Slow Down For No Reason

In the town where I live, there is a well traveled road that has two elementary schools off to either side, one of them is nearly 1/2 mile off this main road. I have lived in this town and traveled this road nearly every day on the way to work. For a period of time, something like 7:30AM to 8:15AM each morning, there is a stretch of this road that slows traffic from 40mph to 25mph by means of flashing yellow lights.

Presumably, the reduction in the speed limit is out of concern for the children. It goes without saying that we have it in our common interest as a community to ensure that all of this traffic is traveling at a safe pace while the kids make their commute to school. Only this road has no sidewalks, and there are never children walking along the road.

I have honestly seen one (one!) group of kids making their way along the road only once in the entire time I've driven to work in the morning, and they were a dozen yards or so from the road. People could have easily passed by at the blistering pace of 40mph without incident. So why have the slower limit at all?

This safety measure that really isn't a safety measure is one of these sacred cow-like policies that will likely never change. If a proposal was ever made to eliminate the lights and the speed change, I suspect that a parent or two would object and grandstand about the safety of the kids, and that would be the end of it. But I think there is an even bigger reason. Revenue.

Although I have only seen the one group of kids the one single day in nearly 14 years, I have seen countless violators of the speed limit sitting in their cars with flashing lights behind them, waiting for their ticket to be issued. I often see the police standing guard along the stretch, waiting for the inevitable Mario Andretti to come screaming by at 35mph. This seems to be the more logical reason in favor of the status quo. While I'm sure that it is possible to catch speeders here any time of the day, I suspect it's much easier to nab them when they are supposed to be traveling at such an unnaturally slow speed given the conditions.

I would be in favor of eliminating all speed limits, since they are mostly ignored anyway...but that's a topic for another day.