NORFOLK, Va. — Driving 10 miles or more over the speed limit near some Norfolk schools now comes with a cost.
“It’s very dangerous through here," said Norfolk parent Melanie Carr. "People fly through here. It’s posted 35 miles an hour and people are going 50.”
$100 fines will now go out to speeders passing through certain school zones in the Mermaid City. This comes after a 60-day warning period to get drivers adjusted to the change.
“We wanted to make sure that citizens were duly informed that the system was going active,” John Stevenson, the director of Norfolk's Department of Transportation, said in March.
Shantel Hall is one driver who got caught going over the speed limit near Booker T. Washington High School during that warning period. She said she didn’t know about the cameras at the time.
“I was doing 10 or more when I got that ticket?" she said. "Ok, that was a little fast.”
At first, Hall said she felt skeptical about the idea.
“I thought it was going to be all over the place," Hall said. "So it’s a whole point to it, I guess I feel a little better now.”
The city put up a total of 19 cameras outside 10 different schools. They include Larchmont, Bayview, Little Creek, Norview, and Richard Bowling Elementary Schools, Ruffner and Southside STEM Academies, and Granby, Norview, and Booker T. Washington High Schools. Signage alerting drivers of cameras were installed at least 100 feet before the cameras’ locations.
Parents like Carr said they are already starting to see a change.
“I think that they’re very effective,” Carr said. “As soon as people hit that spot right where the school zone lights are flashing, they’re immediately slowing down.”
Carr said she likes how this initiative is also helping police officers.
“With the police being short on staff and stuff like that, I’ve been through school zones before where there’s nobody out there," Carr said. "So, it’s just a reminder for people to slow down.”
Chesapeake, Suffolk, and Portsmouth have speeding cameras set up near city schools. In Hampton's proposed budget, the city manager wants to allocate funds to install similar cameras around Hampton schools.