BOCA RATON, Fla. — Palm Beach County has a potential solution for neighborhoods fed up with speeding drivers: speed humps.
WPTV anchor Mike Trim has tracked the speed hump installation process in Palm Beach County after listening to a concerned West Palm Beach resident at a Let's Hear It meetup.
WATCH BELOW: New speed humps spark these concerns
Currently, 18 similar projects in the county are at various stages of construction.
Trim visited a Jupiter Farms neighborhood where a mother started the petition process to get the speed hump process started.
Retired Boca Raton EMS Division Chief Michael O'Neil emailed Trim and brought up concerns about the speed humps.
With 40 years of experience in fire and EMS departments, O'Neil's opinion is that emergency vehicles could lose valuable time driving over speed humps.
"If I'm driving a vehicle like that and I come up and I see that, I'm hitting the brakes," O'Neil said. "Because if you hit that with speed, you're going to cause some damage to the truck, the unit and God forbid if you have a patient in the back."
Trim asked Palm Beach County engineering traffic manager Fadi Emil Nassar about the concerns of EMS and fire rescue vehicles driving over speed humps.
In an email response, Nassar said the speed humps are: "Developed in coordination with emergency vehicle operators and also input from chiropractic doctors. They are designed to punish those driving at excessive speeds, while causing minimum inconvenience for those traveling at the posted speed, including emergency vehicles."
