Iron Lynx @ Iron_Lynx @lemmy.world

Posts

5

Comments

773

Joined

2 yr. ago

Counterpoint:

How often do you think most people watch their speed gauges?
You and I might do so regularly, but you sure as hell cannot say that for sure about every other person on the road.

Furthermore, how obvious is the speed limit?
I can tell you with certainty that, outside of a few, mostly European, places, this may be unclear. North American traffic engineers happily design roads with speed limits anywhere between 40 and 80 km/h, with no changes to the cross-sectional geometry of the (st-) road.

Systemic speeding because of misguided road design is more common than you'd like to admit. And a few cameras probably only do so much to fix that.

Another relevant Not Just Bikes

Essentially, yes.

Besides, speed cameras, especially in NA, enforce by punishment. Punishment that some people are unable to afford, because for some reason they coddle billionaires while letting a fifth of their citizens rot in the gutter.

Meanwhile, a traffic calmed school zone enforces proactively. Are you sure you'd like to risk scratching your brand new $50k truck's pristine paintjob? A properly traffic calmed street will force drivers to face that question, and in many cases, they'll answer the question with "no", and slow down. Mission accomplished.

There's a difference. A road is meant to be a fast connection between points at the ends. This calls for forgiving design and higher speeds.
Meanwhile, a street is meant to be for allowing access to the nearby land. That warrants lower speeds, and the expectation that anyone can be on any of the sides as they see necessary. A street should function less like a vehicle artery, and more like an outdoor room.

Notice that these are incompatible uses. North American traffic engineers clearly didn't, allowing main streets to become the main thoroughfare, i.e. the main roads through an area as well. This produces the most dangerous type of transportation infrastructure: the stroad. Which is both meant to be a fast connection AND access to the nearby land, and in doing so fails at both.

If this stretch of car infrastructure you were discussing is supposed to be a street, vehicle throughput should probably be one of the last priorities, and vehicles are better off on a road a few blocks over.

I mean, if the road street takes up only part of the width of the right of way, you can do a lot with blocking off half the road street and alternating which side every few dozen metres. No demolition required.

Upon closer inspection, what you just described is a street, not a road.

Also, even with a narrower street, with strategically placed obstacles, you can convince drivers to zig-zag and reduce their speed that way.

Drivers who feel uncomfortable naturally slow down and pay more attention.

Congratulations, you stumbled upon the key point of traffic calming!

We're talking the area just around a school where it's safe to assume there are likely to be a lot of children outside of vehicles.

Shit like this is why I think the only thing that will save America is a complete purge of state and federal government, and a very clear and specific explanation why the US governments have been forcibly emptied and rebooted.

It should be governments' jobs to act for the betterment of their subjects. The fact the US doesn't, and happily marches the troops into places where they do "too well" if you'd ask them and read between the lines of their answers, is a crime against humanity.

Then let me specify:

Wide enough for one pickup and no opposing traffic, but so narrow that two pickups are going to really have to negotiate to move around each other.

School busses do nothing to solve the problem of speeding in school zones.

I agree with that last point, but the rest ignores the fact that this refers especially, specifically to school zones, where, as stated previously, fast traffic is a bloodbath about to happen.

skeleton crews

I'm not a manager, but if I had a business critical three person job and some busywork, I'd schedule four people minimum. Probably five if the busywork is important at the time.

Problems that are all reduced, eliminated or rendered irrelevant altogether if traffic moves slowly, which it probably does, thanks to all the other modifications.

Plus, they add a ton of road noise inside the vehicle, further increasing the level of discomfort at higher speeds, contributing to a lower design speed.

Isn't that part of "you piss off everyone else on the road?"

It's simple. If you design the road to be wide, straight, with wide, clearly marked lanes, clear sides and a smooth surface, people will naturally be inclined to drive faster. This is based on experiences with forgiving design. For motorways, this is fine. But for residential neighbourhoods and school zones, it's a bloodbath waiting to happen.

So out there, you do the exact opposite. Make the street so narrow that anything bigger than an average pickup truck barely fits in a lane. Make it out of brick and don't mark the centre of the road. Surround the street with shrubs and other obstacles, and stick it full of sharp chicanes.

This is the deliberate inverse of forgiving design, called traffic calming.

Ah yes, "tHe UsA iS tOo BiG, wE cAnT sOlVe ThIs"

Yes you can fix this. The Dutch bicycle culture was started by municipal votes, where resolutions passed municipal governments with margins of single votes. If American politicians can pull their heads out of their asses and even only pass a resolution that:

• Disseminates empirical research on road safety to all traffic engineers,
• Prioritises safety for all users on roads and streets, with priority given to those without armour (i.e. a car), and maybe
• Penalised engineers and politicians who choose to fail to design for safety

Then in the next thirty odd years, I think that the worst offenders can be rebuilt.

Do note that few things are as good at destroying themselves in regular, correct use as car infrastructure.

Even better solution though: (re-) build the street at a school zone so that no driver more sane than the most insane Florida Man would not fathom driving any faster than 20 km/h, no speed cameras required.

street that was designed wrong

Not Just Bikes? *checks link* yep, Not Just Bikes.

Yeah, speeding is a symptom of poor infrastructure design. It means one of a few possibilities:

• You don't care and get speeding tickets
• You do care and piss off everyone else on the road

I wouldn't describe that as somber. It actually sounds quite cheerful to me.

And maybe also, wierdly, the possibility "I need to get up and having a wank seems like a good way to get the systems starting up."

Either way, they all fall in the category of, what I've come to call, the Keine Lust Fap, named so after the Rammstein song. You're fapping, not because you're horny, but because of other reasons.