I would love to see a more recent study. Safety tends to be a weird subject, particularly the treadmill of introducing safety features, which means more drivers drive unsafely because safety features give an appearance of safety.
Overall, I still stand by what I said outside of maybe the very first sentence. Even if they DO slow traffic, there are vastly better ways that don’t have a disproportionate impact.
My city started putting in speed cushions at roads that were constantly over-traveled. Neighborhoods that would see increased traffic during rush hour, for instance. They’re aggressive, you have to go BELOW the speed limit to safely drive the route. Those roads see SIGNIFICANTLY less traffic, and the traffic that is there is slower.
Fines just don’t work to deter your average driver, or at least not as much as physics does.
Oh yeah, just to be clear, I’m a massive fan of urbanist channels like NJB and absolutely stan the shit out of traffic calming measures. Give me more trees on the sides of the road to make it feel narrower. Give me speed humps. Give me medians. Give me sidewalk extensions. Give me roundabouts. Inject that shit into my veins. I see speed cameras as just one tool in an arsenal to create safer driving conditions, and mercifully, it seems like the US is starting to warm up to those.
I’m pretty sure we’re 100% on the same page here as far as traffic calming measures go, and I think we’d both agree too that if there are fines, they need to be adjusted to account for income. (Here’s an upvote by the way to counteract that downvote; this is one of like two reasonable takes I’ve seen in this thread against speed cameras.)
I can broadly agree with these sentiments. I think speed limits, as they’re implemented right now, are largely folly and should be replaced with something that can’t be abused for revenue. And even if we agree that MOST cameras and speed fines aren’t revenue focused, we HAVE to acknowledge the possibility of abuse.
I think in an ideal world, I’d set speed limits to be higher than they are now - say, (spitballing) 100mph for interstates. It’s HARD enforced, at even 1mph over, and a criminal offense. I know this level of enforcement is already in place, technically - usually speeds like, 20 over are considered criminal - but it’s subject to too much discretion. Those cases need to be enforced almost unilaterally.
From there, addressing the rest of the speed issue is the job of urban planners. Make the roads just not fun)safe, convenient, whatever) to drive at speeds even approaching the limit. From there, enforcement becomes far more justifiable, and will consistently target people driving the most unsafe.
Obviously, reckless driving and other such penalties would be in place, to catch anything else reckless, and that’s going to be case-by-case, still subject to discretion, but at least it’s something.
I think in an ideal world, I’d set speed limits to be higher than they are now - say, (spitballing) 100mph for interstates.
I suspect many cars on the road can’t even be driven safely at that speed, and then you have to account for the driving ability of the average person.
You’d have more cases where there are high speed differentials too with some only going 60mph, and others going 100mph, increasing the amount of passing.
The speed limit, in this scenario, would be set at what is absolutely, inarguably, a dangerous speed. A speed at which NO ONE can argue what you’re doing is dangerous. The bulk of speed management would be done by better urban planning. If no one feels safe going over 50, yeah, you may have the rare dumbass pushing it, but you’re always going to have dumbasses.
I would love to see a more recent study. Safety tends to be a weird subject, particularly the treadmill of introducing safety features, which means more drivers drive unsafely because safety features give an appearance of safety.
Overall, I still stand by what I said outside of maybe the very first sentence. Even if they DO slow traffic, there are vastly better ways that don’t have a disproportionate impact.
My city started putting in speed cushions at roads that were constantly over-traveled. Neighborhoods that would see increased traffic during rush hour, for instance. They’re aggressive, you have to go BELOW the speed limit to safely drive the route. Those roads see SIGNIFICANTLY less traffic, and the traffic that is there is slower.
Fines just don’t work to deter your average driver, or at least not as much as physics does.
Oh yeah, just to be clear, I’m a massive fan of urbanist channels like NJB and absolutely stan the shit out of traffic calming measures. Give me more trees on the sides of the road to make it feel narrower. Give me speed humps. Give me medians. Give me sidewalk extensions. Give me roundabouts. Inject that shit into my veins. I see speed cameras as just one tool in an arsenal to create safer driving conditions, and mercifully, it seems like the US is starting to warm up to those.
I’m pretty sure we’re 100% on the same page here as far as traffic calming measures go, and I think we’d both agree too that if there are fines, they need to be adjusted to account for income. (Here’s an upvote by the way to counteract that downvote; this is one of like two reasonable takes I’ve seen in this thread against speed cameras.)
I can broadly agree with these sentiments. I think speed limits, as they’re implemented right now, are largely folly and should be replaced with something that can’t be abused for revenue. And even if we agree that MOST cameras and speed fines aren’t revenue focused, we HAVE to acknowledge the possibility of abuse.
I think in an ideal world, I’d set speed limits to be higher than they are now - say, (spitballing) 100mph for interstates. It’s HARD enforced, at even 1mph over, and a criminal offense. I know this level of enforcement is already in place, technically - usually speeds like, 20 over are considered criminal - but it’s subject to too much discretion. Those cases need to be enforced almost unilaterally.
From there, addressing the rest of the speed issue is the job of urban planners. Make the roads just not fun)safe, convenient, whatever) to drive at speeds even approaching the limit. From there, enforcement becomes far more justifiable, and will consistently target people driving the most unsafe.
Obviously, reckless driving and other such penalties would be in place, to catch anything else reckless, and that’s going to be case-by-case, still subject to discretion, but at least it’s something.
I suspect many cars on the road can’t even be driven safely at that speed, and then you have to account for the driving ability of the average person.
You’d have more cases where there are high speed differentials too with some only going 60mph, and others going 100mph, increasing the amount of passing.
The speed limit, in this scenario, would be set at what is absolutely, inarguably, a dangerous speed. A speed at which NO ONE can argue what you’re doing is dangerous. The bulk of speed management would be done by better urban planning. If no one feels safe going over 50, yeah, you may have the rare dumbass pushing it, but you’re always going to have dumbasses.
Germany would like a word 🙄
((yeah it seems like there’s a down vote hitting each comment in this thread hahah. Fwiw, same sentiments to you, very good points.))