[RandallBrown]

Seattle lowered the speed limit on a lot of roads, but didn't do much else beyond add a few "No turn on red" signs.

So now you have a road where the speed limit used to be 35, but is large and straight enough to comfortably go 45, with a speed limit of 25. That causes people to go wildly different speeds and (in my opinion) makes it a lot more dangerous.

[quickthrowman]

> Seattle lowered the speed limit on a lot of roads, but didn't do much else beyond add a few "No turn on red" signs.

As you said, that doesn’t do anything since the road is designed to go 35-45 MPH, that is how fast people will go, with the exception of inflexible rule followers that drive 25 MPH and cause dangerous speed differentials.

My city has been doing traffic calming projects where they redesign the road for the speed they want people to drive at and that has actually worked well.

All lowering the speed limit does is make it easier for cops to harass poor people, it doesn’t actually change the way people drive.

[kerkeslager]

> As you said, that doesn’t do anything since the road is designed to go 35-45 MPH, that is how fast people will go, with the exception of inflexible rule followers that drive 25 MPH and cause dangerous speed differentials.

If speediots followed the rules, there wouldn't be a speed differential. You're blaming the rule followers, when in fact it is the people with the patience of a toddler causing the speed differential.

Driving is, in most cases, the only life-and-death activity you undertake during your day, and if you don't have the emotional capacity to handle not being where you want instantly, you don't have the emotional capacity to handle a machine that can kill other people.

[quickthrowman]

> If speediots followed the rules, there wouldn't be a speed differential.

But, they don’t. So there is a speed differential. That’s reality, you aren’t going to change that unless you start executing people that speed, and that isn’t a realistic solution.

Redesigning the road so people instinctively drive slower does actually work. You take a four lane road, and change it to a two-lane road with left turn lanes, concrete medians that make the road appear narrower, concrete aprons that jut out into the road at crosswalks to make it appear even narrower, wider medians, and so on. The two major roads in my neighborhood have been redesigned this way and the results have been great, if a road is properly designed for a specific speed, you can actually get people to drive slower. It works on me, and I know the tricks.

What you’re arguing for is akin to operating industrial machinery without safeties, relying on unreliable humans to moderate their behavior, when you could prevent it by designing the road so that even speeders drive the speed limit or slightly over.

I’ve seen redesigning roads actually work, you can be dismissive and pray that people will magically follow the rules, but that won’t make it so.

[kerkeslager]

> That’s reality, you aren’t going to change that unless you start executing people that speed, and that isn’t a realistic solution.

This is an adult conversation, please think before you type absurdities like this.

If (A) there was enough enforcement to actually catch people that speed, and (B) the punishment was rehabilitative (you have to clean up the roadway you were endangering people's lives on and take a class to retest for your license) there would be far fewer speeders.

> What you’re arguing for is akin to operating industrial machinery without safeties

No, actually, I'd love if we redesigned roads so people instinctively drive slower. I'm not arguing against that in any way.

All my post was doing was insisting that if you're going to blame someone, you place blame where it belongs. You're blaming people doing what they should be doing instead of the people endangering everyone around them.

[quickthrowman]

> This is an adult conversation, please think before you type absurdities like this. If (A) there was enough enforcement to actually catch people that speed, and (B) the punishment was rehabilitative (you have to clean up the roadway you were endangering people's lives on and take a class to retest for your license) there would be far fewer speeders.

Red light cameras are illegal in my state, there isn’t enough money to vastly increase traffic enforcement. Penalties would have to be dialed up to 11 for people to modify their behavior, and I don’t seen that happening. Even if speeding tickets were $1,000 or 40 hours of community service, people would still speed.

It would be great if people would drive safely, but they don’t, so that’s why I think redesigning roads is the only real way to change driving behavior.

[kerkeslager]

> It would be great if people would drive safely, but they don’t, so that’s why I think redesigning roads is the only real way to change driving behavior.

This is really the crux of it: why are you so insistent that we can only redesign roads? Why can we not redesign roads AND have people do community service?

An aside: red light cameras being illegal is such an unfortunate thing, but I really don't see a solution to that. My ideal world would have red light cameras that can only save the recording when they detect an infraction, so that everyone else's privacy is respected. But of course there's nobody I'd trust to implement, install, or use those cameras--law enforcement doesn't care about privacy--so we can't have red light cameras and have privacy.

[alamortsubite]

I think redesign is the way to go, but there are places that are only separated from the U.S. in terms of education and enforcement, and compliance is excellent there. Really we can do both.

[quickthrowman]

It’s also a cultural problem in addition to an engineering challenge, many Americans are notoriously “independent” (aka selfish) and that is evident by watching them drive.