Coming to a Bakersfield street near you (maybe): Excessive-speed warning message boards

Robert Price
·2 min read

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – You’ve seen them — those roadside signs that tell you to slow down if you’re breaking the speed limit. Well, those message signs are about to get a lot more common in Bakersfield, thanks to a $250,000-plus extension of a traffic safety program: Digital, radar-powered, excessive-speed-warning message boards.

Think of them as back seat nags — Slow down! — except they’re over on the side of the road,  shaming you to slow down with “your speed” postings for all to see — including the police department, which collects the data.

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And now, they may be coming to a street near you, now that the Bakersfield City Council has voted to nearly double the number of the excessive speed warnings throughout the city, from the present 16, including the high-visibility tattle-tale on 24th Street, to 30, with the council’s approval last week of $273,544 for 14 new signs. Total Western Inc. of Paramount beat out four other qualified bidders to win the contract, edging second-place Loop Electric of Bakersfield by just $5,400.

The project, funded by the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program, with a 10% match paid for by the state gas tax, will put the digital signs in the vicinity of:

  • Christmas Tree Lane and Columbus Street

  • Beech and 30th streets

  • 21st and F streets

  • 18th and F streets

  • Sundale Avenue and New Stine Road

  • El Potrero Lane and White Lane

  • Gasoline Alley Drive and Harris Road

  • Oleander Avenue and Brundage Lane

  • Sandra Drive and Planz Road

  • Benton Street and Ming Avenue

  • Mountain Oak Road and Mesa Oak Drive

  • Real Road and Palm Street

  • Las Entradas and Jenkins Road

  • Quailwood Drive and N. El Rio Drive

Will the electric shaming devices actually slow down speeders? Data says, overall, it will – not everybody, certainly, but enough leadfoots to make the move worthwhile. Speed, after all, is the single factor most likely to turn injury accidents into fatal ones.

These digital traffic marms typically cannot actually issue speeding tickets, but the data they collect can and will tell police where drivers are ignoring the warnings and may deserve special attention.

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