“Take this road that’s in good condition and spend public money rebuilding it over months instead of installing a camera today to push drivers to be responsible.”
Comment on Get to work, crackheads
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months agoEven better solution though: the street at a school zone 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.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Punishment that your don’t need to pay if your just respect the legal speed. We’re not talking about someone stealing food because they can’t afford to eat, we’re talking about someone driving a car and being unable to get their foot off the gas pedal for a bit. Your reaction to that is “People shouldn’t take their responsibility to respect the law, it’s the state that should spend money to make it so they don’t want to drive like morons!”
If you’re unable to slow down just because the road is wide enough that you feel safe driving fast then you’ve got no business owning a car.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
byroon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
What?
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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. 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.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 months ago
School buses are a thing.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
School busses do nothing to solve the problem of speeding in school zones.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They used to be. Now everyone drives their kids to school for reasons.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, not here.
damnyouclouds@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Firetrucks? Ambulance?
psud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
My city has exactly one road designed like this. Fire trucks have no problem
barsoap@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Not an issue in Europe. Though granted the US would probably need to replace their fire trucks with sanely-sized ones. You also don’t need to haul a big-ass ladder in a low-density area what’s your plan use it to do a header into a suburban pool.
Regarding response time absence of gridlock will be more important than the last hundred metres on a residential street, consider investing in public transportation, walkable cities, and generally everything that abolishes owning and using a car being mandatory.
zakobjoa@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Hey, I live on a road like that. It’s not even bricks, but good ol’ cobblestone. The cars also share it with a tram.
There’s a lot of pedestrians crossing. It’s a residential area with shops in the ground floor of all the buildings.
There’s multiple schools and kindergartens around, so they set the speed limit to 30km/h. Does that matter? No. People go 50-60 during the day and 70-80 at night. The only times that doesn’t happen is when the cops set up a mobile speed camera.
The road is fairly straight, I’ll give you that, but I guess they can’t just demolish a few kilometres of 100yrs old houses to make to road a bit winding.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I mean, if the road takes up only part of the width of the right of way, you can do a lot with blocking off half the road and alternating which side every few dozen metres. No demolition required.
milkytoast@kbin.social 10 months ago
nah fuck brick roads. the rest sure. not brick. dangerous for panick braking (less traction), wears iunt tires and suspension prematurely
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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, further increasing the level of discomfort at higher speeds, contributing to a lower design speed.
psud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Panic braking from 20 km/h isn’t going to be impeded by a brick surface, even wet brick.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 10 months ago
Main roads shouldn’t be brick, but local residential streets certainly should. The speed limit should be 30 km/h or less anyway, and in a well-designed road network they should only make up a tiny portion of your overall drive, so wearing tyres and suspension isn’t an issue.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Wrong. Making winding roads slows down traffic but increases the amount of time it takes to cover a given distance. Which leads to less people walking and cycling plus more local air pollution. You want nice grids. People walk in NYC they don’t walk in burbs. This is what city planners refuse to grasp. You don’t make driving more difficult, you make alternatives easier.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
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.
wesley@yall.theatl.social 10 months ago
The road can have unnecessary curves that the sidewalks and bike lanes do not.
There are other ways to slow vehicles as well such as chicanes that narrow the street at certain points such that only 1 vehicle can pass fit through it at once, raised crosswalks, etc. There are a lot of ways to design the street to force drivers to slow down and pay attention.
Unfortunately, if drivers have room to speed then it comes at the expense of the well being and safety of everyone else (even other drivers).
I agree that winding culdesacs suck btw, but a street grid doesn’t solve the problem if safety in front of a school. If designed poorly it can make it worse since long straight streets can easily be turned into drag strips of speeding vehicles. Street grids are fine and good, but they should not allow drivers to go faster than is compatible with a pleasant and safe environment for people outside of the vehicles.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 10 months ago
You don’t do this everywhere. You do it where you want traffic speeds to be low. Residential streets, school zones, shopping precincts, and the like.
Plus, you further aid pedestrians and cyclists by having these residential streets not be through-traffic, except to pedestrians and cyclists. Use “modal filters”.
psud@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The pedestrians and cyclists get good straight paths. The curves on the road are made by consuming its excess width
barsoap@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Relevant Not Just Bikes.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Another relevant Not Just Bikes