School zones
March 28th, 2012 at 06:42am
An email to 2UE’s Stuart Bocking, who is filling in for Jason Morrison on the Breakfast show this morning
Good morning Stuart, nice to hear you on a weekday again.
About the proposal to make school zones be in force 24/7. I can't see any point to it. There is no good reason to have a school zone in force when there are no kids around. In NSW the system makes sense as the school zones are in force around the times that children are likely to enter and exit the school grounds, and portable school zones exist around stopped school buses…it's much more sensible than the blanket 8:30am-4pm school zones we have in Canberra where various busy roads are slowed down for no good reason in the middle of the day when kids are in classrooms.
I like the idea of having flashing lights at all school zones, but what I would like to see is the ability to have the school zones be in force at times requested by the school, so for example if the school has an after-school program they could keep the school zone active for an extra hour or so in the afternoon, or if the school will have a class go on an excursion where they have to cross the road out the front, the school zones could be turned on while they do that. This might even be useful if schools ever decide to change their operating hours independently of other schools. Flashing lights would certainly make this easier.
I would also like to see school zones monitored by signposted point-to-point speed cameras so that motorists know that speeding in the school zone WILL result in them being caught and fined. This would hopefully free up police to monitor other roads and perform their other duties, and mean that we require less speed cameras elsewhere because we have more available police.
Have a great day Stuart.
P.S. Is Jason "expecting" this morning? I'm sure the rumour mill is in overdrive due to his absence.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
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