Welcome back everyone. I hope your break was amazing. As we come back to campus, we are focused on settling back into our routines, our classes and our lives. However, we are notably not settling back into campus safety. In the one week that Vassar has officially been open for the semester, I personally have witnessed 10 people run stop signs completely without slowing down, another dozen perform a slow and roll through intersections and an obscene number of drivers ignore the posted campus speed limit of 15 mph. Traffic laws on campus can often feel like a suggestion because Vassar is private property and thus local police are not coming on campus to write traffic tickets. It is a low-stakes opportunity to break a rule, especially when you are in a hurry or there is no one in the intersection. But they are not suggestions. They are safety rules written in blood by other people’s tragedies.
Driving, like many other life skills, is one that heavily involves muscle memory. I am sure the drivers on this campus have experienced a moment where they cannot remember if the last three lights were green or not, but they must have been, because traffic is moving like normal. The muscle memory you have developed as a driver ensures your safety. What happens when your muscle memory of driving is full of reckless choices? What happens if you crash your car or hit someone?
According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), if you hit a pedestrian at 15 mph, which, again, is the posted campus speed limit, the probability of being seriously injured is eight percent. If you are going 30 mph, that probability jumps to 48 percent. That is a 40-percentage point jump in risk of serious injury to the pedestrians of Vassar—a percentage that could increase depending on the pedestrian struck. Based on body size, age, disability and countless other factors, certain members of our community are at an even greater risk of serious injury or death.
I have especially noticed the stop signs being run are the two stop signs located between Kenyon Hall and Wimpfheimer Nursery School; I notice because I drop my son off there every day. I park in the Kenyon parking lot and then I walk my two-year-old child across the street to the daycare. Every day, I have seen someone run those stop signs in an attempt to get through the intersection before a parent or a child gets to the crosswalk. I understand being in a rush or being impatient, but is it worth hitting someone?
This is not a student-exclusive issue; this is a campus wide issue. Just because a Vassar golf cart or maintenance cart can go up to 30 mph does not mean it should. Just because a golf cart or maintenance cart does not have a license plate does not mean they get to dismiss stop signs. Campus vans should not be driving so quickly that it is obvious they are going over the speed limit. Security vehicles should not be rolling through stop signs to avoid getting stuck in the 11:45 a.m. class switch traffic. We lead by example and that means driving safely. It means being late to class if it means getting there safely. Slow down and stop at the stop signs. We all want to make it to graduation, so let’s get there slowly and steadily, like the proverbial turtle, instead of missing out completely, like the hare.