KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — People living in a Knoxville neighborhood near Chapman Highway are speaking up about dangerous drivers on their streets.
"I don't understand why people feel the need to drive so fast," said Terry Caruthers, a board member of the Colonial Village Neighborhood Association.
Caruthers said she and others living in Colonial Village are concerned for their safety.
She explained that speeding has been an ongoing issue there for more than a decade. The neighborhood association made an initial traffic-calming request to the city of Knoxville in 2008.
A traffic study from Knoxville's Office of Neighborhood Empowerment shows hundreds of drivers are breaking the speed limit in that neighborhood daily, consistently exceeding the 25 mph speed limit by 20 mph.
Since 2017, the Knoxville Police Department has responded to 49 crashes in the Colonial Village neighborhood.
"We have people on our streets that say, 'I can't let my kids play outside because I'm afraid that a car is going to sail off the road into our yard,'" Caruthers said.
This fall, the city will install 36 speed humps on six different streets in Colonial Village.
Several neighbors requested the speed bumps in 2019 through the Neighborhood Traffic Safety Program (NTSP).
Caruthers said she hopes this is a wake-up call for drivers.
"Drive responsibly and follow the speed limit, especially in neighborhoods where you could you could kill a child," she added.
The project in Colonial Village is estimated to cost between $120,000 and $150,000.
It will be funded by NTSP, which was allotted $1 million by the city last fall.
Since the program's inception in 2018, the city has completed traffic-calming projects in 16 neighborhoods, totaling almost 200 speed bumps.
City engineers estimate roughly 180 bumps will be paved in Knoxville this year.