LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Caught on camera. Driver after driver swerving around newly installed speed cushions meant to cut down on reckless driving in the Southeast valley. FOX5 has been telling you about street racing takeovers happening for years in every corner of the valley.
We wanted to see if the county’s effort to help curb it making a difference.
The speed humps are supposed to make drivers slow down, but instead, many are swerving around them, and that’s a big concern for neighbors like Jean Kelleher who’s lived in the valley for decades.
“Anybody that’s swerving at this speed here 25 miles per hour. I rarely see anybody do 25 miles per hour here, it would be rare.”
Kelleher tells me she usually sees drivers going close to 45 miles per hour in the area. But that’s not all.
“Almost predictably I can hear the street racing up where I am,” Kelleher said. “It wakes me up about 2:30 a.m., between 2:30 and 3:00 almost every night.”
She’s not surprised to see video of driver after driver swerving out of the way the very day the speed bumps were installed.
County Public Works crews put them in on December 19th.
Fast forward to a few days later and it’s still happening in each direction on Lamb Blvd., north of Hacienda Ave.
The county also cut out sections of asphalt in the intersection. The milling work will tear up tires if drivers try doing donuts.
County Commissioner Jim Gibson says he understands there might be pushback.
“We’re hoping that the citizens can handle the speed cushions and they don’t feel like this ruins their drive home at the same time,” Gibson said. “If it does a little bit that at least the price was worth paying in order to bring a lot more safety to this intersection.”
Kelleher says the fix is a nice start but worries it’s not enough to really crack down on the problem.
“It’ll help probably, I think it’ll spread the word around, but I think there’s enough of a group of people who are perpetrating this that they’ll have their surveillance out and they’ll be able to kind of be one step ahead of solutions, but I’m hopeful,” Kelleher said.
She also mentioned how she was ready for any kind of change.
“I think that this particular area is ready to really go with the most drastic measure we could do and then ease back rather than start easy and move to something more aggressive,” Kelleher said. “Most people here would rather start aggressive and then ease off if needed.”
A county spokesperson says they’ll be going over feedback from residents to see if both the speed cushions and milling work are helping to cut down on reckless driving.
They say time will tell.
Commissioner Gibson says if they get positive feedback and see that it’s working, he expects to do more of this work in other parts of the valley that have similar street racing problems.
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