School Zone Speed Limit Enforcement Gains Traction
State Representative Larry Mitchell (D – New Castle) has introduced a bill that would pilot the use of speed cameras to help enforce school zone speed limits. Though I believe it to be a great idea, I believe the bill is too weak. H.B. 330, recently out of committee, would allow Dover and Wilmington to pilot the use of speed cameras to enforce the speed limits inside school zones. As Mitchell told Newsworks there just are enough police officers for enforcement.
Back in April, I posed the question, “Why does Delaware seemingly not enforce school zone speed limits?” as I believe this lack of enforcement is a danger to Delaware’s children. Mitchell’s proposed bill is quite weak though. The bill will only punish drivers who exceed 11 mph over the posted speed limit in a school zone. To put that in a bit of perspective, one of the two schools I drive by every morning has a standard speed limit of 35 mph and a school zone speed limit of 20 mph. Under Mitchell’s legislation, cars would be allowed to speed 30 mph through the school zone, only 5 mph the regular speed limit.
School zone speed limit needs to be enforced at the posted speed limits. Zero tolerance is what is needed.
Tags: Children, Education, Law Enforcement
Zero tolerance inside the schools is the insane policy that gets kids suspended for dyeing their hair pink or taking a knife to school so the teacher can cut their birthday cake.
I’m not endorsing rampant speeding in school zones but automated enforcement of a 20mph limit would fill the coffers in Wilmington and Dover to overflowing and generate incredible ill will in the process.
If speeding outside schools is such a problem, why don’t we take some of those DSP officers who work inside schools all day long and send them outside with a radar gun for a half-hour before and after? When he brings traffic to a halt opposite Brandywine HS by lining up 20 cars in the right-hand lane of Foulk Road to wait for their tickets, then people will take notice.
Let’s start by putting in radar signs that just display your speed. Most people would slow down with that kind of reminder. Unless this is just about money.
@mediawatch – The state cop is inside for a reason.
@puck – Why would a radar sign work when the blinking yellow lights are alerting drivers to slow down.
And to both, no, it’s not about money, it’s about saving lives. I’d rather not wait for a 3rd grader to get hit by a car.
he shoots, he misses, and scores yet another fail. NEMSKI!!!! How about we enforce the speed limit everywhere?
This is a small place. Fairfax county has more people and there are bigger counties in ‘murica. Win the Future is everybody in such a hurry? Like high gas prices? Mangled and dead people? Keep leadfooting it.
I do the speed limit. Can’t tell by the bumper stickers that either side of the political spectrum gives a poop about the environment, children, or anything but whatever imaginary crisis they are having that justifies wiping their collective arse on all of the above. YMMV.
@mediawatch – enforcing the speed limit and respecting the law has nothing to do with the brain damaged zero tolerance school policies brought to us by the enlightened people. How much tolerance should we have for peeps who want access to public roads while having no respect for public safety?
@nemski – did you ever wonder why there was a time we didn’t need cops inside the schools? Just a notion.
@Doug Beatty – With what resources do you plan on enforcing the speed limits *everywhere*? Speed cameras on every block? Police officers every mile on I-95?
Let’s just tackle a small problem first. Mitchell’s legislation is talking about a pilot program of 5 or so speed cameras in Wilmington and Dover. My issue is that 11 mph is too high of a variance.
Since it’s all about safety, does anyone have statistics for how many children are hit by cars near their schools?
No statistics quicly found, but how abou this Google search?
“@puck – Why would a radar sign work when the blinking yellow lights are alerting drivers to slow down. ”
Because they do.
Think about it. A display sign is instant feedback. It makes everybody slow down immediately. But a ticket arriving in the mail two days later might make that one guy slow down the next time he comes back that way, maybe.
Money or safety, you decide.
Just say no to speed cameras.
Okay. Can I get a sign designating the area in front of the house a school zone? It’s the legal location of a non-public school, and if I could get ANY of the cars whipping past to get to the Montessori school down the road to drive within 10 miles of the posted speed limit, I would totally count that as a win.
Hell, if the city and school buses drove the posted limit, I’d throw a party.
There is a whole range of passive traffic-calming techniques that should be tried first. Just saying, maybe the streets in front of our schools shouldn’t be designed like speedways.
Doug,
Was not suggesting any relationship between zero tolerance school discipline policies and enforcing speed laws. My point was that Nemski’s zero tolerance for school zone speeders is as doomed to fail as zero tolerance discipline is inside the schools.
I do like the radar-activated speed displays. The reason: when the car at the head of the line is over the limit and slows down, everyone behind has to slow down too.
And Puck is absolutely right — what’s important here is safety, not collecting money.
@puck – “Money or safety?” is a false question.
No it’s not.
@puck, you’re assuming that I am looking at this as a revenue stream. That is false. I asked this question back in April on why Delaware doesn’t enforce it’s school zone speed limits. Mitchell has proposed a *pilot* program that uses speed cameras. I think his 11 mph leeway is a little high and would like this changed to a zero tolerance speed limit.
Oh, and another thing, puck, I’m sure police departments throughout the state already have the capablity of placing radar signs in front of schools, but do not. And, yes, there are plenty of ways to reconstruct roadways in traffic calming ways, but that costs money.
If you aren’t looking at it as a revenue stream, you are being naive. You do know how these deals work right? The speed camera company installs and operates the cameras in exchange for a cut of the fines.
but that costs money.
I sense the enthusiasm for safety diminishing.
No, puck, I didn’t know how speed cameras work. Thanks for helping out my naivete. You don’t always have to act like a jackass puck. FYI, the first two sentences were sarcastic, the third, not so much.
And, no, my enthusiasm for saftery is not diminishing. I’m a little more pragmatic than that.
Here’s a story of speed cameras nabbing more than 1,000 speeders in a school zone. More than your one guy you mentioned earlier.
Good point, nemski… sarcasm is a style that is too easy to fall into and isn’t always necessary. In my defense, it took me a few comments before I got there though. My point about money vs. safety was originally aimed at the legislation, not at you.
@nemski–Speed cameras work the same way red light cameras work. A vendor (Lockheed-Martin or Sensys, for example) pays for, installs and monitors the cameras. Tickets are issued to violators. The vendor usually keeps a large percentage of the fine (typically more than 50%). The state or municipality collects revenue and attacks the vehicle owner’s credit rating for unpaid fines.
This is a money game disguised as public safety.
IIRC, speed cameras were tried in Dover sometime in the late 1980s or early-mid 1990s. What happened w/ that pilot program?
Finally, is speeding through school zones such a problem in Delaware? Has anyone actually been injured in the last 10 years? Seems to me we should establish the fact that a problem exists before we set about “solving” it.
“… I’m sure police departments throughout the state already have the capablity of placing radar signs in front of schools, but do not.”
Many departments already have them. Typically, small departments would nail these from an Office of Highway Safety grant. The typical use was to set them up in an area a few weeks prior to setting up a ‘speed trap’. Some of them collect data, so it was a way to determine the potential for revenue generation at a given location. As a bonus, they actually are effective at slowing traffic down.
Hate to break this to you, and you’ll rarely get anyone to admit it in the law enforcement community, but speed enforcement is primarily used as a revenue generator, and/or as a way to satisfy the requirements of a federal grant. We got shitloads of money and gadgets from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) via the OHS, but there were always strings attached. They loved statistics. Some people call them quotas.
Same deal with the red light cams. It’s a sweetheart deal for the police departments. Let the vendor install and maintain the equipment, and provide a technician to testify in court, if necessary, and let the money roll in.
You may have noticed a trend in Delaware to decriminalize certain traffic violations, and classify them as civil penalties. That’s because it’s easier to collect revenue if there’s no points, or records to drive up your insurance policy. This has resulted in larger fines, so everyone can get their cut. In California, the cost of an automated ticket is $480. One intersection in Oakland generates over $3 million bucks per year.
I guess I’m a bit too cynical, but I believe this to be another money grab. Like most law enforcement legislation introduced in Delaware, it was probably already proven to be successful in other states, or jurisdictions.
Yep, on the surface it may be ‘for the kids’, but it’s also about the money.
Only an idiot can’t see those machines and slow down for them. So it’s just a tax on idiots… sort of like the lottery.
“classify them as civil penalties”
Actually that’s because if it was criminal, you would have the right to confront your accuser in court. So they make it a civil violation instead, which makes it much cheaper to process, taking the whole thing out of the courts and into the domain of the collection/credit bureau mafia.
Not to mention treating it as a civil penalty has the added benefit (for the state and the corporation, not you) of lowering the burden of proof
While I’m no fan of speeding in school zones, I’m still wondering whether this is not a solution in search of a problem. I wasn’t able to find DoE school transportation reports online yesterday but I suspect that two-thirds to three-quarters of all public school students are taking buses to school. And the schools I most frequently pass during opening/dismissal times are usually congested then with parents dropping off or picking up their kids. And crossing guards are stationed outside most schools to make sure that the small minority of students known as walkers get across the street safely.
Given the small percentage of students who walk to school today, I think the case could be made that the lower “school zone” speed limits are a relic from the era when we had neighborhood schools and most kids were walkers. Again, I’m not saying these lower speed limits should be abolished — it is good to protect the safety of those who are walking — but it seems to me that this “solution” is an overreaction to a presumed problem. Posting the flashing signs that tell approaching motorists how fast they’re traveling would appear to be an equally effective — and revenue-neutral — approach.
“Yep, on the surface it may be ‘for the kids’, but it’s also about the money.”
So? the state needs more money anyway. If they can find a way to make more of it while offering parents a better feeling of protection for their kids, what’s the harm? Maybe the added revenue could go to fighting an actual safety hazard at schools….. Other children.
In Delaware 6th graders walk if they are within a 1.5 miles of school. Seventh grade and up, it’s 2 miles.
No, this isn’t a solution in search of a problem. Also, with the numbers of buses and cars outside schools during pickup and drop-off time, enforcing speed limits in front of schools should be of concern with people stopping to turn into schools and pulling out onto roadways.
I try to laugh when commenters say, is there a problem with this? Just drive by a school in the morning and see. (Except for Newark High School, apparently). So, are we waiting for a kid to be killed and then start enforcing the law?
“So it’s just a tax on idiots… sort of like the lottery.”
Yes!… and casinos.
“No, this isn’t a solution in search of a problem.”
Agreed. But they should, at least, wine and dine us by demonstrating how this is a problem that cannot be solved with current laws and proven practices, before bending us over for another tax substitute.
Example: Back in the 90’s the town of Harrington PD, under the guidance of Chief Frank Melvin, was making in excess of $600,000 per year from speed enforcement. This was enough to enable every officer to have take home vehicles, the town to have their own radio dispatchers, etc., and the leftover was going into the town coffers. This became quite popular down the RT 13 gauntlet, with Greenwood, Felton, etc. following suit. Frederica was a shining example on RT 113.
When enough people complained, and this was practice perceived as a ‘problem’, the solution was, you guessed it, the threat of legislation. If I recall, the idea was to only let the police departments generate a certain percentage of the town budget by fines. Anything over that percentage would go the the general fund. The towns offered to self regulate. I don’t recall if this compromise floated.
“So, are we waiting for a kid to be killed and then start enforcing the law?”
The law should absolutely be enforced, and current practices should continue. Unless they can demonstrate otherwise, it seems to be working. The above mentioned “traffic calming” devices are an effective option. I had not heard of this phrase until recently. I was near Annapolis, and saw a ‘Traffic Calming’ sign, and then a speed bump the size of a cow. It worked beautifully, but didn’t generate one dime for any governmental agency.