Ann Hiott couldn't believe it when a car passed her on Riverside Avenue, when she was already going 10 mph faster than the speed limit.
Hiott lives just west of McKinley Avenue and said that she has noticed many of drivers going a little faster than they did before the street was repaved.
"You used to have to practically inch along the road because of all the holes, but now people are really putting the pedal down," she said.
But this doesn't come as a surprise to police Sgt. Brad Arey of the Muncie Police Department's Traffic Enforcement Unit.
Whenever a road is repaved, people tend to drive a little faster, Arey said. Sometimes it happens on purpose, but sometimes people just don't realize that they are going faster because of the better road conditions.
The department had some problems earlier this summer with people speeding on Granville Avenue, near the mall, after the city repaved it, Arey said. It's just something that comes with a newly paved street.
And although speeding on campus has not been a major problem in the past, the University Police Department is ready to handle any new problems that might come with the smoother roads after this summer's construction, police Sgt. Rhonda Clark said.
Nearly all of the UPD cars have radar guns in them, many of which the Delaware County Coordinating Council donated, and they are almost always on while the officers are driving, Clark said.
In addition to the traditional use of radar to catch speeders, the UPD also has a trailer with a radar gun on it that shows approaching drivers how fast they are going, which is fairly effective in encouraging a self-regulated form of traffic control, she said. The Muncie police also have two of these trailers that are used for the same purpose.
However, during the summer, the UPD doesn't need to worry about traffic as much because there aren't as many people on campus, Clark said.
However, she said that doesn't mean there still aren't officers out doing patrols and trying to keep speeding to a minimum during the Summer Semester.
Aside from patrols, both police departments will respond to complaints of drivers going too fast on certain streets.
"If someone took the time to call in a complaint, then I feel we should take the time to check it out," Clark said.
Although some might think it's just local residents who call to complain about college students racing through neighborhoods, Arey said that he has received calls from students about people driving too fast past their houses as well. Arey said Muncie police, as well, take the time to look into any complaints that people make about speeding in a certain part of town.
Beth Bremigan, who is a math professor at Ball State University and a resident of the same neighborhood as Hiott, said that speeding has always been a problem in the area, but it's not just college students who are to blame.
One driver who constantly speeds through the neighborhood lives just down the street and once had to lock up her brakes to avoid something in the road, Hiott said.
"What if that had been a child?" she said.
"There's a two-year-old in that house, a five-year-old down the street, and a lot of other young kids around here that play outside," Bremigan said, as she held her own son's hand to cross the street.
Still, both Bremigan and Hiott haven't had as many problems as some have had because they don't live on the most direct route through the neighborhood, which spans from Petty Road to Riverside Avenue.
Matt Neal, however, lives in that part of the neighborhood, and he said that speeding is somewhat of a problem.
His biggest complaint, however, is that students park at the stop sign on his road, at Riverside Avenue by the Cooper Science Complex, to pick up or drop off friends at class. When they are stopped there, only one lane is left open on for traffic turning onto and off of Riverside Avenue, he said.
But despite all the patrols, radar trailers and responses to complaints around campus, speeders aren't guaranteed to be burdened with a ticket of other consequences for their infraction.
Believe it or not, Arey is a traffic cop who doesn't think a ticket is always necessary to get the point across to a speeder.
"Sometimes people just need to be educated and warned about what they are doing wrong," he said.
Don't think that means officers won't write tickets and won't know if a driver has been pulled over before -- even if a ticket wasn't given at the previous stop.
"Every time someone is stopped, it gets recorded in our computers, whether a ticket was issued or not," Arey said. So, people who have been stopped two or three times and just got warnings will most likely receive a ticket to get the point across the next time they're stopped, he said.
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