Technology can do more in Delaware

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Rehoboth Beach inaugurated the state's first smartphone app allowing residents and visitors to feed the resort's infamous parking meters with credit card transactions flying over the wireless web waves.

According to Commissioner Patrick Gossett, who championed the system, people responded far beyond expectations. In its first weekend of use, the system accounted for at least 15 percent of all meter revenues collected from what many observers say was a record-breaking holiday crowd.

Rehoboth's experience proves once again that technology rules, and individuals will quickly embrace technological advances that make life easier and more convenient.

At the state level, agencies are using high-tech equipment and software to catch everyone from child predators and pornographers on the internet to those who dump illegally and run red lights. The state recently announced that it will also be installing speed cameras at two sites in Kent County and New Castle County to discourage those who are making our highways unsafe by exceeding the speed limit.

In many jurisdictions around Washington, D.C., such cameras are proving effective not only at slowing many drivers, but also at extracting dollars - in the form of fines - from those who still insist on ignoring laws designed to make highways safe for everyone. Those dollars can in turn be used to fund the expensive business of maintaining roads and policing them.

If drivers know that Delaware is serious about its speed limits, they will slow down. Ask those still nursing their frustration over tickets they have as a result of going too fast through Milton, Ellendale and Greenwood. Sussex County could use a speed camera on Route 1 south of Milford.

That stretch of road has claimed many lives over the past few years, primarily as a result of speeding drivers. A speed camera between Milford and the Route 16 intersection would help slow traffic to a pace that would make life safer for all of us.