MILWAUKEE — Vehicles whiz down streets across the City of Milwaukee all day, every day.
In certain parts of the city, speed boards show just how fast those cars are driving in real-time. Most of the time, it’s within a few miles per hour of the speed limit. But Milwaukee Police provided data showing there are many cases where people are going at least double the posted speed limit.
“It has to be much slower,” Jordan Morales of Sherman Park said. “Right now, it’s very dangerous.”
Four of these speed boards were in Morales’ neighborhood for two weeks at the end of February and the beginning of March. There were two boards posted on Capitol Drive, near 53rd Street and 47th Street and on Fond du Lac Avenue near 53rd Street and 48th Street.
Not only were they showing real-time speeds of the vehicles going by, but they were collecting data.
The Milwaukee Police Department uses the data collected by the speed boards to determine how fast drivers are going on certain streets, which is one factor in helping MPD decide where to deploy its resources for traffic enforcement.
In Sherman Park, these traffic boards showed drivers were averaging about 35 miles per hour. The posted speed limits on Capitol Drive and Fond du Lac Ave. are 30 mph.
“I was surprised that it showed the average speed to be about 35 mph,” Morales said.
But there were drivers doing well above the posted speed limit. In total, 23.7 percent, or nearly one in four drivers, were caught going 41 mph or faster. A much smaller percentage, .33 percent of drivers, were caught going 61 mph or faster. The fastest driver was clocked between 116 and 120 mph. Milwaukee Police say some of these speeds may be from emergency vehicles, but the data does not reflect which ones.
“There is quite a bit of traffic going faster than [35 mph],” Morales said. “The people going 40 mph are posing a danger to the rest of the community as well. We need to make it so that it’s not normal and that we don't feel safe going 40 or 45 mph in our cars.”
“We like to believe that we are making a difference with some of the strategies we’re doing,” Inspector David Feldmeier with MPD said.
Feldmeier says MPD’s strategies are focused more on egregious traffic violations.
“The focus has been on reckless driving, right?” Feldmeier said. “Those excessive speeds. Maybe a turning violation or equipment violating isn’t something necessarily an officer is going to make a stop on when there are more egregious types of violations happening.”
“[MPD] has basically broadcasted their signal to the whole city saying, we’re only going after the most egregious cases,” Morales said. “You can go 40 mph in a 30 and you’re OK. You know you can go 45. If they’re waiting around all day for someone doing 60 mph, I’d rather you nail a bunch of people going 40 mph. It’s a culture that needs to be reset. A bad driving culture that has to be reset.”
From 2017 to 2022, MPD issued speeding citations to drivers averaging 20.1 mph over the speed limit. Morales hopes MPD will start issuing more tickets for drivers going well below that average to send a real message.
“It’s demoralizing,” Morales said. “We’re trying to go in the opposite direction. There is a reckless driving public safety crisis. Waiting around for someone doing 60 mph is not how we’re going to address this crisis.”
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