School’s back – slow down
February 3, 2009 by Matt Brogan
Police are urging motorists to observe school zone speed limits after a blitz in Melbourne yesterday nabbed one driver at 97km/h through the 40km/h school zone.
He was one of 17 people caught in the busy St. Kilda school zone in the first hour of the operation.
Police say that this is a basic safety issue (more than a speeding issue alone) and that they are stunned that many of the driver’s caught speeding were in fact dropping their own children at the school.
Police will continue to target drivers speeding past Victorian schools periodically all year.
Print it: 
School doesn’t go back here for nearly two weeks so I’ll be sticking to the 60 zones :D
This really concerns me. But it is not just the cars that drive by the school, how many of you that have kids have tried to get in and out of a school cark park at drop off and pick up times?. Its not a good mix, stressed out parents running late trying to forge their way through other more stressed out patents running even later. Poorly designed car parks and limited space equal a bottle neck of insane horn beeping and hand jesters. All this is made worse by the dordelers, the stay at home mums who hold everyone else up because they have no were else to be and want to chat. And between all this the kids are running around and between the cars being driven.
Good point Salesman, Schools probably need an area like the airports, a set down pick up section that the school martials can police.
But the speeding in the 40 zone is just plain Stupid. Whilst I hate and detest the usual heavy handidness attached to speeding, I would have absolutely NO grievences to the Authorities setting up fixed speed cameras in all school zones. Even those big sign boards that show what speed you are doing should be used to advertise to everyone else that the driver is an uncaring idiot!!
this system is useless, alot of these school zones are not even near metres near a school.
They should fund the school to build a drop off and pick up area first and in the main streets eg. princes there should be bridge or fences.
one good example is in princes highway Kogarah…it has a bridge and fences and yet they decide to put speed cameras…does not make sense.
the chances of kid getting run over there are little, he would have to jump the fence and thats just idiotic.
by the way i do have a kid just incase i get criticised.
School Zones need to be more clearly marked.
Yellow lines on the road throughout the zone and mandatory Electronic Signs so the driver doesnt have to try and ‘determine’ whether it is a school day/time or not WHILE DRIVING!
Good call Alec. Don’t get me started on the amount of people that observer school zones outside school hours (like 6pm) or during school holidays.
Nice, big LED flashing signals would make it a lot easier for motorists to be aware.
On some more major roads the 40k limits make thing more dangerous as congestion is caused, e.g. Reserve road Beaumaris, I am sure that this road is more dangerous now that it was before 40k, someone will be killed because of this, but as speed ic the only evil in the world things will continue as they are.
^^^
Not to mention Springvale road, just before the Maroondah hwy intersection.
When School is on, you may as well walk!
They could do with some pedestrian over-passes here or a pedestrian tunnel!
Just an observation: Queensland (you know, that hot and wet place Up North)students have been back one week already, so this article is meant just for Southern readers? (why so Southern – centric?) Additionally, I totally agree with the above commentators who mentioned some sort of electronic alert to drivers who genuinely forget the time of day or day of the week etc (especially visitors to the neighbourhood unaware of local places). As for drop off zones, yes please, and get parents trained to just do that, kiss and drop – one of my schools has this system, it works and speeds things up.
An American friend of mine tells me parents line up in their cars single file. The kids all stand in a group with a pick up officer who marks off his list each child as they are collected by the parents. No rush.