Attention, Drivers: New 20 MPH Speed Limit on South St.

After a public hearing on January 14, the Village of Pittsford Board of Trustees unanimously approved a local law to reduce the speed limit on South Street to 20 mph. The law was introduced by Trustee Frank Galusha, who has been working with the neighbors who live near South on traffic calming solutions for a couple years.

The new 20 mph speed limit will go into effect soon. The signs aren’t up yet, so you have some time to get yourself and any other drivers you know ready to slow that roll.

South Street is a two-way two-lane residential street that connects State Street (Rt. 31) to E. Jefferson Road (Rt. 96). It is only .5 miles long and feeds lots of lovely other neighborhood streets along the way.

If you live around here, you know that South is used as a speedy cut-through for impatient drivers, which regularly puts neighbors (especially kids walking and biking to Jeff Road School and getting on and off their school buses) in danger. You also know South isn’t the only street drivers speed through, but it’s one of the favorites and ends steps from the entrance to the neighborhood elementary school off Jefferson Road. Drivers drive so fast around the curve in the short road, that they often end up jumping the curb and taking out the bushes at a house on Maple & South. That house has two young kids that cross the crosswalk there.

The Village is currently working on design measures to make South and other roads around here safer for everyone who uses them. Lowering the speed limit is not a silver bullet. It is, however, one of the tools in our toolbox that will complement other measures to start to change the driver-first culture and design of many of our village streets.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department will give South Street special attention as this new lower speed limit goes into effect. Consider yourselves warned.

Why Will Lowering the Speed Limit Matter?

Alcohol and speeding are the biggest factors in traffic crashes, with almost as many speed-related crashes as alcohol-related. Most drivers know not to drive under the influence, yet we all accept speeding as a norm.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), speeding “…increases crash risk in two ways: (1) it increases the likelihood of being involved in a crash, and (2) it increases the severity of injuries sustained by all road users in a crash.”

So drivers benefit from slower speeds in the following ways:

• At slower speeds, drivers are less likely to crash in the first place because they have more reaction time
• If they do get involved in a crash, the consequences are likely to be way less severe for those inside vehicles and those around them

Pedestrians (who are the most vulnerable users of our community streets) carry the biggest burden when a driver decides to speed. Those inside a car — surrounded by metal and seat belts and airbags — will likely survive a crash involving a pedestrian. Those outside of the vehicle, however, are at great risk. The human body is not designed to handle the impact (and resulting fall back to the ground) from a vehicle.

[Learn more by reading this: How Fast We Drive On Our Village Streets Matters]

If hit by a vehicle, a pedestrian or cyclist has a better chance of survival if that vehicle is traveling at 25 mph or below. And that chance of survival dramatically decreases at higher speeds.

• A pedestrian has a 90% chance of survival if hit by a car going 20 mph
• That pedestrian only has a 10% chance if that driver is going 40 mph
• Those chances of survival go down if the pedestrian is older or a child
• Those chances also go down if that pedestrian is hit by an SUV or truck, because those vehicles are higher off the ground and hit people in the chest or head (instead of the legs like a smaller vehicle would)

We already have places where drivers can drive at high speeds — highways. And, appropriately so, vehicles are the only things allowed there. Pedestrians, cyclists, people watering their flowers, dogs and people sitting on benches outside local businesses are not allowed there.

Slowing traffic speed on our shared community streets—the streets that we live, work, shop and play along—can mean the difference between life and death.

We will give you another heads-up once the 20 mph speed limit is posted and official on South Street. In the meantime, it will be good practice to take a peek at our speedometers now and then and remind ourselves that people live around here.