After a four-year decline, the number of people killed on Nevada roads is increasing. That is prompting local law enforcement agencies to pound the pavement and take a hard look at some of our area’s worst intersections.

Watch your speed, watch those stoplights and watch for pedestrians, because the Reno Police Department is watching you. Thursday afternoon, they held a sting operation at the intersections considered the most dangerous in the area.

“These are the areas that came up after looking at our crash data,” Reno Sgt. Jim Stegmaier said, “being the busiest intersections with the most accidents reported."

An officer would radio in a driver who was speeding, or ran a red light, or didn’t yield to a pedestrian. Another officer would swoop in and pull the driver over.

The statistics show the need for change. So far in 2010, 142 people have died in various types of fatal crashes. Last year at this time, there were 137 deaths.

However, at the intersection at McCarran and South Virginia, the number of accidents has gone down. Police credit a current presence in the decline.

"When we hit an intersection at full force like this,” Sgt. Stegmaier said, “we'll see the accidents that were up to 10-to-15 drop down to 4 or 5."

But that doesn’t mean that they are putting the brakes on the program. With the summer special event season upon us, you can expect to see more of these patrols around.

"With the upcoming events,” Sgt. Stegmaier said, “there's more traffic so we put more officers out on the street. We have them specifically watching those areas and making sure they're really hitting the problems specific to that area."

In conjunction with what’s going on in Reno, the Sparks Police Department will be holding a sting operation of their own in August. Officers will be on the lookout for drivers who speed or don’t yield to pedestrians.