The Chapel Hill Police Department recently concluded a speed study on one of the busiest roads in the town, which found a vast majority of drivers are going faster than advised.

Police monitored the stretch of East Franklin Street between Boundary Street and Eastgate Crossing for a week in February.

Officer Barbee, who is on the department’s traffic unit, says officers use data of crashes, pedestrian collisions and other dangerous incidents to determine which areas need to be studied. He says he’s very aware of that part of Franklin Street seeing similar experiences.

“I’ve had a number of crashes on that hill, specifically, whether its DWI, pedestrian strikes or a deer strike,” says Barbee. “If you’re able to slow down, you can get a greater reaction time, swerve out of the way and stop. Whereas if you’re going 15 to 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, which are some of the higher numbers we saw out there, you’re not able to react in time.”

Barbee says it was a simple process to track the speeds of motorists. Officers attached a Stealth Stat, which looks like a grey box, to a pole and it tracks the speed, quantity and levels of violation.

From there, the department drew data from about 72,000 vehicles that passed by the box. Barbee says it led Chapel Hill Police to discover the high number of people driving over the speed limit: nearly 91 percent.

“That’s anything [above] 36 miles an hour,” says the officer. “The stealth stat actually found a 95 miles-an-hour vehicle and that’s reckless, that’s dangerous for everybody on the road.”

The department then increased its patrols along the street, with Barbee often waiting to cite motorists.

“We let the public know we’ll be enforcing in the area and we were out there with a heavy presence for two weeks,” says Barbee. “During that stretch, we ended up making 71 different traffic stops with a top speed we encountered of 85 miles an hour.”

Barbee says when pulling drivers over during a speed study, it gives police an opportunity to bring more people’s attention to the issue. He says it’s up to the officers’ discretion whether a motorist’s actions are simply a mistake or habitually reckless and deserving of a ticket.

One way to keep up to date with Chapel Hill Police Department’s extra patrols and speed studies? Officer Barbee suggests keeping an eye on the police department’s social media pages.

“We’ll let you know when we’re going to do some of these patrols,” he says. “I know our next patrol is going to be on Weaver Dairy Road and Weaver Dairy Extension, starting within the next few weeks.”

Photo via Town of Chapel Hill.

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