Speeding in school zones up +200% says Colorado Springs Police
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - Flashing lights, crosswalks, and 20mph speed limit signs are installed at school zones to slow down drivers and encourage them to be more aware of the students walking nearby.
However, despite those warnings, the Colorado Springs Police Department says speeding violations in school zones have risen exponentially in the past two school years.
"It's just out of Control."
Donna Mitchell has lived across the street from Queen Palmer Elementary School for 50 years. Mitchell says cars whizzing between her home and the school is a common sight.
"They come off of Union [Blvd] just flying, and they start turning down the side streets. Sometimes you have to run to just get across the street from here to the school. It's become dangerous," Mitchell said, looking across the street to the elementary school.
In the 2022-23 school year, the police department issued 733 school zone speeding tickets. 164 were violations of +20mph.
The next school year, that figure more than doubled to 1,800, and just last school year, police officers issued nearly 2,300 tickets in school zones, with 638 people ticketed for driving +20 miles per hour over the speed limit.
"Traffic safety is always a number one priority for us."
Caitlin Ford-Blanco with the Colorado Springs police department says it's hard to pinpoint a specific factor for the dramatic increase in recent years.
"We have more school zones to write citations. We've also been really targeting our enforcement, from our motor team and our traffic teams, in those school zones during the heavy traffic days, and then I think we know we've been seeing potentially an increase in dangerous driving behavior," Ford-Blanco said.
Potentially, more school zones are on the way. The city has named these 12 schools in future school zone plans.
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