Laurie Arabe's children prompted her to action.
"My children said, 'Why do I have to be afraid to walk here,'" said Arabe, who moved with her family from California to the Copenhaver neighborhood of Potomac approximately one year ago.
"People say that people in California drive aggressive, but it is freeways that allow them to drive that way," said Arabe. "They don't speed in town and in neighborhoods like we see here."
ARABE SAW the impact Safe Neighborhood Day can have just 16 hours after the actual event.
"This morning, people were actually doing the speed limit and it felt like a funeral procession. I think people have to drive the speed limit to realize how much they speed," said Arabe, who kept her "Drive with Care, Walk with Caution" signs planted in her neighborhood after Sunday's Safe Neighborhood Day event. "Cars are more powerful now; people don't realize when they tap the gas they can get to 30 miles per hour in a heartbeat.
"I've had people flash me for doing the speed limit; that's a tough thing to take when you're trying to do the right thing in your own neighborhood. We're not thinking of one another," said Arabe.
WITH THE HELP of some of her neighbors, Arabe has been working with police to gather data on the number of cars that drive through the Copenhaver neighborhoods and the speeds at which they travel. A speed trailer will be set up one day soon in the neighborhood to alert drivers to the speeds at which they are driving.
Parents are frustrated and angry, she said.
"We want to be friendly about this — we don't want to be ugly, but parents are feeling ugly. Parents are ticked and angry at drivers," she said.
Recently, one of her neighbors "flagged a teenager over and he was flying. My neighbor said, 'If you hit my child not only will you ruin my life you'll ruin your life as well.' He said he was busy, he had things to do."
"IT'S A MATTER of changing people's attitude," said Arabe, who said she will work with her homeowners association to determine other things they can do as a neighborhood.
She's considering organizing her neighborhood's own version of "Safe Neighborhood Day," when children in Copenhaver and surrounding neighborhoods such as Fox Hills go back to school in late August.
She's working with police to determine if a stop sign would be appropriate at one of the more troublesome four-way intersections in her neighborhood.
And she's interested in working with more neighbors to determine what can be done.
"If you look at your own street, you can say, 'You have a right to drive down this street, but not to break traffic laws because our children are at risk,'" she said.
<1b>By Ken Moore