Running through stop signs. Spinning donuts in the parking lots. Speeding nearly 20 miles per hour (mph) around campus.
The quality of driving on the campus of Las Positas College is arguably inadequate. Drivers have almost caused many accidents with illegal driving antics and are angering other people on campus: drivers and non-drivers, alike.
There must be a solution to this problem, and people would like to see it as soon as possible.
Campus safety overlooks the campus as much as they can, but with a small staff, not everything wrong can be caught.
“In the last calendar year-to-date, since Jan. 1, 2013, we have given 12 tickets for speeding and reckless driving, minus the ones we haven’t caught,” said Campus Safety Supervisor Sean Prather.
When people are getting away with bad driving every day, it sets an example to other drivers.
These drivers then think driving outside the law is OK, and it causes a problem.
Add the bad driving to the distracted driving seen every day, and it’s much more than a problem. It becomes an epidemic.
Mark Tarte, Administration of Justice instructor, is a concerned driver, and being an ex-policeman, he has seen everything dangerous a driver can do.
“The problem with drivers now, is that the younger drivers have the reactions, but don’t have the experience,” Tarte said. “Then you have the older drivers, 60 and above, who have the experience, but don’t have the reactions anymore.”
The speed limit on campus is 10 mph, and in the parking lots, only 5 mph. When campus safety has to write speeding tickets for drivers going 45 mph, up to sometimes 60 mph, something is going wrong.
Even with campus safety officers watching drivers on campus, and writing tickets, it’s not enough. The officers will get your license plate down, send it to the campus safety office and run it through the Department of Motor Vehicles database.
They then mail the driver their ticket.
A solution has to be made for this problem. There are too many people getting away with their driving, and it’s going to be too late for a solution when a fatal accident occurs because of this driving.