Stay alive and enjoy the ride: Imposing 20mph speed limits to protect lives – time for furious drivers to embrace reality
Stay alive and enjoy the ride: Imposing 20mph speed limits to protect lives - time for furious drivers to embrace reality - Techno Trenz
I think the main problem here is for folks forced to drive every day in the dervish of death that is rush hour.
If you can't afford to live near where you work (as is often the case in the UK), and you're already looking at a 1 hour commute both ways, current public transport isn't an option. You can either give up on sleep, or you will have to drive.
A lot of these changes are coming in the wrong order - first you improve public transport, create affordable housing near city centers, and drastically reduce the price (and let's be frank, increase the quality of) public transport, and THEN you hit car users to push them on to these options. In the current order, they just introduce further hardship to folks who already have a bad time.
A lot of these changes are coming in the wrong order - first you improve public transport, create affordable housing near city centers, and drastically reduce the price (and let’s be frank, increase the quality of) public transport, and THEN you hit car users to push them on to these options. In the current order, they just introduce further hardship to folks who already have a bad time.
It might be a little different in the UK, but in North America step #1 needs to be "first you abolish the low-density zoning restrictions that displace almost everybody far away from the city center to begin with." It's not just that walkable housing isn't affordable; it's that it's not even allowed by law to exist.
There is another substantial difference. In Europe you have private spaces to park your car and then roughly as many public parking spots as there are cars. In the US you have about 8 times as many public parking spots as cars exist. The amount of concrete wastelands just for potential cars is incredible.
You could basically scrap ¾ of your parking spaces to create walkable areas with small shops beside the big malls or oversized markets, then do some public transport to those areas (or still drive by car there), just to establich the idea of walking while shopping.
That's no replacement for getting rid of zoning regulations but a realistic start, where changing the zoning (even when the regulation vanish) would need a generation or more to change.
Yeah, the current approach globally - at least it seems to be the same in Germany - is to make the "experience", if you want to call it that, for car users worse to the point that it's worse than public transport in order to force people onto it. There are some minor improvements being made to public transport, but it's of course a lot faster to put up signs for a speedlimit everywhere or even blocking access to certain roads completely than to increase the capacity of a rail network. And as you said, this hits the already disadvantaged parts of the population more, since they more often than not have manual labor type job that requires going into the "office" everyday, that are living further from work, ...
That's not some "approach" but a symptom of conservatives fighting change tooth and nails. And it's always easier to destroy something. So while one side is trying to improve public transport and create proper bike infrastructure at the same time, the other side is sabotaging.
Disadvantaged parts of population usually don't have cars. For example in Moscow total amout of cars is about 20% of population, in regions it's even less.
Missed one - you actively encourage mobile working so you have less people moving around in total.
I agree here, a larger push towards remote working would definitely help, though such a move would likely come at the expense of privacy (teams is already a privacy nightmare as it is, with wider home work adoption no doubt Microsoft would implement more "features for employers").
Given that we know going over the speed limit raises your collision rate, meaning setting the speed limit so low every driver will go over it is genuinely dangerous, do we have any studies supporting the claim that reducing the speed limit reduces the collision rate overall? I couldn't find one, but it's a surprisingly challenging search - I easily found studies confirming that collision lethality scales with speed, but that's not my question.
Purely anecdotally, the vast majority of my collisions have been at very low speeds - in parking lots.
Regarding the first point, drivers naturally trend towards the speed they "feel" is right. Also many modern cars practically idle faster than 20 once you get rolling.
Change the actual road to slow people down and reduce accidents.
No one in my state complies with the speed limits because they're ridiculously low for the design of the road. You have a road built to handle 90mph but you tell people to go 30mph? Yeah that ain't happening
My main concern with this is that what you're doing is desensitising people from the speed limit.
I'm from a country that has arbitrarily defined speed limits and VERY low compliance rates compared to the UK (if you've ever been to Italy for example you know what I'm talking about). The nice thing here is that because the vast majority of roads have a speed limit that 'feels' appropriate (ie the road is designed for its speed limit), the amount of speeding I see here is negligible compared to what I was used to.
And generally here when the limit changes people comply to it because you can trust there's usually a good reason.
There's roads near me that are arbitrarily set to 30 (no pedestrian walkways, no side roads, but it passes near the back of houses and I assume they successfully petitioned the local authority to change it to 30), and traffic flow there is usually 40-45. I've never seen an accident there.
We have a poorly designed intersection not too far away and there's always accidents there to the point that there's now a consultation to fix it.
If this rule came to England, both these roads would be turned to 20, and that won't really be solving anything. In the first example I assume locals will still be driving 40, and it will create unnecessary overtaking because the road is wide and the visibility is good so it's not necessarily unsafe. But you've gone from a safe 40 road to risking head-on collisions pointlessly.
Tons of European cities already set-up speed-limit to 30 km/h. It's not just large cities, I've seen villaged limited at 30 too.
it's basically less nuisance for the residents
I envy you. My city is still at federal maximum of 60 km/h. I know only one city in Belgorod oblast that has 40 km/h.
Fine where alternatives are available. But this also would slow down busses, right?
We have this speed limit in the Netherlands, mostly in areas with housing. It doesn't really affect busses because they stay on the bigger roads that are 50 kmh (about 31 mph). In my opinion it's fine to drive 20 mph on the more local roads, as long as there are collector roads where you can go a bit faster.
Why not figure out what distance it takes to get going say 30MPH and install speed bumps at those intervals? They hurt if you go over them to fast so its a disincentive to do so.
speed bumps are garbage for speed control, you need to make the cars weave with alternating bollards or curbs. Traffic circles and roundabouts use this method to reduce dangerous collisions.
For small streets with no lane markings: bollards placed on both sides so cars have to stop to let other cars through.
For large streets - lanes that weave near pedestrian crossings with curbs or jersey barriers force drivers to slow down and turn work best.
Traffic calming has plenty of options outside speed bumps.
They let you buy an oversized SUV to bypass that.
This is great, and with electric vehicles being more and more common it should be super easy to drive slow
One of the problems is that a lot of cars have trouble driving at that speed. It's really difficult to get them to remain at a constant speed under 25 mph or so, which can end up being extremely frustrating for the driver and encourages them to go faster than the speed limit. I realize this is a car design problem, but it's still a problem at present until that is fixed.
Is this a European car thing or a driver skill issue? As an American I’ve never had a problem maintaining slow speeds in any vehicle I’ve driven - manual or automatic.
Edit: I am starting to realize that some drivers are startlingly dependent on cruise control to maintain a target speed.
100% skill issue. @FlyingSquid was self-reporting his incompetence.
I’m so confused by the number of people in these comments who apparently can’t maintain speed without cruise control.
This is almost certainly not a European thing. A lot of people here still drive manually and just idling in 1st gear gives you a steady 7-10km/h... or "walking speed" as used in really dense and mostly pedestrian areas cars are still allowed to use. Idling in 3rd gear is around 30km/h (19mph).
As an American, I sure have. Including my current Prius which doesn't drive consistently between about 5 and 25 mph. And that was true of my previous Honda Civic as well.
Can't enable cruise under 40kph (26mph). It's a pain.
It's really difficult to get them to remain at a constant speed under 25 mph or so
You don't have to drive at exaxtly 25, driving below is just fine
Sing it with me, folks...
You 👏 can't 👏 reduce 👏 the 👏 speed 👏 limit 👏 without 👏 also 👏 changing 👏 the 👏 street 👏 geometry! IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!
People don't give a shit about the what the speed limit sign says; they drive at the maximum speed at which they feel safe and comfortable based on the lane width, curve sharpness, etc. If you want to slow people down, you HAVE TO physically change the road -- narrow it, add chicanes, etc. -- to make it "feel" less safe. It's not fucking optional!
(Source: my background in traffic engineering.)
To be clear, I'm not saying that the goal of reducing speeds is bad. I'm just saying that attempting to do so on the cheap by changing the rules instead of the built environment itself accomplishes nothing but to generate more lawbreaking. Well, that and potentially making the road even less safe than it was before because having a wider mix of speeds is even worse than having everybody at a uniformly too-high speed.
Absolutely right. My town just made every road 25mph. Great. Unfortunately nobody gives a fuck. The road out in front of my house just got repaved. It's beautiful. I love it. Pulling in and out of my driveway has never been better. People also blast down it, mainly because I think they perceive speed differently on a nice smooth tarmac versus what was a cratered surface rivaling the moon. My suggestion to my neighbors is we just keep cars parked on the street all the time. If folks in opposing directions need to stick to a side to let others pass, it will naturally cause them to move more slowly.
Edit - Forgot to add, I listen to traffic engineers testify pretty regularly and consistently get mistreated, so I just want you to know that I appreciate what you're saying and what you do.
My house is on a residential 25mph street with a slight S curve. There was a car parked at the end of the curve and a reckless driver managed to plow into it and flip their car. It was the wildest thing I've ever seen. You would expect something like this on an interstate highway, not a tree lined street with little kids playing.
Step 1: reduce speed limit
Step 2: always have speed trap in place
Step 3: profit
For some countries (looking at you, USA) it would have an additional benefit. Cops should do their actual job, not lurk in some corner hoping to catch someone speeding. That's something easily done automatically, so why waste man power for this shit...
Google maps tells me when there's a speed trap.
I see you've been to Australia.
I largely agree with you, but I also recently saw this article: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/26/inventive-or-stupid-french-village-disorients-drivers-with-crisscrossed-white-lines
That seems more like an "and" than a "but," since it's a physical change to the road that makes it feel less safe. Anyway, nice find! I like how inventive and relatively inexpensive it is.
There is a lot a criticism in the article, but not statement on if it worked or not.
Speeds should be set using the 85th percentile rule: the speed limit is whatever speed the 85th percentile driver goes.
The thing, though, is we should work backwards from figuring out a desired speed for pedestrian + cyclist safety and then build a road with the desired 85th percentile speed.
Too often, it's done exactly backwards.
there was a less obnoxious way to say this. the people you are condescending to are not even here.
It's easy, just require speed governors in cars.
Where I live, they're required in e scooters and e bikes, which are far less dangerous than cars
We have different definitely of "easy"
E-scooters and e-bikes don't have speed limits that vary by street. In order to implement a governor capable of limiting a car to a 20 mph speed in certain areas while still allowing it to run at highway speeds in others, you'd need either a computer vision system to read the speed limit signs or a GPS paired with a perfectly complete and up-to-date speed limit geodatabase, and you'd need to give either such fallible computerized system control over the throttle (which could be a safety hazard in and of itself, for multiple reasons).
The difference between a e-bike governor and a car governor that can be set to something lower than 70 mph is like this.
your background in traffic engineering included learning how much these modifications cost.
seems like if we can't have your ideal we get nothing.
yeah, thanks, nope. but thanks for the ovation.
You seem to be under the impression that changing the speed limit sign is "better than nothing."
It's not.
It is, in fact, worse than nothing because having half the drivers comply with the lower speed limit and having half not creates a mix of speeds that's even more dangerous than if everybody just drove at the same higher speed.