Vail mayor calls for $20,000 fines for violation of traction laws on I-70
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Vail Mayor Travis Coggin wants to see massive fines levied on drivers who violate Colorado’s traction laws on Interstate 70.
The breaking point was a Dec. 30 incident in which more than a dozen semitrailers became stuck on Vail Pass with no chains during a snowstorm. The mess took hours to clean up, and as Highway 24 was also closed at the time, passage was blocked for motorists attempting to travel from Vail to Denver during the busy holiday period.
Sgt. Patrick Rice, a Colorado State Patrol public relations officer who used to work the Vail Pass corridor, told the Vail Daily that when the weather turns quickly, sometimes the chain-up protocol won’t be initiated in time, and semitrailers will get past the Vail chain-up station and onto Vail Pass before the chain-up lights are illuminated, telling drivers to exit the interstate and chain up.
Other times, Rice said, drivers will claim they didn’t feel it was necessary to chain up at that point.
“Lots of times 鈥� just from my own personal experience 鈥� you stop a truck, or you’re out with them because they’re stuck, and they won’t ever admit that they passed the chain station knowingly, they’ll say something like, ‘the roads were totally dry at the chain station,'” Rice said.
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Coggin, at the Vail Town 撸先生’s Jan. 7 meeting, described the situation as being “offensive to our community,” and said something needs to change.
“It’s just wrong,” he said.
The laws regarding traction control on roads in Colorado were revised in 2019 with , which specifically called out Interstate 70 through Eagle County as a zone where commercial vehicle drivers were required to carry chains between Sept. 1 and May 31.
to include many other highways around the state, also stipulating that commercial vehicles were no longer allowed to use the left lane in tricky travel spots on I-70 including Glenwood Canyon, Dowd Junction, Vail Pass, both sides of the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels, Georgetown Hill and Floyd Hill.
House Bill 19-1207 also enacted a $500 fine for anyone who violates the traction control law and causes a closure of one or more lanes of traffic.
Coggin said the fine does not come close to going far enough.
“$500 clearly does not change anyone’s mind,” Coggin said. “There needs to be points, or there needs to be a $20,000 fine.”
Vail Town 撸先生 member Barry Davis said he recently became stuck on Vail Pass during an extended closure and was forced to sleep in his car with his son.
Coggin said the council, along with the counties of Eagle, Summit, Clear Creek, Jefferson, Lake, Pitkin “and every municipality in between” should draft a letter to Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Legislature calling for change.
“It’s a fix that we can do, they just need the political willpower to do it, and it is decades past time,” he said.
Coggin received unanimous support from the rest of the Vail Town 撸先生 in sending the letter and also invited Jonathan Levine of Vail Black Car to speak on the issue.
Levine said based on his conversations with area law enforcement, he believes the officers who enforce the chain-up laws are the key to making it work.
“The biggest problem we have is getting enforcement,” Levine said. “We just need to find a way to get more officers to volunteer, at time and a half, to enforce it.”
