by KYW's Mike Dunn and Mike DeNardo
City, state, and federal officials will roll out a program aimed at getting drivers in Philadelphia to heed the speed limit. One part of this involves 3-D images that will look like bumps in the road.
The program is called "Drive CarePhilly," and the goal, according to Charles Denny, the city's chief traffic engineer, is simple:
"The goal is to change the mindset. The goal is to get the drivers to be less aggressive. We want them to go what the speed limit is, not to assume that its a recommended speed, to know that its a speed limit that's appropriate on residential streets."
Denny says this effort includes the deployment at about 100 intersections of high tech decals that create a 3-D image, to make drivers think there's something in the intersection:
"Plastic material that is laid down, and it gives the illusion of being a hump in the roadway. And therefore people react to it as though it were a hump, and slow down. The driver sees this in the roadway, and they think that its some protrusion up out of the roadway, and not a perfectly flat surface. So they slow down before they drive over it."
Also, the city is launching a public awareness campaign to convince you to stop putting pedal to the metal.
Bluegrass Road, for example, connects Welsh Road and Grant Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia. The speed limit is 25, and for about a week, signs, speed humps, and "virtual speed bumps" have been deployed to slow down the speeders who use the road as a shortcut.
Richard Simon, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says they'll be studying Bluegrass Road:
"Crash data, citation data, public awareness data. And we're going to put that all into a comprehensive research report which would prove, hopefully without any equivocation, the success of countermeasures tlike this."
Al Hoffman, who lives on Bluegrass Road, doesn't need comprehensive research:
"We couldn't get in and out of the complex."
And now?
"Now, it's a pleasure."
Police are also getting more speed enforcement tracking devices for squad cars, and officers in six districts will be assigned specifically to go after speeders.
(Photo by KYW's Mike DeNardo)
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