In late June, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation allowing Nassau and Suffolk Counties to implement cameras in school zones to catch speeding drivers.
“By empowering Nassau and Suffolk Counties to install dozens of speed cameras in school zones, we are helping to protect our students and ultimately save lives. This should send a message to all drivers – slow down and obey the speed limit, especially when passing by a school,” Cuomo said.
The county hit some snags during the initial process of implementing the cameras. Last month, County Executive Ed Mangano was forced to dismiss 40,000 tickets (which amounts to about $2.4 million) due to malfunctioning cameras that issued tickets on days when school was not in session.
Now it is early September, school has officially started and despite the amount of time Nassau County has had work out the issues before re-launching the camera system, they have hit another snag and are tossing another series of tickets. This time, it is because the county failed to put up state mandated signs alerting drivers of the speed zone cameras.
Tickets that were issued last week in Massapequa, Syosset, Hempstead, Malverne and Valley Stream school zones will not be processed.
However it seems the issue has been resolved as Mangano has already put up the required signs in all of these areas. There are now 20 school speed zones in Nassau County that are being enforced by camera.
Suffolk County, on the other hand, has not made any noticeable move toward putting up their own school speed zone cameras. They have put off implementing the system until next year, which is later than initially expected.
Following the legislation signed by Cuomo, there are a total of 69 school zones in Suffolk and 56 school zones in Nassau that are legally allowed to put the speed cameras in place.
[Source: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo]