We're talking five, seven, even fifteen CHP officers spotted on a single drive. One Bay Area commuter reported counting nine officers on a two-hour trip between Oakland and Hayward alone. Another had the pleasure of crossing all three bridges in a single day and saw "no fewer than fifteen chippies with folks pulled over."

So what's going on? CHP launched a 24-hour enforcement blitz specifically aimed at curbing speeding — a coordinated, statewide effort rather than the usual scattered patrol presence Bay Area drivers have grown accustomed to ignoring. For context, most commuters report seeing zero to one officers on a typical drive. This was a dramatic change.

Here's our take: this is actually good.

We're generally skeptical when government agencies flex their authority, but traffic enforcement is one of the few areas where the state has a clear, legitimate role — keeping people alive on public roads. Bay Area freeways have become lawless stretches where doing 85 in a 65 is just "keeping up with traffic." As one local put it bluntly: "People drive like maniacs with no consequences."

The real question isn't whether we need enforcement blitzes. It's why we need them at all. If CHP had maintained consistent, visible patrols instead of letting highways become free-for-alls punctuated by occasional crackdowns, drivers might actually internalize that speed limits exist.

One-day surges make for good press releases, but they're a band-aid. Consistent enforcement changes behavior. Sporadic enforcement just creates a lottery — and Bay Area drivers have learned they usually win.

We'd love to see CHP take the resources it marshals for these blitzes and spread them across the calendar. Fewer splashy campaigns, more steady presence. That's the kind of government spending we can actually get behind: visible, accountable, and protecting people who just want to get home in one piece.