For a lot of people, the appeal of living in Covington is to live at a slower pace. So you can imagine how irritated Covington residents get at people speeding through their town. And it got the mayor's office involved.
Covington Mayor Mark Johnson said he heard it two years ago while on the campaign trail.
"The most-often repeated complaint I received had to do with speeding," he said, so after taking office, he went to work.
"We came across a device called a JAMAR Black Cat, which attaches to a utility pole, and it's a traffic counter," explained Johnson. "It measures how many cars pass in both directions. But it also records their speed, and then calculates how many enforceable violations there are."
He said that gives them the data they need to know which areas need extra enforcement. It also tells them where they need to put in speed bumps and other measures to slow drivers down when the cops can't be there.
"Drivers will go as fast as they feel safe. Not as fast as you feel safe, not as fast as the pedestrian feels safe, but as fast as the driver feels safe," Johnson said. "So by narrowing down lanes -- they do a lot of this in Europe -- you narrow down the lane, and out of self-preservation the driver has to slow down."
