On Tuesday, Trooper Trainee David Gibson sat in a new navy-blue uniform in law class with a thick, three-ring binder on his desk. The 52-year-old Columbia man was on page 38 and on his way to a second career after 27 years in the Marine Corps.

"I'm a patriot," the retired sergeant major said. He has five other reasons for being there. "I have five kids. I plan to see to it that the highways are safe for them."

Gibson and others in this class are still weeks away from cruisers, badges and blank ticket books that send chills down the spines of speeders.

When they finish the training, their mere presence is expected to make highways safer, said Col. Russell Roark, the patrol's commander.

"If your visibility is down, people become lax," Roark said.

More troopers could cut down on speeding and drunken driving while increasing seat belt use and driver attention, he said. They'll also shorten wait times for calls, including accident investigations.

It's the first new trooper class since 2003. In that time, the Highway Patrol has been losing about 50 troopers a year down to a total force of about 780, Roark said.

Some retired and others have found greener paychecks elsewhere. But state lawmakers boosted pay for patrol employees by 6 percent in addition to the 4 percent increases all state workers got.

Overall, the agency picked up $16.4 million more for its budget this year.

"We have had some lean times, but, fortunately, we're on the road to recovery," Roark said.

The first group of new patrolmen is split into two classes. About half will get nine weeks of patrol-specific training because they are graduates of the state's Criminal Justice Academy and previously worked for municipal or county police agencies.

Gibson is in the second group of 31 who have to go through basic law enforcement training before taking the patrol's portion of the course work during the next 18 weeks, Roark said.

There are no women in the first two classes, but Roark wants to change that for the class forming for training in January by using women Highway Patrol officers to recruit newcomers. "It's difficult to attract female officers" to a profession that demands night, weekend and holiday work, Roark said.

By early next year, Roark hopes to have a total of 124 new troopers on the road -- including 24 intended to work highway construction zones and high-accident areas.

The state Transportation Department is covering the cost for those two dozen troopers, said Terecia Wilson, the Department of Transportation's safety director.

Since the agency began focusing on work-zone speeding in April, more than 8,000 people have been cited, Wilson said.