Richmond Hill Mayor Russ Carpenter referenced NASCAR on Tuesday when he talked about recently installed speed cameras on Harris Trail near Richmond Hill High School.

“We have stopped the Richmond Hill Daytona 500,” he said.

Carpenter, also a teacher at RHHS, cited numbers from the company that installed them, Blue Line Solutions., showing a 76 percent reduction in the number of people speeding at least 11 mph over the limit through the school zone since the cameras went up in August.

That percentage comes from data gathered before the cameras were installed, and then during a warning period before Richmond Hill Police Department officers began writing tickets.

They showed that over a five day period before the cameras were installed, 4,303 drivers out of a total count of 19,059 sped through the zone from 30 minutes prior to the start of school until 30 minutes afterward. Once the warning phase began, only 495 out of 30,359 over a five-day period were caught speeding.

The numbers went back up again once RHPD officers began writing tickets, with 1,023 out of 27,515 motorists speeding through the zone, which runs from the railroad tracks on Harris Trail to the Osprey Drive entrance into Piercefield Subdivision.

Efforts to get drivers to slow down in the area also include 11 signs telling motorists they’re in a speed zone and “one of those digital signs telling you how fast you’re going,” Carpenter said.