`LEXINGTON RACEWAY'

Bob Price has had more than he can take.

He lives on Lexington Avenue, a street running through one of Cape Girardeau's more prosperous areas. Its new homes and beautiful scenery make it seem like the ideal place to live.

But it's not.

Price and others living in the Lexington vicinity are tired of watching automobiles speed past their homes at dangerously high speeds.

"It's dangerous out here," Price said. "I don't care what anybody says."

Several residents say it's not unusual to see cars speeding down Lexington at about 50 miles an hour or faster, despite posted speed limits of 30 and 35.

Some speeders are going so fast they run through the stop sign at Lexington and Sherwood streets without slowing down, Price said.

"I saw one car go though there doing about 50 or better," he said. "He made no attempt to stop."

Price has trouble backing his car onto Lexington because the cars are whizzing by so quickly.

"I pull out and they're right on my tail," he said.

He often has to wait several minutes in his driveway as cars zip by.

"Sometimes I'm tempted to back out in front of them," he said.

But what took the cake for Price was when he saw two cars zooming down Lexington in a dead heat.

"They were racing," he said, "side-by-side. They had to be going 70. They went right through that stop sign and neither one touched their brakes."

Price isn't just worried about himself.

"What about the children and people on bicycles or walking? They don't have a ghost of a chance," he said.

Bob White lives on the corner of Lexington and an adjoining street. He said it's not the same neighborhood since the "Lexington Raceway" opened in January 1994.

"We've got a serious problem here. It's sad," White said. "I'm just waiting for someone to get killed. I just hope it's not me they hit."

Cars zoom by White's house at 60 to 65 miles an hour as he mows his yard, often coming close to him as he mows the outer edges nearest the street, he said.

"Oh, they don't have any respect for this old-timer and his lawn mower," he said.

Sgt. David Sanders, who is in the Cape Girardeau Police Department traffic division, and a Southeast Missourian reporter spent an hour last week clocking drivers at various locations on Lexington Avenue.

Of the 83 vehicle clocked, 62 were traveling over the posted limit of 35 miles per hour. Had he been issuing tickets, Sanders said, he would have given several that morning.

"Speeding is certainly a problem," he said, looking at the statistics. "More people were driving at or above the speed limit than those who weren't.

"People are just driving too fast."

Sgt. J.R. Davis, who also works in the traffic division, doesn't think the 30-mile-an-hour speed limit is too strict.

"The speed limit is there to keep accidents down," Davis said. "It's a residential area and you've got a lot of people driving there and a lot of kids playing outside. There's a greater potential for accidents there."

But Lexington isn't the street most people in Cape Girardeau speed on.

While speeding is a problem on Lexington, Davis says more people speed on Kingshighway and William streets because those arteries maintain a heavier traffic flow.

There have been 11 tickets this year given on Lexington, an amount Davis says is normal. Eight of those tickets were hazardous driving violations, which includes speeding.

While many of those clocked weren't driving many miles over the limit, Sander said the faster people drive, the worse the danger.

Driving 15 mph over the speed limit is unsafe, he says.

A driver traveling at 45 mph who comes across an object that forces a sudden stop travels 100 feet before braking and then 90 more feet before actually stopping.

At 30 miles an hour, the distance before braking is 66 feet which is added to another 40 before the vehicle stops.

Going 15 mph slower cuts the stopping distance nearly in half.