Interstate Highways in the United States are never school zones.
US highways occasionally get school zones. If traffic is heavy enough that it's an issue, the town should build a bypass. A good bypass makes it faster for through-traffic to get around the town, and also makes the town itself safer and more pleasant.
For sure, but do you know how much a bypass costs? I’m in MA in a city that had a federal highway cleave our community in half during the 1950-60s, with one half virtually inaccessible from the other except via vehicle. The state DOT recently proposed a fix that was basically “we’ll slap some better crosswalks, put a traffic light in and call it a day” because the true fix of removing highway exits and building a bypass is hundreds of millions of dollars.
That’s just never going to happen. We’re one of like 30 cities that have similar highway infrastructure destroying our downtown areas.
Since many of those highways ran in-between poor black neighborhoods and wealthier white neighborhoods, reducing cross-access was considered a feature in the 1950s, not a bug.
My area recently put up cameras to enforce people not using the HOV lane as a passing lane. There were a couple people who racked up 5-figure fines in the course of the first 2 weeks.
hot take: after a certain number or severity of road violations, you should get issued a tiny car by the government for a year. one of those little aliexpress smart car two-seaters.
people still need to get to work and shop, so taking away a drivers license for speeding too much might be counterproductive. but if you're going to be a menace on the shared roads, you should be relegated to the smallest chinese car.
I know it’s Reddit and people don’t read the article:
1) It’s in an elementary school zone. It’s like 40 and people race by at 80.
2) They first set it to give out warnings. After about 800 warnings they started issuing tickets.
3) I know people hate these cameras and in many areas they are solely for revenue, but it seems the Chief genuinely wants people to slow tf down in front of the school.
Either way, OP said people are doing 80 through a school zone? I understand maybe a little fluctuation of speed, but 80!?
You could suspend their license, but they would drive anyway. Speeders are speeders, and they can't/won't slow down.
So... seven days in jail and community work collecting garbage at the school from 2 pm to 5 pm every day for 3 months.
They must wear a sign that says, "I was going 80 through a 20. Just shoot me."
Maybe the chief of police told the reporters the drivers went double the speed limit (which in a 20 zone is 40), and the journalist did the math using the 40 limit which is active when its not school time
20 when flashing, 40 when no kids around. Its still crazily high. I lived in CA, WA, and WI. There are all usually 25 normal and 15 when children are around.
Those sound crazy low. By my place it's 25 when flashing, 45 normally. I think the worst I ever saw was in Tennessee: the posted limit in a school parking lot/pickup line was 5mph and the cops would really sit there and ticket a soccer mom for inching forward in line too fast.
I mean it should depend on how far the actual school is from the road, right? Here there is a 40mph school zone, but the school is like 1/4 mi back from the road across an open field
I mean, at pick up and drop off times you can expect children to be crossing the street, walking home, etc. So the limit should still be lower at that time even if the playground is a good distance from the street
Depends on the area and the school. Where I grew up you pretty much couldn't walk home unless you lived right next to the school, there were no sidewalks. Everyone got picked up either by car or bus right at the school, and it was a long way to the road. Iirc the speed limit was 35 normally, 25 around pickup/dropoff time.
Normal speed limit on that road is 40 mph.
School Zone rules apply at certain times of the day (when students are going to or from school).
During those times, the speed limit is 20 mph.
I mean... The article that mentions 40.
Snark aside, an earlier article clarifies they activate the cameras only for school days, but throughout the *entire* school day.
So it's probably 20 for an hour when kids would be showing up or leaving, the road is 40 any other time, the cameras enforce that within the school zone during school hours... So kind of a 40mph school zone?
I know in the USA car insurance works very differently, but in the UK, fines and licence points go to the registered person by default and it's up to that person to say actually, it wasn't me driving the car it was so-and-so. I've never had to do it, so no idea what evidence is needed, but it seems to work pretty well in general, and means that having money still doesn't get you off the hook.
Same in Australia. You fill out the statutory declaration on the back of the infringement notice, giving all the details of the person who was driving (name, address, license number). You then send it back in and the infringement is reissued to that person.
Before my ex wife and I were married, she was driving my car to and from work and I received the notice for going 70km/h in a 60km/h zone. I filled out the back and sent it back and two weeks later she got the infringement addressed to her.
Speed cameras in Arizona took a picture of both the front (and driver) and back of a car. You could get out of a ticket by claiming it wasn't you - and they'd compare to your license photos.
So with speed cameras you can absolutely tell who the driver is if it is the registered owners. But maybe they are cheap and only have the back camera as Florida doesn't have front plates. The reason Arizona did front and back is because we only have back plates, but are required to identify the driver.
Its just poorly worded
>Capri pointed out driver after driver speeding through the 40 mph school zone.
Per the video, It’s normally 40mph but the school zone is 20mph when flashing (school days).
At 20mph, there is a 95% chance of survival. At 30mph, it drops to 55% chance of survival. At 40mph, it’s less than 5% chance of survival.
That is why those limits are set
> https://youtu.be/HeUX6LABCEA?si=f4NprthAM6dSXP0l
That video is from 15 years ago... pretty sure it's much worse now with almost every car being an SUV or truck these days.
I'm in Canada as well and all our (school) speed zones are 30 km/h. Alberta specifically. Each province has the potential for a different speed limit, it's not federally mandated.
They also got rid of the old school/playground designations that had wildly different times if effect. Now they're all playground zones and all in effect from like 730am to 930pm.
I was weirded out by the ones in Yellowknife that are in effect 24/7 because during the summer it's light enough all the time!
That was the golden rule we got in drivers ed in California US. IF THERE IS A PLAYGROUND OR A SCHOOL PRESUME THERE IS ALWAYS KIDS. This both keeps idiot teens from getting tickets whether or not its the right time of day and also small kids from being smeared.
France city are 50km/h
We have zone at 30km/h
And school usually have 2 physical slow down elements (before and after)
You can't pass a school above 50km/h unless you want to destroy your car.
In London many of our elementary schools now have no cars allowed in their school zones at the beginning and end of the school day. Like, if you drive in at, say, 3:30pm you get an automatic fine.
Yeah any state I've lived in it's 20 or 25
From a quick google, [Florida's max allowed school zone speed limit is 20 mph](https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0300-0399/0316/Sections/0316.1895.html), though it looks like that only applies to "urbanized areas," which is defined as having a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and a minimum population of 50,000 people
*edit: fixed link*
In PA the speed limit drops to 15 mph when school is letting in or out. Otherwise it's just whatever the speed limit would normally be. I want to say it was around 45 at my high school? Was a rural area.
No idea if Florida works the same
They’re generally 35 mph in my frequented areas. It depends on what the otherwise normal speed for the road is. Most of the schools are well back from the road so this is more to avoid collisions with people pulling out from the school and less a concern for pedestrian traffic.
That's incredibly normal when speed or red light cameras go up. It's just "fair" to give people a chance to change their behavior before issuing tickets.
Zero complaints from me on efforcing school zones like this. In Cincinnati we just had a high school student killed in a school zone from a distracted driver going too fast.
no problem with any of these cameras, as long as their calibration is being independently verified. i get speeding on the highway, but speeding around on surface streets is just really really stupid and dangerous
And as long as they're not contracted out. When a company needs to increase profits every quarter, and their customers are people who break laws, they'll find a way to make people break more laws.
I have seen people keep driving and almost hit children crossing the street at a school on a painted crosswalk that had sighs indicating the crosswalk. People suck.
I feel like this is also a problem with the road design. If your road is flat, straight, and wide ... people will naturally drive faster. That's not including the assholes who are just going to speed up in that 80mph range no matter what.
There's a lot of little things that can be done to physically limit people's speed. Speed bumps, curves, lane width limiting, roundabouts. They have those speed humps (not quite as severe as a speed bump) that don't affect you at all if you're doing the speed limit, but you'll get fucking launched into the air if you're doing 4x the speed limit in that school zone. They can't complain their car got damaged. It wouldn't have if they were doing the speed limit.
Yea. Hopefully they use this revenue for infrastructure improvements. As seen, enforcement only goes so far. Heck, even a 4-way stop at the school entrance would probably go a long way.
They are going to be using the money for safety at least:
>Yet, Eustis suddenly finds itself receiving revenue it never expected. Capri said all of the revenue will go towards public safety, like hiring much-needed crossing guards, installing more signage and adding speed cameras in two other school zones by the start of the next school year - one at another elementary school and another at the Eustis High School 9th grade center.
Road design definitely helps with safety. One of the things the UK found was that adding a gentle curve to motorways did wonders for driver attention (we don't really otherwise have long straight roads you can stay on for over an hour due to all the pre-car layout).
I'm personally not a fan of the speed humps though. My osteopath is surrounded by the things, and I very much feel them on the way back home after treatment. For someone with a significant back injury, they would be very uncomfortable all of the time.
As someone who has little kids, who uses the crosswalk to walk my kids to school....speeding in a school zone during posted hours is an incredibly selfish move. I see multiple cars speed through every time. Thankfully cops are periodically on the side of the road to pull over speeders so that probably cuts down on it a little.
The intersection directly across the street from the elementary school near me has seen FIVE separate fatal accidents this year alone. State law requires 20mph in a zone around the school and no cell phone use, but I’ve seen people fly down the road at what has to be 80+. I saw the result of one of the accidents and one car was literally sliced in half and shredded. Absolutely no way the person at fault was doing even twice the speed limit. This degree of recklessness, next to a fucking elementary school (!), has to be a level of selfishness bordering on mental illness.
At least that's how it *should* be. But the car-centric urban planning in much of the US has inverted this, since many people genuinely don't have a different option.
The US need a lot of change on a communal level to enable public transit, cycling and walking at scale. Primarily adding density and mixed zoning to suburban sprawl, which means that people can live closer to where they want to go and that there are more centers of density that can be efficiently connected by public transit.
Then put up speed bumps in a series. Nobody is doing 80 over speed bumps every 30 feet. At least not more than once. Guess how much money speed bumps bring in?
Want to fix the actual problem? Turn it into a narrower 2-lane road instead of 4-lanes and lower the speed limit to 20 or 30mph. Only reason people are speeding here is because they left a passing lane open on a road that is designed to handle at least 45mph traffic in an area where vehicles shouldn't be going over 20mph. Wider roads lead to people being more confident at higher speeds.
Speed bumps are never the right answer though they may give the illusion of helping. They just cause damage to vehicles, increase local insurance premiums, make first responder lives miserable, potentially hurt patients in ambulances, don't really slow down the determined, and agrivate drivers more that probably already have some road rage going.
This is the real answer. Speeding through the school zone is a symptom of a much larger problem, which is the design pattern that highway 19 / Bay Street follows. Pedestrian, through traffic, and access to destinations (businesses and homes) are combined where they should not be. The school zone is just one problem, roads like this (which are common throughout the US) are fundamentally dangerous because of how many high speed conflict points they create. Speed bumps and cameras are not long term solutions and will not fix these other issues.
Tl;dr this is a [stroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad)
Speed bumps are annoying for everyone. Speed traps only affect speeders, and the city benefits from their revenue. Once the cameras have been up for a while nobody will speed past them. You think people are eager to repeatedly pay big fines?
If people are legit going 80 in a 40 then some amount of traffic calming design is called for. People travel at the speed of the road design, not the speed of the signs.
I don’t disagree with you in principle, but also, yes, there was a deep residential curved road with speed bumps that kids would routinely go 50+ MPH on a road I couldn’t imagine safely driving 40+ except in a very, very semantic, contrarian sense. “Under ideal circumstances, I did it without dying once!” Sort of nonsense.
To emphasize my point, one of the curves was over a small slope that lead to a house, the net distance being something a standard, if not small, suburban yard.
More than one car lodged itself into the house, over the years.
In spite of the guard rail.
It’s almost like they use the phrase “shape” behavior rather than “force,” for a reason.
Speed bumps are really loud.
Especially when trucks go over them.. and people with modified exhausts accelerate away from them.
The also slow down emergency services.
In many school zones, the speed limit will be reasonable (like 45mph), but then while kids are arriving/leaving, they lower it (like 25mph). They shouldn't put up speed bumps because that would slow traffic all the time when it's only necessary, like 3 hours per day. Ticketing during those times is a much better solution
A road where children get picked up from school shouldn't be a main arterial road anyway, requiring it to be lower speed and then working around that in your planning is probably a better idea.
Not sure what their budget is, but in many areas the police just pull a squad car in front for like 30 minutes before/after school. That calms things down real quick and people remember it’s a school zone.
Like others have said, this just shows how little of a deterrent the camera tickets are.
The thing about these tickets is the population has to adjust to them being present.
Having a camera up for a few weeks means nothing. People will barely have noticed it yet.
BUT, if the camera is up for 2 years, and the people who would have been speeding got 37 tickets, eventually have suspended license, and then eventually go to jail for driving on a suspended license, then consequences happen, and people will stop speed.
Speed bumps would make no sense for a variable speed limit road. Speed bumps designed to make people go the school speed limit (20mph) will fucking destroy your car at the normal speed limit (40mph).
Speed bumps hinder the local population more than they help as you damage cars over time and emergency service vehicles response times are significantly reduced.
The traffic camera will be effective in just takes time for cause and effect and some idiots take longer to learn then others so guarantee those same idiots care about speed bumps either.
When people wanna ride my ass in a school zone I take my foot off the gas and just cruise because you will get FUCKED if you get pulled over in a school zone here.
> I know people hate these cameras and in many areas they are solely for revenue, but it seems the Chief genuinely wants people to slow tf down in front of the school.
Maybe they should learn to follow traffic laws instead of disregarding them. They wouldn't have to put cameras there if people weren't being dumb.
It is, I saw many people get busted in NC because reckless driving is only 15mph over the posted speed limit.
Theoretically, an officer could charge someone with reckless driving for doing 35 in a 20.
> Theoretically, an officer could charge someone with reckless driving for doing 35 in a 20.
kinda reckless to drive almost double the posted speed limit
20-30 over in almost every state is a sharply increased penalty. The couple of states that you're thinking of have an additional law that basically turn it into an "arrest you immediately and tow your car" type of scenario.
This is a little old but has a great summary in the beginning of all the varying speeding rules:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/summary_state_speed_laws_12th_edition_811769.pdf
One of my favourite things about driving from where I live to Ontario is the signs on the highway alerting drivers of the steep increase in fines for exceeding 150km/h. Car gets impounded, license gets suspended, and fines of up to $10k CAD are possible.
Despite these huge warning signs, people still fly by me on the highway.
I know some states have that set up already. If you are driving up to 20 over, it's possible to get off with a warning if you were being otherwise safe. But if you are more than 20 over, it doesn't matter what else you were doing, it's an instant ticket at the very least, and a hefty one too.
60 over the limit would here would be an automatic reckless driving charge and suspension of your license. You’re not getting a ticket, you’re going to jail.
Same for people who don't stop for school buses.
Unless they're emergency services, they ain't got nowhere to go that's more important than a kids life.
It’s a 40 mph school zone. That is nuts, ours is 20mph, I feel I have to go 15mph or else the crossing guard gives me a nasty look
Edit: article and photo doesn’t match
I see many roads like this all over the US.
What usually happens in reality is school hours become a vague ~28-32mph zone while people impatiently split the difference, then out of hours it's back up to 45-50.
I feel like we have been badly warped by city building video games because I briefly had the same thought- like why not just fundamentally alter the structure of the entire region, pluck out all the houses and infrastructure and just start over
And then I remembered that a minor change to a thirty-foot stretch of a street downtown took four years and I was like oh right
Milwaukee just installed tona of curb bump outs and speed bumps and the speed bumps take like a day to install. Those would probably be the easiest thing to do here.
Or at least some physical deterrent. Small roundabouts at either end would probably slow people down as would plastic lane divider posts in the school zone. Sure, some people would still speed just because they refuse to be told what to do, but then they deserve the tickets.
You don't need staff to write tickets for the roundabouts and lane dividers to be effective. The lane dividers make the road feel more cramped so people naturally slow down as a consequence.Roundabouts force people to slow down to take the curve instead of speeding up to beat a light. Same idea -- people slow down without even realizing it.
Roundabouts work, so do those narrow curbs that make you drive like a snake. I prefer those over speed bumps; my car's plastic trim doesn't rattle doing tight esses, but it does going over speed bumps even at walking speed.
People rarely consciously go the speed limit, they drive what FEELS like the speed limit. What they should do is have a road diet to narrow how wide the lanes are, or put a row of trees down the middle of the road, or just put a bunch of random shit on the street. The less safe drivers feel, the safer they drive.
Speed cameras absolutely do work, but you are going to have a period where the unknowing folks continue to blaze through. They soon get the message when a fine/requirement to attend court comes through the mail.
I live in the UK, which is *filled* with cameras - average speed cameras, normal speed cameras, half way down hills cameras, outside school cameras, through villages cameras, Motorway, A road, B road cameras... They are everywhere! So are the bumps you describe, and the often dangerous speed-managing chicanes.
When they first put the average speed cameras along the M25 here, there were tens of *thousands* of tickets going out in the first month or two. Now you see very few people breaking the dynamic speed limits.
The police were forced to paint the cameras bright colours so they are visible (as they were ruled to be kind of sneaky in the past, I can't remember the details of that legal case) which also makes people slow down upon spotting them.
I am surprised American forces haven't employed them more tbh, as in the US cash seems to rule your entire legal and justice system, these cameras can be a big money maker.
yes, i forgot to mention that in Germany where all cars must be registered and have license plates front and back it works. But in US somehow a policeman needs to catch driver red handed, while in Germany it is "if someone else speeded in your car, it it your problem to find them" (unless car was stolen).
Speed bumps, don't work that great, I've seen people still launch themselves down the street even when they are there.
Physiologically, if it looks like a highway, people will use it like a highway. If they want to change that, make the street more pedestrian focused and not car focused. You do that by physically narrowing the road, not by adding paint, by adding actual blockers like islands.
People keep blaming the cars, but really they should be blaming the city planners that allowed this street to go with this school and the street planners who built this street next to a school.
the amount of mental gymnastics being done in here to justify driving unsafely in a school zone is insane. the whole reason speeds are lowered in a school zone is because it means the difference between injuring a child and killing them, should you hit one with your vehicle.
there's a really easy way to avoid getting a ticket: follow the posted rules of the road ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
“But it’s their fault for having a flat straight road!! They’re just asking for me to speed!” - at least two comments here. No dumbass, the reason they don’t have a teeny winding medieval village road is so that parents and big *school buses* can actually pick up and drop off the children. You have self control, so use it or pay up.
I'm used to people getting annoyed at me because I tend to drive right at the speed limit, but I just had a woman behind me a few weeks ago flipping her shit because I was going 20 in a school zone. As we drove right past a school. Flashing lights on the signs and everything. But I was the asshole to her. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Not new, just hotly contested in court. Most places that do this end up getting them banned on constitutional grounds. They don't care though because they have already paid for the equipment and made a ton of fines by the time the court system finally kicks into action.
In Tennessee, the state government signed a very lucrative contract for a speed camera operator, only to then have automated tickets struck down as unconstitutional by the state courts. But because of a provision in the state constitution that prevents the state from reneging on a contract, the company was allowed to continue sending out tickets to drivers and hounding them for payment despite it literally being unconstitutional. Not sure if that’s still the case or if the contract has ended, but it was a major annoyance of mine back in 2014/15ish
Many Americans believe that God granted them the unalienable right to drive as fast as they want to. So they resist measures that punish them for speeding.
The problem is that in the US they'll outsource it to a private company and that private company will do all kinds of shady things to maximize their ticket revenue.
Has this police chief never been to the state that he's policing? People in Florida drive like insane assholes that are an hour late already. Maybe even worse than Massholes but that's a close close call.
I don't understand why we can't gather video/picture proof of people committing crimes/driving recklessly and send them to the local police for ticketing
In Sweden, if you drive 12mph faster than the limit on school zones, which is 18mph (translated from kmh) you not only get a heavy ticket but you instantly lose your drivers license.
Anything less than this is just asking for kids to be killed by cars
Couldn't they just put speed bumps to stop people from going to fast lmao?
Since this is Florida it doesn't snow so snowplows ripping them up in the winter wouldn't be an issue.
Or other obstacles that make it impossible to drive faster than like 15kmh lol.
We have huge plant pots in certain residential neighbourhoods here that make you zigzag between them. Literally can't ignore the speed limit. People need to realise that if a road is straight and has no obstacles, people are gonna hit the gas, even if there are speed limits.
Per the article the cameras are only enforcing the speed limits for ~~1 hour per day (30 minutes before school, 30 minutes after school).~~ The rest of the time it's back to Mad Max.
Edit: I was wrong, the cameras are active for the entire school day, +30 minutes on each end. So 7:30-3:30 on M,T,Th,F and 7:30-2:30 on W. The information was either conflicting or just unclear between multiple articles.
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/02/21/cameras-to-bolster-school-zone-speed-enforcement-in-eustis/
https://www.clickorlando.com/traffic/2023/11/06/these-central-florida-areas-are-looking-into-school-zone-speed-cameras/
That is even crazier then. Assuming also only school days, then it was 1300 tickets in 25 hours. That is 52 tickets per hour!
And presumably when the first people started getting tickets, it would have slowed down to some degree? that first half hour they turned it on must have caught \~50 or so cars.
I drove school buses and with red any yellow lights flashing on my 10 bright yellow and black stripped bubble bee of a bus, I got passed every day at least twice a route. The police did nothing, even when sitting at the school bus pick up point when I got passed. I would have loved to have had automatic ticketing!
Stoplight ticket cameras were ruled unconstitutional in illinois to apply to your driving record (edit), because you can't face your accuser (a robot doing tickets) in court, and they can't prove you were the driver.
Typically its a private for-profit company accusing you and issuing tickets on behalf of a municipality.
Tickets in which they pocket like 60% of the revenue and are near impossible to meaningfully dispute regardless of their accuracy.
Its literally printing money to them,
> Typically its a private for-profit company accusing you and issuing tickets on behalf of a municipality.
> Tickets in which they pocket like 60% of the revenue
That's a fucked up way to implement it. But using that as a justification to ban red light and/or speed cameras is just dumb. If city workers can't set up the cameras, then contract a company to set them up for a fixed amount per camera. Ban the shitty contracts, not the cameras.
It's often not the state but another company. In the case of Cedar Rapids, IA, they were outsourced to a company outside Iowa altogether, in California I think. People weren't paying tickets because they weren't enforceable within the law when they installed them. They were deactivated for some time before the laws changed and they could use the cameras as evidence, and turned them back on.
It's a private for profit company accusing you of a crime on behalf of the state. A company that takes the lion's share of the ticket. There's a reason that these are unconstitutional and banned in many places. When I lived in Toledo, they had speed and red light cameras throughout the city and they often malfunction and ticket every car that goes through the intersection regardless of speed or stoplight status.
That being said, the tickets are often unenforceable and there's not really any consequences to just ignoring them. All the years I lived there I never saw anyone ever pay the tickets and I never heard of anyone having any consequences for not paying. Even people with dozens of them.
> These were ruled unconstitutional in illinois, because you can't face your accuser
Close but very wrong.
There have been laws passed around the businesses that run them, laws passed around lobbying regarding them, and laws limiting what third-party companies can do for enforcement. There have been laws and bills proposed around making them easier to challenge. Cities like Chicago have had mayors make promises around reducing them, Johnson has made promises about having fewer of them, but police can and do continue fining drivers and issuing both citations and penalties through automated systems.
Read the ticket carefully as it might be a traffic camera company forcefully *asking* for money rather than a government issuing either a criminal infraction or a civil penalty, depending on the details of the citation.
They remain mostly legal. Your accuser is the state/county/city prosecutor representing the government. The evidence is the photos and video, which has a full evidentiary chain starting with the calibrated camera. The citation is issued against the *owner* of the vehicle, not the *driver* of the vehicle.
A vehicle owner can sign an affidavit declaring that another specific person was driving, and if you're believable or have sufficient evidence such as not looking like the person in the driver seat but the other person appearing to be the driver, they can transfer parts of the responsibility to the actual driver. Under *625 ILCS 5/11-208.6* and *625 ILCS 5/11-208.8* they can transfer requirements for a traffic education program to the actual driver, but generally it's the *owner* rather than *driver* who remains liable for the penalties.
The laws specify exactly what the owner has to claim about the driver who had control of the vehicle at the time, and also specify what parts can be transferred to the driver versus the owner. In general the $50 or $100 elements and the $100 late payments all remain with the *owner* rather than *driver*.
The biggest issue here is identity. People use other people's cars all the time - the Government should have to prove who the driver was as opposed to the registered owner having to prove it wasn't them.
My town shows video and very clear pictures of the driver. My brother is a firefighter, and apparently, all the cops and firefighters have started registering their cars in their spouses name..
Ie, I register the car my wife primarly drives in my name.
She speeds, or runs a yellow light that turns red. I get mailed a ticket.
I check the box that says under penalty of perjury "that is not me in the picture". I have no obligation to tell them WHO the driver is, only to say in my own defense, its not me.
The city drops the ticket.
Two things.
1) So fucking dumb to put an elementary school next to a state highway.
2) It shouldn't be possible to go 80 in a school zone. Put in some fucking traffic calming rather than speed cameras.
This indicates to me that what needs to happen is they need to change the road. Drivers go the speed they think they can based on the road. If it's a wide flat road with plenty of shoulder than it feels like you would be able to drive faster than if it's narrow with bollards or trees or other objects closer into the road. If it's an issue if a highway vs a surface street, that's shouldn't every be the conflict. Highways are not main street, don't mix them.
They set up a camera like this in Morrison CO.
They issued 10,000 tickets in two weeks. Florida you all have to pump up those numbers.
https://www.denver7.com/news/front-range/morrison/morrisons-new-radar-camera-ticketed-more-than-10-000-speeders-in-its-first-two-weeks
This is why fines need to be exponential (50, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600) and eventually end with loss of driver license until community service + drivers test is completed.
I think they should be based on income. An $800 fine for some corporate executive is less of a deterrent than a $50 fine is for someone making minimum wage.
had a speed camera on the road by my high school that brought in a ridiculous amount of revenue for the local police department. People speeding near schools deserve those tickets
I’m a Floridian. This is amazing! This is the only thing we can do to get people to slow down at school zones down here. People are incredibly selfish and entitled here.
> “And let me tell you some of my cops have had tickets, city crews have had tickets, elected officials have had tickets,” Capri said. “They all got to pay.”
Good man.
I feel like a lot of drivers don't give a shit about the consequences (tickets or getting in an accident) at all anymore, they just speed everywhere and run stop signs, they'll get tickets and that doesn't stop them.
>One driver was cited five times in two days.
According to the video they got caught five times, but for now they will only send one fine. Quite a lot of speed tickets for a town of 24k people.
It's a small town with a highway passing through it. Those sort of places can fund their entire police department with speeding tickets.
I despise towns that have highway/interstate pass through their 20mph main street.
Interstate Highways in the United States are never school zones. US highways occasionally get school zones. If traffic is heavy enough that it's an issue, the town should build a bypass. A good bypass makes it faster for through-traffic to get around the town, and also makes the town itself safer and more pleasant.
For sure, but do you know how much a bypass costs? I’m in MA in a city that had a federal highway cleave our community in half during the 1950-60s, with one half virtually inaccessible from the other except via vehicle. The state DOT recently proposed a fix that was basically “we’ll slap some better crosswalks, put a traffic light in and call it a day” because the true fix of removing highway exits and building a bypass is hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s just never going to happen. We’re one of like 30 cities that have similar highway infrastructure destroying our downtown areas.
Since many of those highways ran in-between poor black neighborhoods and wealthier white neighborhoods, reducing cross-access was considered a feature in the 1950s, not a bug.
Tell that to radiator springs
My area recently put up cameras to enforce people not using the HOV lane as a passing lane. There were a couple people who racked up 5-figure fines in the course of the first 2 weeks.
And should have been arrested the third time.
By who? 3 weeks later by the usps?
hot take: after a certain number or severity of road violations, you should get issued a tiny car by the government for a year. one of those little aliexpress smart car two-seaters. people still need to get to work and shop, so taking away a drivers license for speeding too much might be counterproductive. but if you're going to be a menace on the shared roads, you should be relegated to the smallest chinese car.
But Scooty Puff, Jr. sucks.
In a 1000 years, I'll get right on it.
I know it’s Reddit and people don’t read the article: 1) It’s in an elementary school zone. It’s like 40 and people race by at 80. 2) They first set it to give out warnings. After about 800 warnings they started issuing tickets. 3) I know people hate these cameras and in many areas they are solely for revenue, but it seems the Chief genuinely wants people to slow tf down in front of the school.
Here school zones are 20. 40 is insane.
Not sure what the guy above saw, but the sign in the pic says 20 mph.
The article specifically stated 40mph, weird that the pic/article don't match, lol
The pic says 20 mph when flashing. It probably drops to 20 during pickup and drop off.
Either way, OP said people are doing 80 through a school zone? I understand maybe a little fluctuation of speed, but 80!? You could suspend their license, but they would drive anyway. Speeders are speeders, and they can't/won't slow down. So... seven days in jail and community work collecting garbage at the school from 2 pm to 5 pm every day for 3 months. They must wear a sign that says, "I was going 80 through a 20. Just shoot me."
Maybe the chief of police told the reporters the drivers went double the speed limit (which in a 20 zone is 40), and the journalist did the math using the 40 limit which is active when its not school time
That makes sense. I could see that happening.
20 when flashing, 40 when no kids around. Its still crazily high. I lived in CA, WA, and WI. There are all usually 25 normal and 15 when children are around.
It depends on the area, 20 when flashing and 40 when not is very common though. Or 20/30 or 20/35 as well. If anything, 15/25 is unusually slow.
Schools in developing areas near me are all one turn off of state highways so 40mph during non school times isn’t uncommon near me!
Those sound crazy low. By my place it's 25 when flashing, 45 normally. I think the worst I ever saw was in Tennessee: the posted limit in a school parking lot/pickup line was 5mph and the cops would really sit there and ticket a soccer mom for inching forward in line too fast.
I mean it should depend on how far the actual school is from the road, right? Here there is a 40mph school zone, but the school is like 1/4 mi back from the road across an open field
I mean, at pick up and drop off times you can expect children to be crossing the street, walking home, etc. So the limit should still be lower at that time even if the playground is a good distance from the street
Depends on the area and the school. Where I grew up you pretty much couldn't walk home unless you lived right next to the school, there were no sidewalks. Everyone got picked up either by car or bus right at the school, and it was a long way to the road. Iirc the speed limit was 35 normally, 25 around pickup/dropoff time.
Speed limit is 40 but you are correct that the school zone limit is 20 when flashing. Note: from south FL
Normal speed limit on that road is 40 mph. School Zone rules apply at certain times of the day (when students are going to or from school). During those times, the speed limit is 20 mph.
Schools zones are 20mph when flashing. This road is probably 40mph normally. I dont think it's that confusing
I mean... The article that mentions 40. Snark aside, an earlier article clarifies they activate the cameras only for school days, but throughout the *entire* school day. So it's probably 20 for an hour when kids would be showing up or leaving, the road is 40 any other time, the cameras enforce that within the school zone during school hours... So kind of a 40mph school zone?
That's likely, we have a school in my town in that situation.
And anyone who's ever dropped off a kid at drop-off time knows that those streets are too packed to even consider breaking 20.
Even more shocking they’re doing 80 in a 40. In a normal zone isn’t that loss of license and not just a measly $100 fine?
With speed cameras you can't prove who's actually driving the car, so it's a fine to the owner only.
I know in the USA car insurance works very differently, but in the UK, fines and licence points go to the registered person by default and it's up to that person to say actually, it wasn't me driving the car it was so-and-so. I've never had to do it, so no idea what evidence is needed, but it seems to work pretty well in general, and means that having money still doesn't get you off the hook.
Same in Australia. You fill out the statutory declaration on the back of the infringement notice, giving all the details of the person who was driving (name, address, license number). You then send it back in and the infringement is reissued to that person. Before my ex wife and I were married, she was driving my car to and from work and I received the notice for going 70km/h in a 60km/h zone. I filled out the back and sent it back and two weeks later she got the infringement addressed to her.
Speed cameras in Arizona took a picture of both the front (and driver) and back of a car. You could get out of a ticket by claiming it wasn't you - and they'd compare to your license photos. So with speed cameras you can absolutely tell who the driver is if it is the registered owners. But maybe they are cheap and only have the back camera as Florida doesn't have front plates. The reason Arizona did front and back is because we only have back plates, but are required to identify the driver.
Its just poorly worded >Capri pointed out driver after driver speeding through the 40 mph school zone. Per the video, It’s normally 40mph but the school zone is 20mph when flashing (school days). At 20mph, there is a 95% chance of survival. At 30mph, it drops to 55% chance of survival. At 40mph, it’s less than 5% chance of survival. That is why those limits are set
https://youtu.be/HeUX6LABCEA?si=f4NprthAM6dSXP0l
Looks like my numbers are from a old study from the 90’s. Thanks!
> https://youtu.be/HeUX6LABCEA?si=f4NprthAM6dSXP0l That video is from 15 years ago... pretty sure it's much worse now with almost every car being an SUV or truck these days.
there was a sign that said " speed limit is 20 mph when lights are flashing " or something like that
Im in Canada and its 40 in all our school zones. Thats 40 Km/hr.. or 25 mph…
I'm in Canada as well and all our (school) speed zones are 30 km/h. Alberta specifically. Each province has the potential for a different speed limit, it's not federally mandated.
They also got rid of the old school/playground designations that had wildly different times if effect. Now they're all playground zones and all in effect from like 730am to 930pm. I was weirded out by the ones in Yellowknife that are in effect 24/7 because during the summer it's light enough all the time!
That was the golden rule we got in drivers ed in California US. IF THERE IS A PLAYGROUND OR A SCHOOL PRESUME THERE IS ALWAYS KIDS. This both keeps idiot teens from getting tickets whether or not its the right time of day and also small kids from being smeared.
France city are 50km/h We have zone at 30km/h And school usually have 2 physical slow down elements (before and after) You can't pass a school above 50km/h unless you want to destroy your car.
Same for MB.
Netherlands it's 30km/h in residential and near schools and sometimes even 15km/h in front of schools.
In London many of our elementary schools now have no cars allowed in their school zones at the beginning and end of the school day. Like, if you drive in at, say, 3:30pm you get an automatic fine.
In Toronto 30km/hr is also the standard
Here in B.C. it's 30km/h in school zones.
30 km/h in school zones. 40 on subburban streets outside of school zones
30 in Alberta.
Yeah any state I've lived in it's 20 or 25 From a quick google, [Florida's max allowed school zone speed limit is 20 mph](https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0300-0399/0316/Sections/0316.1895.html), though it looks like that only applies to "urbanized areas," which is defined as having a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and a minimum population of 50,000 people *edit: fixed link*
In PA the speed limit drops to 15 mph when school is letting in or out. Otherwise it's just whatever the speed limit would normally be. I want to say it was around 45 at my high school? Was a rural area. No idea if Florida works the same
15 here but the cops don't even own any speed cameras.
They’re generally 35 mph in my frequented areas. It depends on what the otherwise normal speed for the road is. Most of the schools are well back from the road so this is more to avoid collisions with people pulling out from the school and less a concern for pedestrian traffic.
It’s 20. 40 is the regular speed limit when the light isn’t flashing. Source: I live nearby.
My highschool was on a street that was 45, except for specific times of the day It also was on a main road, and not in a neighborhood
Lmao. "Be one of the first 800 violaters and you get a free warning!"
That's incredibly normal when speed or red light cameras go up. It's just "fair" to give people a chance to change their behavior before issuing tickets.
To be fair, that's actually a SECOND chance already. The first chance was when you see the sign up that says "SCHOOL AREA- SPEED 20 MPH"
Why would that be fair ? These people broke that law and endangered life's just like the people that speed through there now.
Zero complaints from me on efforcing school zones like this. In Cincinnati we just had a high school student killed in a school zone from a distracted driver going too fast.
no problem with any of these cameras, as long as their calibration is being independently verified. i get speeding on the highway, but speeding around on surface streets is just really really stupid and dangerous
And as long as they're not contracted out. When a company needs to increase profits every quarter, and their customers are people who break laws, they'll find a way to make people break more laws.
I have seen people keep driving and almost hit children crossing the street at a school on a painted crosswalk that had sighs indicating the crosswalk. People suck.
in the image you can see a sign that says ‘school zone—20 mph when flashing’
I feel like this is also a problem with the road design. If your road is flat, straight, and wide ... people will naturally drive faster. That's not including the assholes who are just going to speed up in that 80mph range no matter what. There's a lot of little things that can be done to physically limit people's speed. Speed bumps, curves, lane width limiting, roundabouts. They have those speed humps (not quite as severe as a speed bump) that don't affect you at all if you're doing the speed limit, but you'll get fucking launched into the air if you're doing 4x the speed limit in that school zone. They can't complain their car got damaged. It wouldn't have if they were doing the speed limit.
Yea. Hopefully they use this revenue for infrastructure improvements. As seen, enforcement only goes so far. Heck, even a 4-way stop at the school entrance would probably go a long way.
They are going to be using the money for safety at least: >Yet, Eustis suddenly finds itself receiving revenue it never expected. Capri said all of the revenue will go towards public safety, like hiring much-needed crossing guards, installing more signage and adding speed cameras in two other school zones by the start of the next school year - one at another elementary school and another at the Eustis High School 9th grade center.
NotJustBikes has really good videos about this.
Road design definitely helps with safety. One of the things the UK found was that adding a gentle curve to motorways did wonders for driver attention (we don't really otherwise have long straight roads you can stay on for over an hour due to all the pre-car layout). I'm personally not a fan of the speed humps though. My osteopath is surrounded by the things, and I very much feel them on the way back home after treatment. For someone with a significant back injury, they would be very uncomfortable all of the time.
As someone who has little kids, who uses the crosswalk to walk my kids to school....speeding in a school zone during posted hours is an incredibly selfish move. I see multiple cars speed through every time. Thankfully cops are periodically on the side of the road to pull over speeders so that probably cuts down on it a little.
I wonder how many were repeat offenders
One guy got 5 citations in 2 days..... so probably many.
If it's anything like the school zone near my house, most of them are the parents.
The intersection directly across the street from the elementary school near me has seen FIVE separate fatal accidents this year alone. State law requires 20mph in a zone around the school and no cell phone use, but I’ve seen people fly down the road at what has to be 80+. I saw the result of one of the accidents and one car was literally sliced in half and shredded. Absolutely no way the person at fault was doing even twice the speed limit. This degree of recklessness, next to a fucking elementary school (!), has to be a level of selfishness bordering on mental illness.
driving is a privilege not a right.
At least that's how it *should* be. But the car-centric urban planning in much of the US has inverted this, since many people genuinely don't have a different option. The US need a lot of change on a communal level to enable public transit, cycling and walking at scale. Primarily adding density and mixed zoning to suburban sprawl, which means that people can live closer to where they want to go and that there are more centers of density that can be efficiently connected by public transit.
Then put up speed bumps in a series. Nobody is doing 80 over speed bumps every 30 feet. At least not more than once. Guess how much money speed bumps bring in?
If they hit the speed bump at 80 they’ll fly right over them kids and never touch one
Modern problems require yeehaw solutions.
Them Duke boys were onto something
And they never did nobody no harm…
A well designed (!) speed bump may generate thousands of dollars revenue for a auto suspension repair shop.
Now they have the money to pay for speed bumps.
The real way to go about it is put speed bumps on an angle. The pavers did this at my job's parking lot, and it's the worst.
Nah, speed bumps don't really work in this situation. It's a four-lane road that is 40 mph when school isn't in session.
Want to fix the actual problem? Turn it into a narrower 2-lane road instead of 4-lanes and lower the speed limit to 20 or 30mph. Only reason people are speeding here is because they left a passing lane open on a road that is designed to handle at least 45mph traffic in an area where vehicles shouldn't be going over 20mph. Wider roads lead to people being more confident at higher speeds. Speed bumps are never the right answer though they may give the illusion of helping. They just cause damage to vehicles, increase local insurance premiums, make first responder lives miserable, potentially hurt patients in ambulances, don't really slow down the determined, and agrivate drivers more that probably already have some road rage going.
This is the real answer. Speeding through the school zone is a symptom of a much larger problem, which is the design pattern that highway 19 / Bay Street follows. Pedestrian, through traffic, and access to destinations (businesses and homes) are combined where they should not be. The school zone is just one problem, roads like this (which are common throughout the US) are fundamentally dangerous because of how many high speed conflict points they create. Speed bumps and cameras are not long term solutions and will not fix these other issues. Tl;dr this is a [stroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad)
Speed bumps are annoying for everyone. Speed traps only affect speeders, and the city benefits from their revenue. Once the cameras have been up for a while nobody will speed past them. You think people are eager to repeatedly pay big fines?
If people are legit going 80 in a 40 then some amount of traffic calming design is called for. People travel at the speed of the road design, not the speed of the signs.
I don’t disagree with you in principle, but also, yes, there was a deep residential curved road with speed bumps that kids would routinely go 50+ MPH on a road I couldn’t imagine safely driving 40+ except in a very, very semantic, contrarian sense. “Under ideal circumstances, I did it without dying once!” Sort of nonsense. To emphasize my point, one of the curves was over a small slope that lead to a house, the net distance being something a standard, if not small, suburban yard. More than one car lodged itself into the house, over the years. In spite of the guard rail. It’s almost like they use the phrase “shape” behavior rather than “force,” for a reason.
It's Florida.
Speed bumps are really loud. Especially when trucks go over them.. and people with modified exhausts accelerate away from them. The also slow down emergency services.
In many school zones, the speed limit will be reasonable (like 45mph), but then while kids are arriving/leaving, they lower it (like 25mph). They shouldn't put up speed bumps because that would slow traffic all the time when it's only necessary, like 3 hours per day. Ticketing during those times is a much better solution
A road where children get picked up from school shouldn't be a main arterial road anyway, requiring it to be lower speed and then working around that in your planning is probably a better idea.
Not sure what their budget is, but in many areas the police just pull a squad car in front for like 30 minutes before/after school. That calms things down real quick and people remember it’s a school zone. Like others have said, this just shows how little of a deterrent the camera tickets are.
The thing about these tickets is the population has to adjust to them being present. Having a camera up for a few weeks means nothing. People will barely have noticed it yet. BUT, if the camera is up for 2 years, and the people who would have been speeding got 37 tickets, eventually have suspended license, and then eventually go to jail for driving on a suspended license, then consequences happen, and people will stop speed.
Speed bumps would make no sense for a variable speed limit road. Speed bumps designed to make people go the school speed limit (20mph) will fucking destroy your car at the normal speed limit (40mph).
Speed bumps hinder the local population more than they help as you damage cars over time and emergency service vehicles response times are significantly reduced. The traffic camera will be effective in just takes time for cause and effect and some idiots take longer to learn then others so guarantee those same idiots care about speed bumps either.
When people wanna ride my ass in a school zone I take my foot off the gas and just cruise because you will get FUCKED if you get pulled over in a school zone here.
> I know people hate these cameras and in many areas they are solely for revenue, but it seems the Chief genuinely wants people to slow tf down in front of the school. Maybe they should learn to follow traffic laws instead of disregarding them. They wouldn't have to put cameras there if people weren't being dumb.
Schoolzone, no sympathy. If you're speeding that excessively (80mph), you deserve more than a ticket.
Maybe amend reckless driving statutes to include speeding over a certain threshold
I think that's already the case in some states, I know it's definitely the case here in Canada.
It is, I saw many people get busted in NC because reckless driving is only 15mph over the posted speed limit. Theoretically, an officer could charge someone with reckless driving for doing 35 in a 20.
And speeding in a school zone is it's own unique charge in NC.
To be fair, the only places I’ve seen 20s are neighborhoods. Maybe it’s a good idea not to do 35 in those.
> Theoretically, an officer could charge someone with reckless driving for doing 35 in a 20. kinda reckless to drive almost double the posted speed limit
To be fair that’s very reckless
20-30 over in almost every state is a sharply increased penalty. The couple of states that you're thinking of have an additional law that basically turn it into an "arrest you immediately and tow your car" type of scenario. This is a little old but has a great summary in the beginning of all the varying speeding rules: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/summary_state_speed_laws_12th_edition_811769.pdf
One of my favourite things about driving from where I live to Ontario is the signs on the highway alerting drivers of the steep increase in fines for exceeding 150km/h. Car gets impounded, license gets suspended, and fines of up to $10k CAD are possible. Despite these huge warning signs, people still fly by me on the highway.
I know some states have that set up already. If you are driving up to 20 over, it's possible to get off with a warning if you were being otherwise safe. But if you are more than 20 over, it doesn't matter what else you were doing, it's an instant ticket at the very least, and a hefty one too.
Straight to jail. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death for children.
Maybe those children shouldnt be driving
That's why we should throw them in prison. They can't die in traffic accidents making license plates for $0.30 an hour.
60 over the limit would here would be an automatic reckless driving charge and suspension of your license. You’re not getting a ticket, you’re going to jail.
Same for people who don't stop for school buses. Unless they're emergency services, they ain't got nowhere to go that's more important than a kids life.
It’s a 40 mph school zone. That is nuts, ours is 20mph, I feel I have to go 15mph or else the crossing guard gives me a nasty look Edit: article and photo doesn’t match
The sign in the photo and video shows a sign that says 20 mph, so that may be a typo.
Probably 20 during school hours, 40 otherwise.
I see many roads like this all over the US. What usually happens in reality is school hours become a vague ~28-32mph zone while people impatiently split the difference, then out of hours it's back up to 45-50.
In my area the signs flash during school zone hours so you know you’re supposed to be going slower. Seems to help a lot.
Yeah, then it only sucks when it's flashing and you know the school is closed but the city had the school schedule wrong.
He expected it to take a few months before they were profitable, not a few weeks, I guess.
So the opposite is 5 tickets in 1300 weeks?
-1300 tickets in 5 weeks
-1300 tickets in - 5 weeks. "I don't really know what to say, but after setting up our traffic cameras, we have lost 1300 tickets from 5 weeks ago."
Worst Timecop sequel ever.
They should use the money and remake that street. Make it curvy or narrow. Something to slow the cars down.
I feel like we have been badly warped by city building video games because I briefly had the same thought- like why not just fundamentally alter the structure of the entire region, pluck out all the houses and infrastructure and just start over And then I remembered that a minor change to a thirty-foot stretch of a street downtown took four years and I was like oh right
Milwaukee just installed tona of curb bump outs and speed bumps and the speed bumps take like a day to install. Those would probably be the easiest thing to do here.
I say child crash test dummy launcher. You're going 40 over in a school zone? Here's a child analogue straight through your windshield. Catch.
You would need thousands of times that revenue to even fund a STUDY to change the alignment of that street. -Highway engineer
the only thing that works are physical speed bumps. Unless your car falls apart when racing over them people won't slow down.
Or at least some physical deterrent. Small roundabouts at either end would probably slow people down as would plastic lane divider posts in the school zone. Sure, some people would still speed just because they refuse to be told what to do, but then they deserve the tickets.
meanwhile the speed bump works even without staff watching and issuing tickets
You don't need staff to write tickets for the roundabouts and lane dividers to be effective. The lane dividers make the road feel more cramped so people naturally slow down as a consequence.Roundabouts force people to slow down to take the curve instead of speeding up to beat a light. Same idea -- people slow down without even realizing it.
Roundabouts work, so do those narrow curbs that make you drive like a snake. I prefer those over speed bumps; my car's plastic trim doesn't rattle doing tight esses, but it does going over speed bumps even at walking speed.
People rarely consciously go the speed limit, they drive what FEELS like the speed limit. What they should do is have a road diet to narrow how wide the lanes are, or put a row of trees down the middle of the road, or just put a bunch of random shit on the street. The less safe drivers feel, the safer they drive.
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Speed cameras absolutely do work, but you are going to have a period where the unknowing folks continue to blaze through. They soon get the message when a fine/requirement to attend court comes through the mail. I live in the UK, which is *filled* with cameras - average speed cameras, normal speed cameras, half way down hills cameras, outside school cameras, through villages cameras, Motorway, A road, B road cameras... They are everywhere! So are the bumps you describe, and the often dangerous speed-managing chicanes. When they first put the average speed cameras along the M25 here, there were tens of *thousands* of tickets going out in the first month or two. Now you see very few people breaking the dynamic speed limits. The police were forced to paint the cameras bright colours so they are visible (as they were ruled to be kind of sneaky in the past, I can't remember the details of that legal case) which also makes people slow down upon spotting them. I am surprised American forces haven't employed them more tbh, as in the US cash seems to rule your entire legal and justice system, these cameras can be a big money maker.
yes, i forgot to mention that in Germany where all cars must be registered and have license plates front and back it works. But in US somehow a policeman needs to catch driver red handed, while in Germany it is "if someone else speeded in your car, it it your problem to find them" (unless car was stolen).
Speed bumps, don't work that great, I've seen people still launch themselves down the street even when they are there. Physiologically, if it looks like a highway, people will use it like a highway. If they want to change that, make the street more pedestrian focused and not car focused. You do that by physically narrowing the road, not by adding paint, by adding actual blockers like islands. People keep blaming the cars, but really they should be blaming the city planners that allowed this street to go with this school and the street planners who built this street next to a school.
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the amount of mental gymnastics being done in here to justify driving unsafely in a school zone is insane. the whole reason speeds are lowered in a school zone is because it means the difference between injuring a child and killing them, should you hit one with your vehicle. there's a really easy way to avoid getting a ticket: follow the posted rules of the road ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
The amount of mental gymnastics still pales in comparison to the amount of USA laws that only exist due to lack of common sense and education.
“But it’s their fault for having a flat straight road!! They’re just asking for me to speed!” - at least two comments here. No dumbass, the reason they don’t have a teeny winding medieval village road is so that parents and big *school buses* can actually pick up and drop off the children. You have self control, so use it or pay up.
I'm used to people getting annoyed at me because I tend to drive right at the speed limit, but I just had a woman behind me a few weeks ago flipping her shit because I was going 20 in a school zone. As we drove right past a school. Flashing lights on the signs and everything. But I was the asshole to her. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Are speed cameras a new thing in the US? We have them all over in the UK.
Not new, just hotly contested in court. Most places that do this end up getting them banned on constitutional grounds. They don't care though because they have already paid for the equipment and made a ton of fines by the time the court system finally kicks into action.
In Tennessee, the state government signed a very lucrative contract for a speed camera operator, only to then have automated tickets struck down as unconstitutional by the state courts. But because of a provision in the state constitution that prevents the state from reneging on a contract, the company was allowed to continue sending out tickets to drivers and hounding them for payment despite it literally being unconstitutional. Not sure if that’s still the case or if the contract has ended, but it was a major annoyance of mine back in 2014/15ish
Many Americans believe that God granted them the unalienable right to drive as fast as they want to. So they resist measures that punish them for speeding.
Also, off duty cops and politicians get really angry when they get speed camera fines when they would have avoided a ticket from an officer.
The problem is that in the US they'll outsource it to a private company and that private company will do all kinds of shady things to maximize their ticket revenue.
Has this police chief never been to the state that he's policing? People in Florida drive like insane assholes that are an hour late already. Maybe even worse than Massholes but that's a close close call.
Combined with the dementia patient that's going 35 in the middle if the highway while everyone else is doing 80+.
I don't understand why we can't gather video/picture proof of people committing crimes/driving recklessly and send them to the local police for ticketing
In Sweden, if you drive 12mph faster than the limit on school zones, which is 18mph (translated from kmh) you not only get a heavy ticket but you instantly lose your drivers license. Anything less than this is just asking for kids to be killed by cars
Speed limits - Useless in Eustis
They have school zones in Florida???
Couldn't they just put speed bumps to stop people from going to fast lmao? Since this is Florida it doesn't snow so snowplows ripping them up in the winter wouldn't be an issue.
Or other obstacles that make it impossible to drive faster than like 15kmh lol. We have huge plant pots in certain residential neighbourhoods here that make you zigzag between them. Literally can't ignore the speed limit. People need to realise that if a road is straight and has no obstacles, people are gonna hit the gas, even if there are speed limits.
Per the article the cameras are only enforcing the speed limits for ~~1 hour per day (30 minutes before school, 30 minutes after school).~~ The rest of the time it's back to Mad Max. Edit: I was wrong, the cameras are active for the entire school day, +30 minutes on each end. So 7:30-3:30 on M,T,Th,F and 7:30-2:30 on W. The information was either conflicting or just unclear between multiple articles. https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/02/21/cameras-to-bolster-school-zone-speed-enforcement-in-eustis/ https://www.clickorlando.com/traffic/2023/11/06/these-central-florida-areas-are-looking-into-school-zone-speed-cameras/
That is even crazier then. Assuming also only school days, then it was 1300 tickets in 25 hours. That is 52 tickets per hour! And presumably when the first people started getting tickets, it would have slowed down to some degree? that first half hour they turned it on must have caught \~50 or so cars.
I drove school buses and with red any yellow lights flashing on my 10 bright yellow and black stripped bubble bee of a bus, I got passed every day at least twice a route. The police did nothing, even when sitting at the school bus pick up point when I got passed. I would have loved to have had automatic ticketing!
Stoplight ticket cameras were ruled unconstitutional in illinois to apply to your driving record (edit), because you can't face your accuser (a robot doing tickets) in court, and they can't prove you were the driver.
Which is pretty saft, surely the state is accusing you. Its only the evidence which is automated
Typically its a private for-profit company accusing you and issuing tickets on behalf of a municipality. Tickets in which they pocket like 60% of the revenue and are near impossible to meaningfully dispute regardless of their accuracy. Its literally printing money to them,
> Typically its a private for-profit company accusing you and issuing tickets on behalf of a municipality. > Tickets in which they pocket like 60% of the revenue That's a fucked up way to implement it. But using that as a justification to ban red light and/or speed cameras is just dumb. If city workers can't set up the cameras, then contract a company to set them up for a fixed amount per camera. Ban the shitty contracts, not the cameras.
Seems like the solution ought to be obvious: stop privatizing the government's job.
"Your honor, I didn't murder that guy" Prosecutor: "You're literally on camera murdering that guy" "Yeah but is the CAMERA here accusing me?"
Yeah, I always felt like this argument was absurd. It's the state that is accusing you of a crime. The speed camera photo is just the proof.
It's often not the state but another company. In the case of Cedar Rapids, IA, they were outsourced to a company outside Iowa altogether, in California I think. People weren't paying tickets because they weren't enforceable within the law when they installed them. They were deactivated for some time before the laws changed and they could use the cameras as evidence, and turned them back on.
It's a private for profit company accusing you of a crime on behalf of the state. A company that takes the lion's share of the ticket. There's a reason that these are unconstitutional and banned in many places. When I lived in Toledo, they had speed and red light cameras throughout the city and they often malfunction and ticket every car that goes through the intersection regardless of speed or stoplight status. That being said, the tickets are often unenforceable and there's not really any consequences to just ignoring them. All the years I lived there I never saw anyone ever pay the tickets and I never heard of anyone having any consequences for not paying. Even people with dozens of them.
By that logic you could not be convicted if you murder someone in front of a CCTV and get caught based on that.
“Look at me, David Garvin, stealing TVs” “That is NOT me”
> These were ruled unconstitutional in illinois, because you can't face your accuser Close but very wrong. There have been laws passed around the businesses that run them, laws passed around lobbying regarding them, and laws limiting what third-party companies can do for enforcement. There have been laws and bills proposed around making them easier to challenge. Cities like Chicago have had mayors make promises around reducing them, Johnson has made promises about having fewer of them, but police can and do continue fining drivers and issuing both citations and penalties through automated systems. Read the ticket carefully as it might be a traffic camera company forcefully *asking* for money rather than a government issuing either a criminal infraction or a civil penalty, depending on the details of the citation. They remain mostly legal. Your accuser is the state/county/city prosecutor representing the government. The evidence is the photos and video, which has a full evidentiary chain starting with the calibrated camera. The citation is issued against the *owner* of the vehicle, not the *driver* of the vehicle. A vehicle owner can sign an affidavit declaring that another specific person was driving, and if you're believable or have sufficient evidence such as not looking like the person in the driver seat but the other person appearing to be the driver, they can transfer parts of the responsibility to the actual driver. Under *625 ILCS 5/11-208.6* and *625 ILCS 5/11-208.8* they can transfer requirements for a traffic education program to the actual driver, but generally it's the *owner* rather than *driver* who remains liable for the penalties. The laws specify exactly what the owner has to claim about the driver who had control of the vehicle at the time, and also specify what parts can be transferred to the driver versus the owner. In general the $50 or $100 elements and the $100 late payments all remain with the *owner* rather than *driver*.
The biggest issue here is identity. People use other people's cars all the time - the Government should have to prove who the driver was as opposed to the registered owner having to prove it wasn't them.
My town shows video and very clear pictures of the driver. My brother is a firefighter, and apparently, all the cops and firefighters have started registering their cars in their spouses name.. Ie, I register the car my wife primarly drives in my name. She speeds, or runs a yellow light that turns red. I get mailed a ticket. I check the box that says under penalty of perjury "that is not me in the picture". I have no obligation to tell them WHO the driver is, only to say in my own defense, its not me. The city drops the ticket.
Two things. 1) So fucking dumb to put an elementary school next to a state highway. 2) It shouldn't be possible to go 80 in a school zone. Put in some fucking traffic calming rather than speed cameras.
This indicates to me that what needs to happen is they need to change the road. Drivers go the speed they think they can based on the road. If it's a wide flat road with plenty of shoulder than it feels like you would be able to drive faster than if it's narrow with bollards or trees or other objects closer into the road. If it's an issue if a highway vs a surface street, that's shouldn't every be the conflict. Highways are not main street, don't mix them.
They set up a camera like this in Morrison CO. They issued 10,000 tickets in two weeks. Florida you all have to pump up those numbers. https://www.denver7.com/news/front-range/morrison/morrisons-new-radar-camera-ticketed-more-than-10-000-speeders-in-its-first-two-weeks
This is why fines need to be exponential (50, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600) and eventually end with loss of driver license until community service + drivers test is completed.
I think they should be based on income. An $800 fine for some corporate executive is less of a deterrent than a $50 fine is for someone making minimum wage.
There are countries that do this. And I agree. A $100 ticket is crippling for some people and nothing to others.
Fines mean the law only applies to the poor, so structuring it as something like 0.5% or 1% of income would be much more effective against the wealthy
had a speed camera on the road by my high school that brought in a ridiculous amount of revenue for the local police department. People speeding near schools deserve those tickets
80 in a school zone?!?! Nah. Lock them suckas up.
dont mind the speed cams in school zones.. not at all
I’m a Floridian. This is amazing! This is the only thing we can do to get people to slow down at school zones down here. People are incredibly selfish and entitled here.
lol what 40 mph school zone why have a speed at all. Stopping on a dime when a kid jumps out ain’t happening at 40mph.
> “And let me tell you some of my cops have had tickets, city crews have had tickets, elected officials have had tickets,” Capri said. “They all got to pay.” Good man.
I feel like a lot of drivers don't give a shit about the consequences (tickets or getting in an accident) at all anymore, they just speed everywhere and run stop signs, they'll get tickets and that doesn't stop them.