News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville Police Department has two new digital displays ready to deploy in an effort to decrease speeding across town.
The first display showed up over the weekend on Maple Avenue between Highway 111 and Neal Street. The monitor records the number of cars that pass as well as the vehicles’ speed. Cookeville Police Lieutenant Anthony Leonard said the displays will help the department allocate time and resources.
“Sometimes we’ll put them in places where we might have gotten a complaint in the past,” Leonard said. “Or in places, we may have seen there might be a speed issue and then we’ll use the information that we gather from those to help us with our direct enforcement in the future.”
Leonard said this information will allow officers to only be posted at times and locations of high amounts of motorist speeding. While Leonard said speeding is not a big problem throughout Cookeville, accidents could be prevented by slowing down.
“It tells them what their speed is, so it does serve as a reminder of what their speed is in that speed zone,” Leonard said. “So that can be helpful with reducing speed and so forth.”
Leonard said Cookeville Police hope the displays would encourage citizens to change their behavior. Leonard said the purpose is gathering information.
“Once we figure out exactly where they need to be or have ideas about where they might be helpful then we’ll try to put them on some kind of rotating schedule,” Leonard said.
