Subject: Re: Speeding by schools [was: Fought my ticket and won...]

From: [email-masked] (Dan Howell)
Date: 16 Aug 1995 05:08:51 GMT

In article <1995Aug12.211133.5968@cmkrnl>, [email-masked] (Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Systems) writes:
> In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Kevin Atkinson) writes:
> > In article <[email-masked]>, Jessica Fistere <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >>Uhhh... does it occur to anyone that someone just *should* *not* be driving by
> >>schools and YMCAs at 52 miles per hour???
> > 
> > School speed zones are only in effect when children are out, often duren 
> > the begging of the day, lunch, and when they are let out.  When all the 
> > children are safely in the building or not even there there is no need to 
> > slow down.  
> 
> Kevin, you and I have exchanged many words of agreement in this forum, 
> but here we part company.  
> 
> Tell me, do you know the lunch and recess periods for every school you
> drive past?  How do you KNOW they're *all* "safely in the building"? 
> How do you know, after hours, that there are no after-hours activities
> going on? 
> 
> Yes, school speed zones are in effect only when children are present.  
> That doesn't mean that it's prudent to drive at 52 when they aren't 
> present.  Children cannot be relied upon to behave responsibly, nor 
> safely, nor predictably.  If one had popped out from behind a parked 
> car while you were zooming past, and you'd hit him or her, I doubt 
> they'd cut you much slack because "there were no children obviously 
> visible, so I assumed they were all inside".  
> 
> Now granted I don't know the road you're talking about; I don't know 
> any of the details.  Maybe 52 WAS a perfectly safe speed for that 
> situation.  But in general I have big problems with anyone saying that
> school zones should only be given special caution when children are 
> *obviously* present. 

Well, allow me to explain why I believe 52 WAS a perfectly safe speed for
that situation.  The school is a high school and fenced off by a transparent
chain-link fence from the road, and the students were in class as far as I
could tell (it was in the afternoon, after lunch).  The Y_W_CA (not YMCA) is
far enough from the road and also fenced off.  It is also a few hundred feet
_past_ the place on the road where I stopped for the cop.  There were no parked
cars at the side of the road at the time--if there were, I undoubtedly would
have been driving slower.

I drive that stretch of road often (at least twice a week) and based on my
own observation, which admittedly is not scientific, I believe the average
speed of traffic on this particular stretch of road, when no children or
teenagers are walking to or from school or the YWCA, is over 40 mph; the 85th
percentile is probably over 45.  This could explain _why_ there are fences
separating the school and the YWCA from this road.

As for my own speed, 52 mph would be unusually high for me on that stretch of
road, if that is indeed what I was driving (radar readings are certainly
not infallible).  I don't think I had ever have noticed myself doing over 50
mph on it.  But conditions were pretty much ideal (clear, dry weather,
excellent visibility, no parked cars, no traffic, etc.) at the time.  I guess
I just have this annoying habit of adjusting my speed for actual conditions
instead of blindly following whatever the posted speed limit happens to be,
or adding some arbitrary number of mph to it like some people seem to do.

So far the only thing that I have seen unexpectedly pop out from behind anything
on that road was the motorcycle cop popping out from behind a tree in the bus depot
parking lot on the other side of the road.

-- 
Dan Howell  <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Dan Howell)
Date: 16 Aug 1995 05:08:51 GMT