effect For Busy Holiday Season

It’s that time of year when we hit the road to join family and celebrate the holidays.

This is one of the biggest travel times of the year; according to AAA, more than 90 million people are expected to hit the roads.

And while the number of people traveling is up, the number of OHP troopers patrolling state highways is down, and the mileage restriction on OHP troopers is impacting their ability to police this holiday season.

"The 100-mile restriction, per day, per trooper is not lifted due to the holiday, due to the bad weather," said Trooper Dwight Durant.

The biggest change this year for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is less preventative patrolling.

Durant said, "Back and forth looking for drunk drivers, trying to protect people from those people, it's not going to happen."

Instead, troopers will be forced to spend most of their time waiting and responding to accidents.

"So, once they get that work they are going to look and see where they are at on miles, and, most likely, they are going to go to headquarters or somewhere and they are going to wait on the next call," Durant said.

He said the state has no leniency when it comes to OHP's travel limit.

"We don't want to go sit, we want to go to work," said Durant.

If they go over one day, they must drive less the next.

"It has to balance out. There is a limit, it is 100 miles and it is real," Durant said.

The restriction is making it hard to protect and enforce as millions head to the roads.

Durant said, "It hurts our ability to do our core function, which is protect the people."

Durant said one of OHP's concerns is that if they cannot do traffic stops and make themselves visible then people might be less likely to obey the rules of the road, and accident numbers could go up.

OHP said funding problems don't seem to be going away anytime soon.

There is no trooper academy this year, meaning there will be no new hires in the coming year.

Also, because of attrition and retirement, OHP said there will be fewer troopers statewide next year than officers working for the Tulsa Police Department.