If you haven’t seen any crazy drivers around North Texas lately, you haven’t been on the roads. Motorists treat red lights as stop signs — or ignore them altogether. They zoom at 55 mph on streets with a posted 35 mph speed limit. They slalom down freeways, distracted by cellphones.

Many of us picked up bad habits during the pandemic, when roads were empty, and it’s time to unlearn them now. Thanks to the Dallas Police Department, which has a new focus on traffic enforcement, reckless drivers could soon learn that those bad habits can be very expensive. The department launched Operation Slowdown to crack down on dangerous motorists.

In two weeks, officers have handed out 2,058 citations and 339 warnings. They’ve used data to scan the city for locations with the highest number of speeding-related crashes and have increased enforcement in those places.

Cynics may grouse that the city just wants to issue citations to collect fines. For our part, we welcome safer streets and more police presence, and we suspect most Dallasites do, too. Traffic wrecks are far more costly, to people and property, than most drivers realize.

For the past two years, Dallas has experienced a little more than 200 traffic fatalities annually. There were tens of thousands of wrecks during that period, and many of those caused injuries and property damage.

It would be interesting to know how much money the city of Dallas spends cleaning up after preventable wrecks. A Wednesday afternoon crash in north Oak Cliff on Beckley Avenue involved a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus, a FedEx delivery truck and at least two passenger cars. All were badly damaged, with debris scattered across the entire intersection.

A large traffic light was knocked down, and the delivery truck ended up mashed against a utility pole, which thankfully didn’t break. Two ambulances, a fire truck and multiple units from DART and Dallas police had to secure the scene, direct traffic and investigate what happened. We couldn’t obtain the accident report by the time of this writing, but we wonder whether speeding — perhaps someone trying to beat a red light at that broad intersection — factored in the mishap.

Most traffic accidents aren’t accidental. They may be unintended, but there are specific factors that often produce wrecks: speeding, distractions, failing to yield during left turns, alcohol and drug use, and running red lights. We know how to drive more safely — and if we forget, Dallas police officers will be waiting to remind us.

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