What’s Up with That? Snow day? 20 mph still the rule in school zones

Like a lot of other folks, I assumed that when kids are off school for the day (a snow day, holiday, etc.) but warning lights are still flashing in the school zone, we can still drive the normal speed limit. I recently heard that a friend’s friend received a ticket for doing just that. Are we still required to drive 20 mph even when no students are in school that day?

— Kathleen Brown, Felida

Yup, Kathleen. When flashing lights abound, you must slow down — even if no one’s around.

Here’s the nonrhyming explanation from Bill Wright, Clark County’s traffic engineering manager.

“It takes considerable staff time and effort each summer to program the school zone flashers for the individual hours that each school is in operation. All weekends and scheduled holidays are programmed prior to the start of the school year. It’s impossible to reprogram this magnitude of signals in a few hours, especially considering that many school closures and delays happen without much notice,” Wright wrote in an e-mail.

“In addition, during snow events, county operations staff are typically busy dealing with the snow and ice, accidents and other problems that often arise with traffic signals. Crew overtime to reprogram the school signals for the closures and then resetting them for normal operations is not a cost that can be justified.”

That leaves the lights doing their thing with the full force of law. Drivers can’t give themselves a pass that day just because they don’t believe the lights really mean it. Look at it this way: Schoolyards are often where children go to sled and play in the snow even when classes have been cancelled. Frosty, fast-moving kids may be harder to see than usual.

“If a person is ticketed when the school is closed, the district court would probably take that into consideration if the citizen goes to court to challenge the charge,” Wright said.