Watch that heavy foot

Stellarton police monitors MacGregor Avenue for speed data

STELLARTON — Those electronic speed signs that police agencies place around Pictou County aren’t just to tell you how fast you’re going.

It also gives police a useful tool for traffic law enforcement, and/or prevention.

“Whenever there’s public complaints about speeding, or we feel we want to look at a street, or signage, to see if we need to change anything, we’ll put that out there,” said Stellarton Police Services Police Chief Mark Hobeck, who joined the department in September.

Stellarton shares the sign with Westville police, and Stellarton put the sign up on MacGregor Avenue, a major feeder road to the Pictou County Wellness Centre, and one that, because of its generous width, can lull people into drifting over the speed limit of 50 kilometres per hour.

Robeck also said that the sign hopefully reminds speeding motorists to slow down.

The results were actually encouraging; over a five-week period of data accumulation, more than 33,000 vehicles travelled MacGregor Avenue, at an average speed of 52 km/h, just slightly above the posted speed limit.

“We have a look at the data and try to identify the times of days when speeds are higher than at other times,” Robeck said. “If that’s the case, we can go out and do a radar enforcement during that time, to try to get them to slow down.”

The collected data showed that a couple drivers were putting the hammer down, reaching speeds of more than 100 km/h.

“It’s hard to explain that one — 100 is extremely high there,” Robeck said.

He said in cases such as that, a stunting charge — costly to drivers who are caught — could be laid.