Blountstown Police Department is excited to announce our new school zone safety plan for the designated school zones of Blountstown Elementary. This program aims to prioritize the safety of our youngest residents at school while helping positively influence long term driving behavior across the county for the safety of all residents, regardless of where they are in our county.
LiDAR cameras have been installed at Blountstown Elementary School zone. These cameras will detect individual vehicles speeding in the school zone. School zone speeds will be enforced when school is in session, lights are flashing, and children are present on the school grounds.
Our school zone safety plan will be a phased plan to help keep communication open, transparent, and equitable for all our community members:
1. Public Information & Education: We’re dedicating a window of time BEFORE the program is in place to provide information, answer questions, and share goals of this program with the community to help everyone understand how we can keep kids safer through speed reduction.
2. Warning Period: Beginning August 12th, we will begin our second phase where warnings will be issued to those who speed in the designated school zone at Blountstown Elementary School. These will be warnings sent by mail to the address of the registered vehicle owner that carry no fine – they serve as a reminder that Blountstown Police Department is serious about keeping children safe. This warning period will remain in effect for 30 days after the start date.
3. Citations Period: Once the warning period ends, on September 11th citations will be issued to those who continue to violate the school zone’s speed limit. Fines will be mailed to the address of the registered owner’s address. These citations will not carry points on your license or an impact on your insurance, but they are to be taken seriously as each infraction is exponentially endangering the lives of students in and near the school zone.
This plan is modeled after other similar programs nationwide with an average speed reduction of 92% by all vehicles passing through the monitored school zones. We hope for similar if not better results for Blountstown with the help of our community members.
Speed studies conducted in early 2024 at the Blountstown Elementary School identified a significant problem with speeding in this area, recording 2,829 violations in a 5-day period. In Blountstown at the Blountstown Elementary School, we had 13,159 drivers a week in the school zone with 2,829 speeding vehicles (21.5% of all vehicles). Of those speeding, 1,538 of those speeding vehicles were traveling 11-14MPH over the enforceable speed limit (54.4% of speeders). Another 999 vehicles were speeding 15-20MPH (35.3% of speeders) and 292 vehicles were exceeding 21 mph over the posted school speed limit (10.3% of speeders).
We look forward to the community’s support in keeping kids safe as they return to school, and we know that together, we can save lives. Working together, we can achieve our Vision of ZERO: Zero crashes, Zero injuries, and Zero fatalities.
