CITY OF GRANTS, N.M. – The City of Grants is currently suffering an all too familiar epidemic of off highway vehicles, commonly referred to as OHV, racing through the city streets and creating dangerous driving conditions for everyone on the street. To counter the reckless driving by OHV, the Grants Police Department is ramping up their proactive approach of education and are preparing to impose stricter penalties on those OHV drivers that are making the roads dangerous.
Complaints have flooded GPD about dangerous OHV drivers to the point where a single officer could have a stack of complaints about three inches tall on their desk at any given moment, according to GPD Lieutenant Jeff Marez.
What is an OHV
An OHV is “An off-highway vehicle (OHV) is any motorized land vehicle predominantly used for recreational purposes on unimproved roads, trails, and other approved use areas not suitable for conventional two-wheel-drive vehicular travel,” according to offroad-ed.com
OHVs typically consist of fourwheelers and dirt bikes, but could include other vehicles like three-wheelers, quads, and Polaris-style carts.
Why is this happening?
“This is something that every town in America is experiencing right now,” Lt. Marez said, as the days grow longer and as people emerge from COVID-19 caused lockdowns, cities across the country are seeing large influxes of reckless driving from riders of OHVs.
From complaints to Cibola County Regional Dispatch to complaints at the Grants City Council, citizens across the city are in an uproar as OHV riders cause dangerous driving situations for drivers. Reports of drivers being forced out of their lanes, racers passing cars on the left and right sides, and OHV riders passing through traffic without yielding to oncoming cars have flooded the GPD.
What is GPD doing about it?
The GPD is taking a two-pronged approach, taking the opportunity to be proactive, and strengthening the penalties for OHV drivers who travel recklessly.
Proactive: Lt. Marez explained that GPD has had an ongoing initiative of educating drivers about the laws and rules in the city when it comes to vehicles that are typically illegal on street roads. In the City of Grants, four-wheelers and dirt bikes are illegal to drive on the street along with other OHVs, unless those four-wheelers and dirt bikes have the proper registration, insurance, and the driver has a special endorsement from the Department of Motor Vehicle to drive a motorcycle.
To ensure that an OHV is street legal, Lt. Marez encourages parents to visit the police department at 105 Roosevelt Avenue, the police can inspect the vehicle and make sure that it is okay to drive. Specifically, GPD will look for: Is the vehicle street legal?; Does the driver have a valid driver’s license?; If the vehicle is a dirt bike, does the driver have a DMV endorsement on their license allowing them to ride motorcycles? This is an endorsement on the license of the driver, which can be searched by any law enforcement agency; Does the vehicle have valid registration and insurance?; If the vehicle does not have a windshield, does the driver have eye protection? Lt. Marez explained that while helmets are not required by city law, eye protection is required for every vehicle without a windshield. Helmets are required for all riders and drivers of OHVs under the age of 18; Does the driver know their hand signals?
The police department will explain the city laws and rules for driving OHVs on city streets and even provide parents with a copy of City Ordinance 16-1214 which allows properly licensed OHVs to be driven on city streets.
Stricter penalties: Lt. Marez said that there is a misconception that GPD allows OHV riders to drive recklessly, this is not the case. He explained that GPD has a policy not to aggress a situation, which means that the police are not allowed to chase after an OHV rider who flees from them. Lt. Marez explained that this policy prevents the road from becoming more dangerous, and that OHVs can travel where police cruisers cannot, cutting through small alleyways or traveling through non-road conditions. Because of this, GPD has begun holding on to the OHVs of drivers they do catch.
“If cited, reckless driving is an arrestable offense,” Lt. Marez explained, “We will hold on to the bike until the court case is over.”
Lt. Marez explained that several of the reckless OHV drivers, many of whom are underaged, don’t recognize that they are turning an already arrestable offense of reckless driving into a much more serious charge of fleeing a police officer when they don’t stop for an officer attempting to pull them over.
“All drivers must follow the street laws, otherwise it just becomes dangerous for everyone,” Lt. Marez said.
Do the police have anything better to do?
Lt. Marez explained that GPD received a complaint about the new enforcement of OHVs, with a community member complaining that the police should have more important things to do than chasing after kids having fun.
“Our number one goal is to keep our kids safe. Our kid’s safety is our primary objective, and we will keep them safe. The hardest thing for us to do – for any officer to do – is tell a mom and dad that their son or daughter isn’t coming home.”
Has stepping up enforcement helped?
On June 6 a GPD officer attempted to stop a reckless OHV driver, the driver fled the officer, and because of GPD’s policy on non-aggression, the driver managed to get away. The GPD officer continued down the street and came across the same OHV which had broken down, the officer cited the underage driver, according to Lt. Marez.
The new enforcement and proactive measures only recently came into effect, but Lt. Marez said, “Since stepping up enforcement, [OHV speeding] has been falling,” he explained that the department expects the reckless driving to stop as more people recognize the danger of their driving.