Student project reveals speeding issue in Barrington

Police chief will increase radar posts in trouble spots

By Josh Bickford
Posted 1/16/19

A recent lesson for eighth-graders revealed an ugly truth about Barrington: We speed.

The students in all three eighth grade clusters at Barrington Middle School were conducting field work on …

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Student project reveals speeding issue in Barrington

Police chief will increase radar posts in trouble spots

Posted

A recent lesson for eighth-graders revealed an ugly truth about Barrington: We speed.

The students in all three eighth grade clusters at Barrington Middle School were conducting field work on calculating average speeds when a reoccurring trend surfaced. Students discovered that all across Barrington, motorists were exceeding the posted speed limits. 

"I know they were surprised by the percentage of people speeding, by how much over the speed limit people were going, and by how very fast some people were going," wrote Barrington Middle School science teacher Anthony Borgueta. 

"I totally agree with Anthony, it was very eye-opening," added fellow BMS science teacher Shawn Henderson.

Students in the blue, green and purple clusters researched vehicle speeds in different parts of Barrington in the fall — some of the readings were taken during the school day along Middle Highway, while others were recorded in other parts of town. After tallying the results, students shared their findings with the Barrington Times and town officials. 

Eighth-grader Sara Kenyon wrote a letter detailing her research. She calculated the speeds for 20 cars traveling on Lincoln Avenue near the intersection with County Road. That part of the road has a speed limit of 25 miles per hour, but Sara discovered that the vast majority of vehicles she clocked were traveling faster than the posted limit.

"This data shows that only five out of the twenty cars … were going a legal speed," she wrote.

Grace Mole, a student in the green cluster, also checked the speeds on Lincoln Avenue.

"By timing cars in this area, I found that 95 percent of the cars on the road were speeding," Grace wrote, "70 percent of the cars exceeded the speed limit by 5 mph or more, and 45 percent of the cars exceeded the speed limit by 10 mph or more. This data shows how much of a problem speeding is in Barrington."

Mia LeRoux, another eighth-grader at the middle school, discovered a similar situation on Bowden Avenue in Hampden Meadows — she wrote that 100 percent of the cars she recorded during her study were speeding. 

"When all of the data came together it was clear that while some may think that our town is a very safe place, speeding is a big problem…" she wrote. 

Eighth-grader Matthew Raffa's research indicated that speeding was also an issue on Rumstick Road. 

"On Rumstick Road, the speed limit is 25 mph. We tracked a total of 180 cars …  66.44 percent of the cars we tracked on Rumstick Road were speeding," he wrote. "Out of the 125 speeders, 70.4 percent of all speeders were significantly faster than the speed limit (7 mph or over)…"

BMS eighth-grader Gabriella Furtado checked the speeds of vehicles on Maple Avenue. She wrote 55 percent of the vehicles she recorded exceeded the posted speed limit, adding "only 1 person was traveling above the speed limit by 10 mph." She wrote that most of the vehicles that were speeding exceeded the posted speed limit by 2 to 4 mph. 

She still cautioned "However, this could be very dangerous for people on and off the road, walking, biking, and running…" 

Barrington Police Chief John LaCross said he had received the eighth-graders' letters and was impressed by the level of professionalism displayed. He also said he plans on addressing the speeding problems documented in the letters.

"Based on these (letters) I can start deploying officers out there on radar posts," said Chief LaCross. He added that prior studies of vehicle speeds in Barrington have shown problem areas.

School zone speeding

Data collected by the eighth-graders included the speeds of vehicles traveling along roads with school zones. 

One student clocked vehicles as they traveled on Nayatt Road, where the school zone speed limit is 20 mph.

"The fastest car was going 53 miles per hour," wrote eighth-grader Helen Copple. "This means the driver was exceeding the speed limit by 33 miles per hour. The average speed at which a car goes on Nayatt Road is 37 miles per hour…"

Helen was one of the many students to record vehicle data on Middle Highway near the middle school. Her data showed that 55 percent of the cars she recorded were speeding. That's less than the data tallied by Mia LeRoux, who discovered that "74 percent of these drivers were speeding…" and "even worse, 44 percent of the drivers speeding were going five miles per hour over or more."

Lara Nicholson, a student in the blue cluster, recorded fewer cars speeding on Middle Highway. 

"In our science class on Oct. 4, we went out by the road (Middle Highway) to record different vehicles' speeds," she wrote. "In this investigation, we found that 29 percent of the cars were speeding. Of the speeding cars, 66 percent were at least eight miles per hour over the speed limit."

Hampden Meadows School is located on New Meadow Road, where eighth-grader Beatrice Materne recorded vehicles' speeds. Beatrice wrote that speeding was not as bad along that stretch of road.

"Only three cars were speeding," she wrote, "but one was exceeding the limit by 13 mph…"

Beatrice cautioned that her results from Middle Highway near the middle school were more concerning.

"When I collected data on Middle Highway in front of the school, half of the cars were speeding, and a quarter were exceeding the limit by 5 mph," she wrote.

Suggestions 

In addition to recording and averaging the speed of motorists driving on local roads, students also offered suggestions for improving the situation.

Most of the students included recommendations on reducing the number of speeding vehicles in Barrington. Some wrote that police need to increase patrols, and that blinking radar signs are also effective. Some called for speed bumps, more stop signs and increased fines for speeding.

Gabriella Furtado went one step further and offered the slogan for a possible safety campaign: "The difference of a few miles per hour can mean the difference between life and death."

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.