August is Back-to-School Safety Month. With summer coming to an end, more than 200,000Hawaii studentswilltravel Hawaii’s streets throughout the upcoming academic year. The buses, cars, and bikes they use share the roadways with drivers like you. Trying to manage traffic around schools can be a difficult challenge with balancing the need for safety and the communities need to reduce congestion.
Community groups facing tough speeding challenges look for creative, cost effective solutions that make smart use of available funding. Municipalities need to know that speeding enforcement dollars are spent on programs that will affect real benefits in their community. One solution of radar speed signs have been studied for effectiveness and tested in the field. City & County of Honolulu officials should consider this effective driver feedback method for deployment in problematic speed zones. There are two case studies of real towns that have used dynamic radar speed signs and have shown significant improvement in reducing speeding and speeding citations.
In King County, Washington they used radar speed signs to reduce the speed on 100th Ave. NE near an elementary school and a high school. Engineers determined that road restructuring for choke points or curb build-outs would have negative impact on emergency response in the area. The community groups were pleased with the results of the study featuring our TraffiCalm radar speed sign and the police department saw a marked decrease in traffic complaints, speeding and traffic accidents.
The Police in Tigard, Oregon were looking to increase pedestrian safety near a high school The posted limit was 20 MPH but police were regularly citing drivers going 40 MPH or faster. Using additional police patrols proved effective but drivers were speeding again when patrols stopped. Using the TraffiCalm driver feedback signs proved effective even 6 months after they had been installed and citations along that stretch of road is down 66%.
Using a driver feedback system like TraffiCalm has, can be a cost effective approach to solving traffic speeding problems and give lasting results by using a permanent or intermittent installation.
We wish everyone a happy and safe start to the new school year.