BROWN DEER, Wis. — A group of traffic experts discussed ways to cut down on reckless driving and invited TMJ4 News to take part. TMJ4 anchor and Project Driver Safer reporter Ryan Jenkins shared his insights on the problem here.
"It really is an epidemic in Milwaukee. It is something that is claiming the lives of people every week, sometimes every day,” said Ryan Jenkins.
The Brown Deer-based company, TAPCO, which manufactures and sells traffic and parking control products, hosted a reckless driving panel. Along with Ryan it included Traffic Logix, a private company that works on traffic calming solutions and the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) which advocates for road safety. They took questions from around the country on things people can do to cut down on reckless driving.
A major issue, how to cut down on speeding?
Traffic Logix James Weatherall says studies show just changing a speed limit won't change behavior.
"These roads are going to be driven the way they are built. No matter what you put in place, that's how they are going to be driven. So you have to do traffic calming or traffic safety measures to physically slow down that traffic,” said Weatherall.
The experts on the panel too often they’ve seen people guess at the problem and try to implement a solution. But they say an important first step is to get the data first before trying to find the fix. It will ultimately lead to making everyone safer.
"Go back to the fundamentals of doing your engineering studies. The last thing you want is to give your road users a false sense of safety or security which could go the other way of improving safety,” said Melodie Matout from American Traffic Safety Services Association.
The panel also said even though speeding tends to get more attention the biggest problem they see on the roads is people driving distracted. They believe more education can cut down on it while people wait for laws and technology to catch up.
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