March 17-- Tulsa Police Capt. Travis Yates has made a name for himself by telling fellow police officers to do what most drivers take for granted -- buckle up and obey the speed limit.
"It's a cultural shift in our profession," he said. "We need to stop taking unnecessary risks."
Yates was instrumental in overhauling the Tulsa Police Department's driver training program in 2007 and has been recognized as one of the country's most influential driving instructors and advocates of officer safety.
For the first time since 1997, vehicle-related incidents dropped below gunfire as the leading cause of death for on-duty police officers nationwide in 2011.
Many in the profession believe that Yates had a hand in that, Law Officer magazine Editor Dale Stockton said.
The San Diego-based publication named Yates the nation's top driving instructor in 2008.
"He's been a leader," Stockton said, adding that Yates has been described as "almost evangelistic when he talks about officer safety."
Eight police officers nationwide have died in crashes this year, three fewer than at this time last year, according to The Officer Down Memorial Page, a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring fallen law enforcement officers.
Strictly counting traffic accidents in which officers were driving, five officers have died so far in 2012 and 43 died in 2011, down from 52 in 2010, the organization's data show.
Yates, who teaches police-driving classes nationwide and has shaped state and national safety campaigns, said he and other instructors are finally persuading their colleagues to follow some of the most basic rules of the road.
Research has shown that fewer than 50 percent of police officers regularly wear their seat belts and that officers drive faster than necessary, even when responding to emergency calls, Yates said.
"Citizens say, 'Well, it's because they think they're above the law,' " he said. "It's not because we think we're above the law.
"In law enforcement, we do things the way we do them because we've always done them that way. Not everyone likes change."
Attuned to danger
Police officers' personalities might be the biggest factor, Yates said. Anyone who wants a dangerous job probably likes taking risks.
"So much of their job is risky that when it's not risky they feel like they have to take risks, which may mean, 'I'm going to drive a little faster to that call or not wear a seat belt,'" he said. "It's the same men and women who will run to the gunfire instead of run away from it."
But that's OK, he added.
"We need our men and women to run to gunfire when others don't," he said. "We just need them to know when to take a risk and when not to."
He said instructors also blame some of the profession's most common misconceptions -- such as that arriving sooner can help catch criminals red-handed or somehow prevent something bad from happening.
Yates tells trainees that officers can rarely point to examples of the former and, with regard to the latter, "well, something bad's already happened."
Police can be justified in breaking the speed limit during emergencies, but Yates said they often go too fast for the conditions.
He said his own instructor in the 1993 Tulsa police academy repeated another common misconception -- that officers shouldn't wear seat belts because they restrict movement during ambushes.
Ambushes on police are rare, but officers often treat them as commonplace, Yates said. Far more deaths can be prevented by wearing seat belts, he said.
Safety at home
Before 2007, Tulsa police trained on a predictable driving course with only traffic cones to test their reflexes, Yates said. The agency has since added stop signs, moving vehicles and other real-life obstacles in scenarios designed to make officers think on their feet, particularly during high-speed chases.
The goal is for officers to know when the risk to the public outweighs the benefit of speeding to catch a criminal.
The next training session is in April. Instructors prepared by driving the course themselves Tuesday.
Cpl. Dan Ward, a Tulsa police instructor, said, "We need (officers) to think, 'If I'm driving fast, would the average citizen or my boss look at it and say, 'I can understand why you're running so fast with your lights and sirens on'?' "
Yates believes that the training is working. No on-duty Tulsa officer who was driving has died in a wreck since 1963, and instructors said the number of officer-involved collisions has decreased for several years.
"What we did in '07 is we changed it all, and I've been pushing that philosophy nationally," he said.
National influence
Yates is a co-founder of Below 100, a national campaign to reduce police officer deaths into double-digits largely by emphasizing traffic safety.
In 2009, he founded Police Driving International, which offers officers a four- to eight-hour course on driver safety.
Yates posts police-related news and driving tips on the group's website, which can be found online at , and writes safety columns that appear there and on other websites aimed at those in the profession.
The International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, along with Law Officer magazine, named Yates the 2008 Law Officer Trainer of the Year -- a "big deal in law enforcement," Stockton said.
Yates said he doesn't know more than other officers but was forced into being a poster child for driving safety because he was one of the first to advocate it in so many ways.
"I've had people come up and say, 'I used to do this, but now I won't,'" he said.
"I think we're seeing a real change as agencies adapt to what we've been saying."
Officer traffic deaths*
2011 43
2010 52
2009 40
2008 46
2007 63
*Nationwide deaths of on-duty officers who were driving
Source: The Officer Down Memorial Page
History of state's driving deaths
Eighty-two on-duty Oklahoma law enforcement officers have died in vehicle-related accidents, according to a nonprofit group dedicated to honoring fallen officers.
Fifty-six of them were driving when they died or suffered injuries that later killed them, data collected by the Officer Down Memorial Page show.
Sixteen were in pursuit, seven were riding motorcycles, and 11 were struck while on foot, according to the data.
The last deaths were those of Pottawatomie County reserve deputies Timothy Lowry and Michael Roberts, whose patrol car hit a tractor-trailer rig after cresting a hill Sept. 30.
George Green Jr. was the last officer to die in a Tulsa-area crash. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol captain died Oct. 26, 2010, after a dump truck hit his patrol car at the intersection of Oklahoma 97 and Interstate 44 in Sapulpa.
Tulsa police have had eight traffic-related deaths, and the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has had one.
Three Tulsa police officers were struck by vehicles or were victims of vehicular assault in the 1980s, but the last to die while driving was Officer George Brady in 1963.
Brady was chasing a juvenile driver at 90 mph when a vehicle pulled in front of him and he swerved into oncoming traffic.
The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office's last traffic death was that of Deputy Joe Clark in 1959.
The earliest record of a vehicle-related officer death in Oklahoma is that of Muskogee Traffic Officer Leslie Jennings, who was struck by a vehicle in 1924.
Including vehicle-related accidents, 462 on-duty Oklahoma or Indian Territory officers have died in the line of duty since 1890, when Oklahoma County Officer Peter Anderson was shot after serving just one day.
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
Copyright 2012 - Tulsa World, Okla.
