“I hate these damn bike lanes. Screw your studies. I’m not reading that”
"Cut gas taxes. I see no reason why I should pay to support public transit"
“Fuck speed limits. I’m proud to break the law”
This sense of entitlement is insane.
“I hate these damn bike lanes. Screw your studies. I’m not reading that”
"Cut gas taxes. I see no reason why I should pay to support public transit"
“Fuck speed limits. I’m proud to break the law”
This sense of entitlement is insane.
I’m actually sympathetic to these folks, because there’s a bunch of studies that show that people drive the speed that feels safe. You can’t engineer a road to be safe for 15 mph over the posted speed limit and be shook when folks do the speed that feels safe (the US does this ALL THE TIME). That kind of engineering is all but guaranteeing that an enforcement control is going to be a money printer.
I’ve encountered a few roads in my time driving where the speed limit doesn’t match actual driving conditions at all.
I think by now we should have the technology to do statistical analyses on actual road data (currently observed speed vs. speed limit speed) to more accurately assign speed limits that are safe enough that enough people actually follow them.
@Gork @three_trains_in_a_trenchcoat
My understanding is, when they design a road they do calculate the “engineering speed limit”, the safe speed given road geometry and surface and visibility, etc., but then they mostly ignore it and assign an arbitrary limit from the standard list for that type of roadway.
We botched raising the limit for 400-series. We should have gone to 120km/h with actual enforcement, but what we did was 110 and a wink, and now 1 in 3 drivers do 130km/h.
Problem: Driving faster doesn’t make anyone safer, so that’s not true. Studies usually show that people drive at what “feels comfortable” for the design of the road, which is vastly different from what’s safe.
I’ve been driving for decades and never felt compelled to drive at excess speeds of what’s posted. I’ve certainly never had the urge to go 90km/h in a 40km/h or 100km/h in a 60km/h zone.
If people are unfit to drive at the posted speed limits, they should consider taking other forms of transportation.
What you’re describing is what I meant. If you’re driving at a speed that feels uncomfortable, it’s likely because it feels unsafe. I’m glad you’re a human cruise control, because I’m not, I often do vibes based speed control and I’d be very vulnerable to speed traps. I know I’m a bad driver, and I’d much rather take the bus, train, or bike lane if it was realistic to do so; I honestly hate driving.
I think the distinction they’re trying to make is that whether or not a given speed feels unsafe on a road doesn’t necessarily correlate with whether it actually is unsafe.
Oh, absolutely. But that doesn’t stop civil engineers from making residential roads that are wide enough to function as interstates, post a 25 mph speed limit, and be SHOCKED when people do 50. It’s not safe to do 50 mph on that road in any sense, but it feels like it is, so that’s what people do.
The studies really show that narrow roads make drivers slow down, while wider roads have them increasing their speed.
Make roads like 3 inches wide.
Because they are uncomfortable or comfortable depending on the road design, not because they want to drive safer. They don’t want to hit a plastic bollard, but have no problem driving millimetres away from cyclists, for example. 😱
That’s exactly the point… If they drive safer because they don’t want to scratch the paint on their car or because the feel some kind of communion with others, what difference does it make? We often chalk up problems to “personal responsibility” when we should be focusing waaaay more on systems and the built environment.
People use things the way they’re implicitly built to be used.
Maybe I didn’t get my point across clearly. People may be worried about the paint on their cars, but that doesn’t mean they are worried about the safety of others.
Of course, driving slower is still driving slower, to the benefit might still be there.
However…
If someone chooses to only drive “safely” because their car would get scratched, rather than drive safely because it could kill a child, that person should be taken off the road. It’s unbelievable that drivers shouldn’t be expected to drive with the safety of other human beings (and animals) in mind.
Instead of hoping people will feel a particular way, would it not be easier to get people to drive safer using measues that directly cause them to drive more safely, irrespective of their feelings in the moment?
It may be a matter of opinion, but if a driver doesn’t have the ability to drive safely (i.e. defensively, with concern for others, etc.) without the use of the guardrails (no pun intended), then they really shouldn’t be driving.
Driving is a skill. If it requires “hacks” or mind games, then we’re doing something terribly wrong.
Some countries that have implemented safe street design also have drivers who know their place on the road.
Safe street design won’t have the same effect in countries where drivers feel entitled and for which their behaviour has no consequences.
For example, we have stop signs and red lights. Everybody who drives should know what they mean.
But we have the majority of drivers rolling through stop signs, and quite a few ignoring red lights. You can’t really design this stupidity out. Roundabouts are not an answer when the attitude of entitlement still exists. We are just shifting the bad behaviours to another part of the road.
And in particular Ontario, where our government would rather build wider roads with fewer safety implements, makes this challenge even more difficult. Drivers need to change their behaviour, and need to, well before we make the roads “safe by design”.
By all means: be an advocate for safer driving. Just know that this kind of advocacy been the dominant strategy for decades and the research says it doesn’t work, or at least not as well as roads engineered to be safe. Have a look at the work by Strong Towns for more information, if you’re interested.
I know there’s nothing I can say in this moment that will change your mind, as were just typing to eachother on the internet. I’m just an advocate for this because I believe it has the potential to fix huge portions of Canada and Noth America generally, without a strictly left/right partisan stance.