Since the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office stopped responding to crashes on state roads, the Florida Highway Patrol says they've had a lot more work on their hands.

“We’re struggling but yes, we’ll make it,” said Captain Keith Gaston with FHP.

He says when compared to August 2011, this year in August they saw a 238 percent increase in the amount of traffic crashes they respond to.

FHP used to primarily respond to Interstate crashes, whereas now they have to respond to secondary roadways.

“This is a common thing throughout the state where every one of the agencies is having to do more,” Gaston said.

He says his biggest problem right now is the amount of time it takes to drive from one crash to the next.  It has always been a problem for FHP, but now they have more zones to cover.

According to Gaston, sometimes it can take FHP 30 minutes to respond to a crash during the typical morning or midday traffic scenario.  But on a rainy afternoon, he said sometimes it will take them two or three hours to get to a crash.

In one example, Gaston said an officer finishing a crash on San Jose Blvd may have to drive all the way to Regency Square for the next crash.

He says they’ve had to do a lot of officer reallocation.  If he could, he says he would keep certain officers dedicated to some of the main secondary roadways to keep response times down.

But Gaston says he can’t because he has more crashes for nearly the same staff.

“There’s less time to be proactive where we’re reactive to, not only the traffic crashes, but to other law enforcement incidents,” Gaston said.

Recently the FHP had advertisements about D.U.I. checkpoints and patrols on Friday and Saturday evenings.

“Where we used to have five, six, maybe ten people out on those patrols, we’ve had to drop down to just one or two people that would be available to do that type of patrol,” Gaston said.

Still, Gaston is hopeful.  This week he says they’ve gotten four new troopers right out of patrol school, which he says is actually a “tremendous” increase for FHP.

He says they’re averaging about an hour to complete a crash where an officer doesn't have to respond to the hospital for follow ups.