Colerain Avenue is one of the main roads to and from Cincinnati’s west side. For Scott Hand, it’s also a home address.
“We should probably be wearing vests because this is dangerous,” Hand said, standing on the sidewalk in front of his house as cars whizzed by. “It’s dangerous just to be here.”
Traffic counts collected by Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation and Engineering tell the story.
Back in August, the division of Traffic Engineering used cables at the intersection of Colerain Avenue and North of Leeper Street to record each car’s speed.
Data reviewed by WCPO for Wednesday, Aug. 21 shows of the nearly 22,000 vehicles that passed the cable, 76% of the cars were traveling faster than the 35 miles per hour posted speed limit.
Of the drivers heading down the steep southbound incline, 33% were traveling 10 or more miles per hour above the speed limit.
“The cars going downhill are already exceeding the speed limit, even without using the gas,” Hand said.
The city’s recorded data, he said, is justification for what he already knew: “We started a spreadsheet, but ultimately lost track of the number of crashes that have happened.”