As someone who has 25 years driving without a speeding ticket or any booking for that matter it does not matter whether or not the school zone signage is poor(as it usually is) living your life having killed a child would not be easy. its easier just to keep your foot on the brake and drive at the speed limit. Saves a lot of money. I even drive at 50km an hour ( in a 50 zone) at 2am if the sign says to do it.
Uhuh. The issue here isnt about people purposely speeding through school zones as you are trying to make it out to be, its the signage being poor and people accidently speeding through them... thats why things such as flashing lights on top of the signs would be good, but the government doesnt really care about saving lives, it cares about $$$.
A perfect example of people accidently speeding through them is only 100m away from my house. There is a crest of a hill, the 40 zone sign is a couple of metres before the crest, so cars are driving up this hill and obviously seeing a residential area and no school they dont take extra notice of the sign, because they assume its 50. By the time they make it over the crest, Ive seen on several occasions, cops getting them on their radar! Now Im sure that alot of people once they see the school would slow down, its just an unusual situation, but their just in it for the money, not for safety! The same thing applies on main roads, people dont assume there would be a 40 zone on a mina road doing 70km/h, and they certainly wouldnt notice such a sign doing 70km/h on a three lane road! And the focus on the kiddies seems to be descreasing now with the drivers always to blame. If the kids are taught in the first place not to cross the road, or be very aware of traffic, falaties wont occur. When I was young, I was very aware of traffic, because I was educated properly by school and by parents. And then some may say 'oh if their football goes on the road they go for it', well if they know to be aware of traffic they wont, but I doubt this is a major causes of deaths, Ive seen on many occasions young kids crossing busy roads with on one occasion an over-pass only 20m down road! And where I lived ages back a teenage girl was killed when crossing the road 200m from school on a road where visibility is the best it could possible be (like it was exactly at the bottom of a dip, like both directions of traffic were elevated for hundreds of metres so you could easily see ALL traffic!).... once again, education, how can someone that old not look both ways to check for traffic! To much emphasis on it being the drivers fault has made kiddies think that they can do what they want and cars have to stop for them (Obviously you have to, but if they try to cross when their isnt a big enough gap.....)... Ive seen this occur on many occasions where teenage guys cross roads in 60km/h areas stopping traffic or virtually dodging it.
Like I said before, implementing those flashing light things would almost eliminate speeding in 40 zones as 99% of people accidently speed through them, not many people are dumb enough to speed for fear of being caught or hitting some child (And obviously these days they can estimate your speed etc when you hit em and you go to jail for manslaughter!). Im not sure, but if they were also timed to flash during the 40km/h zone hours, that would also help, because I know some of the time, well at least in my early driving days, not knowing the exact school times (Although going to 4pm is stupid, went passed a couple of schools yesterday, at 3:30 let alone 4pm they are dead quiet... same applies to the morning time of like 10pm I think, by then the little kiddies should be in class)