Leicester City Council has stepped up efforts to keep children safe on the school run through the introduction of a new ‘camera car’ to enforce parking restrictions.
Fitted with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, the car will provide evidence to fine anyone caught stopping on ‘School Keep Clear’ markings between 8am-5pm from Monday to Friday.
At present, civil enforcement officers working for the city council can issue offenders with fixed penalty notices for stopping on the yellow zigzag markings.
However, as it can take officers several minutes to capture evidence, the council says offenders have been known to evade the fine by driving away before the ticket has been printed.
The camera car – leased from Nottingham City Council – will patrol 24 schools on a regular basis and made its first appearance earlier this month.
Cllr Kirk Master, assistant city mayor for neighbourhoods, said: “This is just one of a range of measures we’re taking to keep children safe on their way to and from school.
“We’ve been upgrading the signs and refreshing the road markings outside more than 20 city schools so that we can use the camera car to enforce the ‘no stopping’ restrictions that are not always respected by drivers.
“Motorists who stop on the zigzag lines, but drive off when they see one of our enforcement officers, won’t get away with that when the camera car is in use – now that ANPR evidence can be used to enforce the restrictions.”
Reducing speeds near schools and pedestrian crossings
Leicester City Council has also installed vehicle-activated safety signs on parts of the city’s road network to reduce traffic speeds near schools, pedestrian crossings, sharp bends and known accident sites.
The work has been carried out as part of a city wide speed reduction and road safety programme – and the first seven signs were installed earlier this month.
The vehicle activated signs are connected to a central monitoring system, which will monitor their effect on traffic speeds.
Peter Soulsby, Leicester city mayor, said: “These initial seven signs are the result of us working closely with ward councillors to identify persistent problems, and in some cases responding to petitions demanding action to tackle speeding traffic.
“The sites involved in this first phase are where we think vehicle-activated signs could be very effective in warning drivers of particular dangers, and the need to slow down.”
Ref the second item in the article about new vehicle activated signs:
The Leicester council website says “At some of the sites, additional road safety measures are also being installed, including speed cushions, static signs and new road markings.”
It could be a good opportunity for the council to monitor the signs-with-engineering and signs-without-supporting-engineering in parallel for comparison purposes.
The experience of many Local Authorities with vehicle activated signs ON THEIR OWN is a short term speed reduction effect which tails off after a couple of months and the vehicle speeds begin to return towards pre-scheme levels.
As I say, would be great to see a comparison report on effectiveness in 1 year’s time.
Pat, Wales
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