School Zone Santa .Com

What do you do when you find yourself in the middle of a school zone? Does your heart skip a beat?

Do you say “Oh dear” or worse and frantically look at your watch and speedo?

Did you ignore the warning signs?

You didn’t see them?

Is it because there are just too many signs?

Is it because it’s only at a certain time and only on school days?

Why DO drivers get caught out at school zones?
I think good drivers get caught –out at school zones, because they don’t see the signs and they just don’t realize it is school zone time.
Driving a car becomes automatic. You look ahead driving at a normal safe speed and then all of a sudden you’re in a school zone.
How many good normal drivers with excellent or even unblemished driving record, get caught out at school zones?
Why would 2GB feel it would be a public service to warn it’s listeners both morning and afternoon when it’s school zone time.
It’s because they get so many complaints from drivers about the zones.

40 km/h school zones were introduced to help ensure school children’s safety before and after school. At face value, an excellent idea. But even with large signs and signs painted on the roadway, 49,500* drivers were detected speeding at one school zone in 12 months.
The RTA will admit that they never imagined that they would catch so many drivers, and still do, so long after school zones were introduced. They assumed drivers would learn.
Well 49,500* motorists in one year haven’t learnt and were endangering children.
Obviously signs alone, don’t work.
For the children’s sake, something more is needed.
At any place where the speed changes from the normally posted speed, as at school zones, road works etc, flashing lights are needed to make drivers aware of the “new” speed.
WE DON’T NEED MORE “TRIALS” THERE’S 49.500* REASONS AT KOGARAH ALONE, FOR FLASHING LIGHTS.

(DT Tuesday 12 October 2004)
State Labour MP for Kogarah Ms Cherie Burton has said, [St George and Sutherland Shire Leader 9/11/04] that while the cameras would have caught many dangerous drivers, other drivers were being treated unfairly and she is lobbying the RTA to have the cameras moved and ,Ms Burton is on the SAME team as Mr Scully the transport minister

The NRMA P & C Association and Pedestrian Council of Australia have all called for flashing lights to help motorists observe the limits. However, Mr Scully’s office said a study of an initial trial at 11 school zones was “not conclusive”. The study found that motorists did slow down at some schools but not at others. In some cases drivers even increased their speed, the spokesman said.

Of course there are some drivers who take no notice of any road rule. These people think that rules don’t apply to them. They weave in and out of traffic, get on the back bumper of cars traveling at the correct speed to intimidate them, cut corners, don’t indicate, pass on double lines etc. These arrogant morons need to be caught and taken off the road.

How could flashing lights on school zone signs not work? If flashing lights wouldn’t attract driver’s attention, then why put them on police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, emergency vehicles and even on RTA vehicles. The RTA says that the benefit of flashing lights is “not conclusive”.
Perhaps it’s because if they said that the flashing lights do work, then more pressure would be there to install them. If they say they don’t work, someone will prove that they do.
The NRMA did a survey and found that76% of drivers asked were in favour of flashing lights and I think the other 24% haven’t been caught yet.

With flashing lights normal law abiding people would slow down, that is the whole point of school zones. If they were aware of them, and the time, there wouldn’t be a problem.
Normal drivers would never endanger children.
We need flashing lights at the Kogarah school zone at least.

Leave the two speed cameras there and also put up flashing lights, use the existing timer on the speed camera to switch them on and off, then we’ll see how “inconclusive” it is.

Looking at the figures from these two cameras alone and all the other sites, it’s quite obvious that signs alone don’t work. It’s not just the school zones with speed cameras that have the problem of unaware drivers. At any school drivers sail past all the signs, oblivious of doing wrong. SEE RTA”S Figures

Put up flashing lights and anyone then caught speeding at school zone time, and some will, fine them $500 no excuses and put the money raised to help fund more lights. What do you think?

*NB The speed camera site at Kogarah is a” variable speed” zone. So not all the 49,500 would be for school zone violations. However even if half were, that’s still a huge number of unaware drivers caught that pose a risk to children.