Government steps in where common sense won't

By Staff
The Red Bay City Council is looking at lowering the speed limits in subdivisions to 25 miles per hour, down 10 from its current state of 35. Mayor Jeff Reid read the ordinance to the council Monday night, and the council is expected to vote on it at the next council meeting.
Currently, drivers are cruising the streets at a healthy 40 mph. Consider this:
That's to say that if a child darted out in front of your car, you would travel about 44 feet before your brain relayed the message to your foot that you needed to stomp on the brake pedal.
Now let's take the reaction time and add it to the breaking distance. That gives us an average stopping distance of 124 feet at a speed of 40 miles per hour. Do you know what a child standing at 123 feet means? It's not good.
One hundred and twenty four feet is not a tremendous amount of time, especially considering it's not very likely something will jump out in front of you at the farthest possible point. Under most circumstances, you're looking at needing to stop quicker than 124 feet, but 124 feet is the fastest you'll be able to make it happen.
That's a lot of math to say one simple thing: Slow down.
In most subdivisions, you'll find children. Where you find one, you'll find several. Driving at high speeds in neighborhoods is extremely dangerous. All it would take is one second for a ball to roll in front of a vehicle, or a child to pull out on his or her bike. Even though parents try to teach their children not to play in the streets, they are still children and will find themselves there on occasion.
It doesn't matter what the maximum speed limit is. Page one of the driver's manual tells us that you should use the safest speed possible under current driving conditions. Sometimes that's 40, 35, 25 or zero.