'Crawl of Shame' Planned for Tuesday Morning in Hewlett

The following was submitted by Nassau County Crawl of Shame organizers:

Residents pelted by multiple tickets for speeding (as low as 31 MPH) in unpublicized school zones, did not have opportunity to modify behavior, as first tickets arrived 14+ days in the mail. Rallies are planned Tuesday at 7AM at Starbucks, 399 S. Oyster Bay Road in Plainview, and at the Peninsula Shopping Center at the corner of Mill Rd and Peninsula Boulevard at 7:30AM.

Residents are planning on driving past the school zones at very slow speeds in effort to call attention to the SHAMEFUL implementation of the speed zone cameras.

Nassau County, Long Island: Repeated calls to County Executive Edward P. Mangano, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray, and Legislator Howard J. Kopel’s office, among many other elected officials, were met with an infuriating chorus of “you broke the law,” “you should have known; we publicized this” and “we didn’t have to publicize this,” when asked about the insipid implementation of the school speed cameras that resulted in thousands of tickets over a short period of time.

“Of course I slowed down the day after I received the ticket,” said a Cedarhurst mother on her way to work. “But I still got 8 more tickets that were issued before the first ticket arrived,” I’ve been driving on this road for 20 years,” said a Hewlett Park resident who received 8 tickets. “I drive with the flow of traffic. I’ve never seen police there, nor been told I was doing anything wrong.” Within hours, two Facebook groups, one addressing all of Nassau County, and one addressing the Mill Rd Carbonaro school camera, attracted a large following. Posts included: “This is pure greed.”

“This is not about the law nor is it about safety. If that was the case, we would have been notified immediately, and given a chance to drive safely the next time,” and “In this recession any program which penalizes the middle class is not a smart one.”

Resourceful members posted the voting records of all legislators who voted for the law and many vowed to print out the list and “take it to the voting booth with them” next month.

Members have also reviewed and criticized the Tri State Transportation Campaign study touted by the Nassau County School Zone Speed Safety Camera Program Facebook page, by pointing out that the logic behind the justification is weak. The study finds that:

“In 2012 alone, among the 37 pedestrians killed on Nassau County’s streets, 14 were hit within a quarter of a mile of school, accounting for nearly 40 percent of total pedestrian fatalities countywide.”

The study then admits that not everyone in the study is school aged. In fact, the same group found that out of the 88 pedestrian deaths from 2010-2012, only 3 were children, which is still unacceptable, but not related to school zones. “There is no clear cause and effect in this study at all,” said a local teacher who instructs students on “Common Mistakes in Critical Thinking.” For example, the study claims that 40 percent of the accidents occur near a school zone. The school zone is a variable. It could be replaced with “House of Worship” or “Gas Station”. A 16 year old pointed out that “About 99 percent of these accidents probably occurred within a 1/4 mile of a Starbucks.”

Researchers on the Nassau County Residents Opposing School Zone Speed Cameras found a dubious relationship between the company that leases the cameras, American Traffic Solutions, and the government. “There have been lawsuits, problems with the cameras.” One member seriously questions the calibration and that her elderly mother was barely going over 15 miles per hour when she was ticketed.

Either way, when dealing with a speed camera and not a live human being, there is no recourse.

Still, residents do not want to let this pass without expressing their complete disappointment in this rollout.

No one disputes the opinion that public safety, especially child safety, should not a serious concern. Even PTA President Linda Kreisman, a resident of North Woodmere said, “I have been a PTA president for the past 10 years. I care more about the safety of children than anybody. I know these speed zone vans and cameras have nothing to do with the safety of children.... Everyone wants kids to be safe. This is just not Options suggested were speed bumps, police presence, flashing lights, and better publicity. Another complainant suggested a warning period, as was done in Chicago, for the first 30 days. But this did not generously fill government coffers, because motorists slowed down before incurring the fines.

So it’s off to the streets on Tuesday morning. One of the sites founders said, “Approximately 50 attendees [are] expected between the two [locations] even though a workday. Even though we’ve not made ourselves publicly known, we have close to 1200 people that joined the group in less than 10 days. . It seems that the residents of Nassau have found us just through word of mouth. They are talking about this in workplaces, the dining room, the boardrooms and the water coolers. It is apparent it has become a hot topic and there appears to be no debate that this is just an overreaching cash grab by the county to fill the budget shortfall that nobody asked for, and nobody

Nobody that is, except the cash hungry legislators.