Your Charleston Police Department is excited to announce our new school zone safety plan for the designated Charleston Elementary School zone. 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.
Automated speed enforcement cameras have been installed at Charleston Elementary School. These cameras will detect individual vehicles speeding in the school zone. School zones speeds will be enforced when school is in session, lights are flashing, and children are present on the school grounds.
Our posted speed limit is 35MPH in the Charleston Elementary School zone at all hours except when the beacons are flashing. Beacons will flash on days that school is in session, during the drop off and pick up times of 7:00 – 7:45AM and 2:30 – 3:15PM. While beacons are flashing, the school zone speed limit is reduced to 20MPH. We will be monitoring speed based off of these conditions, and they are posted on the roadway for continued transparency.
Our school zone safety plan will be a phased plan to help keep communication open, transparent, and equitable for all our community members:
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.
Warning Period: Beginning February 10, we will begin our second phase where warnings will be issued to those who speed in the designated school zone of Charleston 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 Charleston Police Department is serious about keeping children safe. This warning period will remain in effect for 30 days after the start date.
Enforcement Begins: Once the warning period ends, on March 17, 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. In the Charleston Elementary School zone, we measured 23,254 drivers in one week in the school zone. Of those vehicles, 3,088 were speeding vehicles of at least 10 MPH over the posted speed (13.28% of all vehicles). Of those speeding at least 10 MPH over the speed limit, we had 1,837 vehicles traveling 11-14 MPH (59.49% of all speeders) over the speed limit, 1,158 vehicles traveling 15-20 MPH (37.50% of all speeders) over the speed limit, and 93 vehicles traveling 21+ MPH (3.01% of all speeders) over the speed limit. We hope for similar if not better results for Charleston with the help of our community members. 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.