This Is our Village

Monday, December 5, 2011

THE GATE ARMS: A QUESTION

Are the gate arms at the Haverhill and Okeechobee exits still sometimes kept in the open position? I think they sometimes are, and if so, I have a question.

Sometime ago on the blog there was a “movie” of someone exiting at the Haverhill gate, going a mile a minute, and breaking the gate arm. Could it be that some drivers, seeing that the arm is in the UP position, assume the gate is in the kept-open position and so drive right through? Because driving toward an exit gate, it can be hard to tell if the gate is the kept-open position or if the gate arm is just slow in coming down—as is normally the case with the exit gates

Could this "not knowing which way it is" be contributing to the number of drivers crashing into the exit gates? Could it be that because the exit gates are in the kept-open position SOME of the time, there are more, not fewer, crashes?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Lanny,

    The Security Committee has spent much time ratiocinating on this problem.

    The basic aim is to induce drivers to slow down as they approach the gate, because this is a high density pedestrian area.

    We have tried keeping it open, but folks simply speed through.

    Current policy is to use it on sensor mode all day, but I will look into why it is kept locked open all the time, sometimes.

    I hope I have been sufficiently obscure.

    Dave Israel

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  2. You really need to slow down when exiting through the sometimes open and sometimes just coming down gate. I have come up to the open gate and it is suddenly coming down. When it senses a car it goes up immediately. You really need to be awake and alert. If a driver manages to crash through a gate it is because they are going too fast and probably don't have good reflexes. Don't blame the equipment!

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