City Of New Orleans: City Of New Orleans To Reactivate School Zone Safety Cameras On Monday

Press release from the City of New Orleans:

September 24, 2021

NEW ORLEANS — Today, the City of New Orleans announced that school zone cameras will be reactivated Monday, Sep. 27, 2021, at 7 a.m.

The automated photo enforcement program is one component of the City's efforts to reduce speeding and increase safety on our streets. As children return to in-person learning, the reactivation of school zone cameras provides important safety and deterrence functions. Cameras outside of school zones will not be reactivated until traffic signal function returns to normal across the city. 

School zone hours are 7 a.m. until 9 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. until 4:45 p.m. Motorists are advised to carefully observe posted speed limits and exercise caution in school zones, including no cell phone use and stopping for children crossing the street. Drivers can expect to see enforcement of 20 mph school zone speed limits.  

Speed is fundamentally linked to safety as higher speeds not only increase the likelihood of crashes, but also the severity of crashes. A person hit by a car traveling 35 mph is five times more likely to be killed, than by a car traveling at 20 mph. The risk is even greater when a crash involves a child or a larger vehicle such as an SUV. Higher speeds contribute to crashes in a number of ways:  

• Crashes at higher speeds create more force and are therefore more likely to be fatal
• Drivers traveling at higher speeds have a narrower field of vision  
• Drivers traveling at higher speeds travel further before they can react
• Vehicles traveling at higher speeds have longer stop times

About Department of Public Works 

The Department of Public Works is composed of five divisions responsible for maintaining approximately 1,547 miles of streets (21 million square yards of pavement) and 149 bridges in the city of New Orleans. This system includes 72,000 catch basins and approximately 8.2 million linear feet of drainage lines. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is responsible for maintaining an additional 105 miles of state and federal highways within the city limits.

About Mayor's Office of Transportation 

About New Orleans Police Department 

The mission of the New Orleans Police Department is to provide professional police services to the public in order to maintain order and protect life and property. In order to accomplish our mission, we are committed to the philosophy of Community Oriented Policing as a means to inform our organizational decisions to prioritize our crime fighting and quality of life initiatives by engaging each neighborhood community organization in collaborative problem-solving partnerships.  

This press release was produced by the City of New Orleans. The views expressed here are the author’s own.