Comment on Get to work, crackheads
grue@lemmy.world 5 months agoThey also can’t testify in court, depriving accused speeders of their constitutional right to due process.
But back to your first claim: “gotta enforce speed limits.”
No, we do not. Speeding is a symptom of a street that was designed wrong to begin with. The correct solution is to fix the design, not install a speed camera as some sort of big brother band-aid.
Sorry but it’s a black and white thing in this case, r either you’re under the speed limit and not breaking the law or you’re over the speed limit and breaking the law.
Also, tons of people object to speed camera tickets and win, the only difference is that there’s no officer there when the event happened to tell them “Say that to the judge if you’re not happy.”, the end result is the same.
Sorry but it’s a black and white thing in this case, r either you’re under the speed limit and not breaking the law or you’re over the speed limit and breaking the law.
This isn’t actually true. It’s entirely possible to be breaking the law while driving under the speed limit: “driving too fast for conditions” is very much a thing.
But that’s beside my point, which really was just that changing the design of the street to make people not want to speed in the first place is way more effective (and frankly, way less totalitarian) than punishing them after-the-fact for doing so.
“Driving too fast for conditions” won’t be enforced by cameras, will still exist if the road is modified and is 100% subjective which is a problem speed cameras don’t have so you should be happy about that.
It might be easy more effective, it’s still not possible to change all roads as quickly as speed cameras can be deployed.
We also need to keep in mind the mechanism it is using to detect speed. If it uses radar it will need regular calibration. Handheld units for example are supposed to be spot checked before and after each shift with tuning forks.
Lidar is supposed to be checked like radar. You have a standardized distance and you check that the machine is exactly matching.
Bullshit. You are allowed to cross examine your accuser which you can’t do for a camera. It is not the same. Random tech should not be judging humans for crimes.
What would you prefer? That some people drive slightly over the speed limit? Or a spot where people suddenly slam on the brakes to avoid getting a ticket, endangering those who might be behind them with their sudden change of speed?
Because the latter is what these devices tend to do.
Show me evidences that they increase accidents please, I’ve provided two sources showing they work, surely you can provide one that they cause accidents.
What if the speed limit is unreasonably high or low?
“unreasonably low”
Eh… What? Car drivers can get fucked in this case, they don’t have a right to travel quickly, it’s a privilege.
“Unreasonably high”
Then a police officer there won’t change a thing and the road design won’t change.
if it’s too low, good, drivers shouldn’t go fast. If it’s too high, fine, drivers can go fast.
Eh … What?
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 do care and piss off everyone else on the road
Or worse, incite a bunch of extra passing maneuvers, making the road less safe.
Isn’t that part of “you piss off everyone else on the road?”
No. Although they often go hand-in-hand, it is possible to either piss people off without them doing anything in response or to incite people to pass you without pissing them off.
I'm sure it varies by area.
Where I live they install speed cameras in residential areas, school zones, and bus routes. They also only trigger when you are going 12 or more over the limit, and the highest speed limit I've seen with one these was 45mph, 35mph during school times. They also have an officer review and sign the citation, it is a flat fee, and no points. If needed, the officer who reviews will testify in court.
If someone is going 12+ over on school zones, school bus routes, and residential neighborhoods, then they deserve their fine.
I’m sure it varies by area.
They are illegal in my state
why do y’all apparently hate the idea of improving street design? As a former traffic engineer,
I think people are intuitively understanding that it’s not really a possibility in a country as large as America. There are only 139,000 km of public roads in the Netherlands, compared to 6,743,151 km of roads in America. We also have different types of traffic compared to the Netherlands, more large vehicles and people without access to public transportation for daily commutes. Compounding all this with the fact that the federal government has no control of how most of these roads are built… It’s understandable why people don’t see this as realistic option.
I think people are intuitively understanding that it’s not really a possibility in a country as large as America.
Their cynical intuition is wrong, though, and the “large country” argument in particular falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. So what if we have more roads? We have commensurately more traffic engineers, too! There is no excuse not to design properly.
Anyway, NJB has an entire video debunking that, so I’m just going to cite it instead of wasting my time arguing the point myself.
We also have different types of traffic compared to the Netherlands, more large vehicles and people without access to public transportation for daily commutes.
Vehicle size is irrelevant. Lack of access to public transportation is indeed a problem; however, in general “we shouldn’t fix problem A because we also have problem B” is not a valid argument. It just means you should fix problems A and B.
Compounding all this with the fact that the federal government has no control of how most of these roads are built…
Sigh… look, you’re not wrong to argue that that’s a popular perception; however, that’s much more a consequence of the shitty state of civics education than it is an accurate description of reality. There’s a bunch of different ways the Federal government exerts control, including things like taxation and funding (including for state- and local-maintained roads in a lot of cases, not just U.S. Highways) and collaboration between the FHWA (government) and AASHTO (industry) on design standards. It’s more complicated than just a unitary central government dictating things, but rest assured, roads are designed in a relatively standardized way nationwide.
Their cynical intuition is wrong, though, and the “large country” argument in particular falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. So what if we have more roads? We have commensurately more traffic engineers, too! There is no excuse not to design properly.
I think we’re having a problem determining the difference of what is possible and what should be possible. Your argument is ignoring the most important aspect of any public project. There isn’t enough political will in this country to pass universal healthcare, something that would end up saving the country billions of dollars. In what world do you think American politicians are going to replace 4 million miles of working roads?
Anyway, NJB has an entire video debunking that, so I’m just going to cite it instead of wasting my time arguing the point myself.
I don’t have the time ATM to watch this, I’ll give it a try after work. However, I doubt they’re going to be able to explain how they would get through the gridlock of our current government.
Vehicle size is irrelevant. Lack of access to public transportation is indeed a problem; however, in general “we shouldn’t fix problem A because we also have problem B” is not a valid argument. It just means you should fix problems A and B.
Traffic congestion won’t improve unless we improve public transportation. It doesn’t matter how well you build the roads, unless there is an alternative to driving there will be too many people on the roads. My argument is if we have to solve problem B before we work on problem A, there is no real reason to address problem A.
look, you’re not wrong to argue that that’s a popular perception; however, that’s much more a consequence of the shitty state of civics education than it is an accurate description of reality.
I think we’re just just getting into sematics now. Yes there is somewhat of a standardization of roads, but that does not mean they have the power to unilaterally create a new standard in which they could enforce with the power of the purse.
Your argument is ignoring the magnitude of funding and state and federal cooperation that would be required to revamp the entire transportation network of a huge country. Even if you could get a bill passed through our current Congress, how much money would it take, how much time?
Do I think we should be designing walkable cities with ample public transportation, of course. Do I think any politician in America would actually care about that…? No.
There isn’t enough political will in this country to pass universal healthcare, something that would end up saving the country billions of dollars. In what world do you think American politicians are going to replace 4 million miles of working roads?
We do have the political will in this country for universal healthcare, or, at least, most people, a majority, think it would be a good idea. it’s just I guess up to how you define “political will”, because we can have a majority that think we should have it, and then still not be able to get it even with popular support because the american government just straight up sucks and has bad voting systems and gerrymandering and even at the local level most of them are awful and are victims of circumstance of the presiding state and federal government. So that’s just kinda. I dunno. It sucks.
I always find it very strange how this shit comes up, though, right, basically as nihilism. I don’t think that guy’s point was to try and convince you to like, go out an canvas for better road conditions, his point was just to convince you that your arguments and causes were wrong and that you should be thinking about road design differently, mostly in that it’s a deliberate decision, and a bad decision. If you look at NJB, the guy who made that video, he’s an omega doomer that doesn’t really think progress will be made towards good urbanism within like, two generations, so he moved to amsterdam to escape it, basically. He’s also a doomer.
The point wasn’t to convince anyone to be an activist for anything, because that’s a pretty rare person that’s gonna be able to do that, the point is just that, the next time it comes around that the city has to do road maintenance, and they have a couple different options for proposals on how they might improve things, or if they will improve things, or if they’ll just leave things to rot, you can vote to make them better and it will take like 5 minutes cause someone talked about this shit previously.
Which, was the other point I was gonna make. We’ve just had a big new infrastructure bill passed and new passenger rail funding, and new amtrak proposals, and even though it’s not enough we’re seeing progress on that front. And more than that, at the local level, things don’t happen all at once with federal funding projects. They happen by degrees. You change the local standards, zoning regulations, so on, you know, shit you can precisely do because most politicians don’t give a shit about it, or shouldn’t right, if they turn it into a political issue where they’re like “we’re fighting the war on cars” with that mayor of toronto, gerard ford? it kind of becomes a mess. But if you can get it done, then over the next 20 years, things slowly shift in the right direction, as things have to be maintained by the city, and they decide hey maybe we’ll redo some of this in a different way that makes more sense and will legitimately feel better to drive even if suburbanites have been so propagandized to hate everything but a 6 lane totally car centric road.
I also would maybe contest the point about people driving in lieu of anything else, you know, I mean, this is sort of always the problem with urbanist solutions, right, is this chicken or the egg problem. Sometimes it’s easier to get big funding, even venture capital funding, for new development along a newly federally or state funded rail project, right, and that’s obviously a good thing, and then sometimes it’s easier to just change your regulations and then slowly make it so people can actually take their bike some place, right. I mean, you just kind of have to do both at once, whenever they become available as options, whenever prevailing conditions allow, and it takes a while. Hopefully you don’t get shafted with a useless kind of commuter park and ride rail line, but I suppose that’s better than nothing, and you know, hopefully some sort of development could come in and help fill some of the surrounding development with walkable shit so people have actual destinations at the suburban end of that, but then, you know, that requires you change the zoning regulations around that end of the track. I dunno. If you make the neighborhoods more walkable and have more destinations you might actually want to go to, more intracity places to go to, then public transit usually gets better, and if people have good public transit then that’s good for making walkable places because then you can kind of have the ability to expand people’s horizons and let them go places without having to own a car. I dunno, chicken or the egg, but also you just kind of do them both because there’s not really a dichotomy between them, is what I would assume that guy to be getting at.
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:
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.
If American politicians can pull their heads out of their asses and even only pass a resolution that:
This is my entire point… It is unrealistic to believe that American politicians would do something for the good of the people. Especially when a large portion of Americans themselves rarely vote for their own self interest.
What would be the cost of redesigning and paving 4.19 million miles of road? Well let’s do some real conservative napkin math. Let’s choose the cheapest type of road, a rural minor arterial on flat ground. The reconstruction for this single lane would be 915,000 per mile, per lane. Assuming every road is just rural and two lanes the cost would be around 7.7 trillion dollars. Roughly a third of America’s GDP.
That’s the absolute minimum according to The most recent estimate for road reconstruction and while using the least expensive options available.
No politician is ever going to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars for infrastructure.
yeah see that’s what I was talking about. you don’t have to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars all at once, because we already spend a pretty ludicrous amount on road maintenance already. you just redesign the road the next time the maintenance schedule comes around, which works out to be like. what you were already gonna spend, + the cost of paint you were already gonna use, + maybe some bollards, - the projected amount you would save by making it so people can take more trips by bikes and walking. which decreases car usage, which decreases the frequency with which you have to do road maintenance and upkeep, because cars weigh a lot and wear down the roads way more than any other use of roads.
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.
I’m a big fan of NJB (shout out to !notjustbikes@feddit.nl), but I’m not going to argue against speed cameras. That’s ridiculous. Yes, if I have to choose one or the other I’ll take the better road design. But even with good road design, some people will choose to be dicks because they can, or they see it as a challenge or some shit. And speed cameras can be implemented right now, whereas better road design waits (even in the Netherlands!) until that street is next due for repaving.
I don’t find improving road safety through intelligent engineering controversial, I think blaming the street design instead of the idiot deciding to speed through it is controversial. In the end it is the driver who accelerated, not the road engineer.
In fact I actually like how much attention has been brought over the past years to road design. I’ve always been scared of cars.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 5 months ago
Sorry, but that is a gross misinterpretation. Drivers are not victims of an intrinsic speed devil that they cannot escape. They still choose to violate the speed limit in most cases.
What was done in these countries is to acknowledge, that physical design is more effective as enforcement, than the cop with a speed-meter.
Still the explicit intent is to enforce speed-limits, knowing that people would violate them if they could, but they can’t because they would wreck their car. Still those people choose to violate and are responsible for their actions.
grue@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I gotta be honest; I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. First you tell me I’m wrong that it’s essential to fix the design of the street to facilitate the correct speed, then you agree with me that “physical design is more effective as enforcement,” then you say that the risk of people wrecking their car effectively deters them from speeding, then you say they choose to speed anyway.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 5 months ago
You say that speed limits shouldnt be enforced as they would be a “symptom” of poor road design. This abolishes the speeding drivers from their own responsibility for violating the traffic rules.
You misinterpret the design choice as the opposite of bad road design, therefore goad road design, which implies a generality. However these design choices are made solely and explicitly to enforce speed limits. They have disadvantages in other ways e.g. if you make spots where only one car can pass at a time, it makes traffic less efficient. These disadvantages wouldn’t be needed if people would take their responsibility not to speed seriously.
Good design or bad design, many people will speed if they can get away with it. With a proper enforcement through speed cameras, and proper penalties for speeding, e.g. losing your licences for repeated offenses or having your vehicle impounded, could equally serve for enforcement. They are just more expensive, so making design choices is prefered by some countries.
But still people who speed chose to speed. They chose to violate the traffic rules and they chose to endanger other people and themselves. So speeding is never a “symptom” of road design. It is always a “symptom” of selfish assholes that should not be given the right to operate dangerous vehicles.
grue@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No, they’re designed to discourage people from exceeding the design speed, which is different.
Jeez, it’s not as if the vast majority of speeders are mustache-twirling villains doing it for the evulz who are incorrigible short of being punished by the law! They just think it’s safe to be driving that speed because the overly-generous street design misleads them.
Look, here’s the bottom line: the whole concept of a “speed limit” only exists in the first place because of a mismatch between the design speed and the speed people want to drive, which makes it unsafe. If you fix the geometry of the street to eliminate the mismatch such that the speed people want to drive at is safe, you don’t need the limit anymore and can just fall back on “reasonable and prudent.”
Y’all are acting like we need speed limits for their own sake, just to have something to enforce.