Drive like a Christian Motorist

Wow fuck cars all roads should be 30kph

Road ways are designed with something like a safety factor where a 50kph road way Is safe up to 80kph. It’s just reduced for those stunned types of us.

But then we can’t just cut and paste the same lane design regardless if it is a school zone or a freeway.

Designing a 50 zone to be safe at 80 is a big part of why our roads are dangerous and we need to address mass speeding. On a highway it make sense to give more wiggle room with speed, the same is not true for residential roads or school zones.

Driving is not a right. Not everyone is entitled to it. Blind people, people under 16, people with certain health conditions, people who have had too many DUIs.

I agree with the rest of your comment but driving isn’t a right, we’ve just built a society where it feels like we have to treat it as a right to be fair.

Try understanding. The road was already designed to be safe at 80kph. They lower it down to 50kph because of folks such as the ones who brake at the green light because the count down timer for the walk signal hit zero. Or the ones who don’t know where the fuck they are going, panick miss their turn and slam on the fucking brakes in the middle of a 3 lane road instead of pulling a u-turn 100m up the road. Then they try the bulshit of traffic calming shit by retiming the lights so every light in 10km stretch will be red when you get to it. Fucking phenomenal way to prevent irritation.

Doh, I got that reversed 🫣 Corrected now.

In my rural area they are putting 50km signs in the middle of the road on the yellow lines. Makes you feel like you’re threading a needle.

I like that idea!

We have something similar in a few spots around here using flexible bollards.

So no example of a city that has successfully implemented all these ideas and was better for it?

Because there’s lots of cities that have successfully done mostly the opposite and are better for it (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Montreal, Paris, Bergen, Oulu, etc)

Last year, I think it was on the War on Cars podcast, their guest was a disillusioned traffic engineer that called his entire field “a fraud discipline.” Like they put absolutely no critical thought into their designs as long as they are built to the exacting code.

Edit: Found it, it was an episode from a few years ago.

I was getting it mixed up with this other episode.

Maybe they should consider changing the speed limits a bit.

Or, hear me out, people could make the needle on their dash point at the same number as the one printed on the giant white signs all over.

For sure! One of those changes requires money and time, and one requires people to pay attention. Should be an easy choice which should get implemented now vs in 5-10yrs.

I dislike the infantalization of the public, and the idea that people can’t be trusted, so we should make the roads such that they NEED to follow the limit feels stupid.

now just rely on getting tickets to keep us in line, I mean if thats our system and there isn’t enough push to retest us regularly, then yeah, I’m not opposed to getting tickets. My city has installed them throughout our community safety zones, and I got dinged once at 8km.hr over. Sure, it sucks, but I was the one in the wrong. The idea of removing them, or me saying its the fault of the road design is ridiculous. I chose to go that speed, largely because we’ve been able to speed at 5-10km/hr over the speed limit with no consequences for my entire adult life. Now I see a community safety zone and I go the speed limit, regardless of where I am or what the road ‘feels’ like I can drive.

The 10 speed automatic transmission can let you creep from 100 to 115/120 pretty easily and relatively unnoticeably on an empty road.

If he’s on a highway, then learn what 100 feels like in your new car. It’s an adjustment. I work in road design, and the safety standards that are required when designing highways trump concerns over speeding. People are bad judges of what is a ‘safe’ speed, and building highways around how fast people feel comfortable going leads to more accidents and more dangerous accidents.

That being said, I’m all for narrowing lanes, adding MUPs or widening sidewalks, all of which can occur at the same time. But the transportation master plan and/or asset management queue is built up for the next ~10 years (minimum), and updating or changing that is a very expensive process most places dont have the money for.

From the article, New Westminster Drive was the highest (9,000+ tickets). The road was redone in 2015 (with no changes to the alignment or width). That means they’re likely looking at a minimum of 15+ years before they’ll rebuild the road, which is whats required to adjust curblines, narrow the road, or otherwise change the alignment. Likewise Ansley Grove Road was redone in 2010, and won’t be rebuilt for 10+years.

Those roads are all four lane urban roads with few intersecting streets and long stretches for motorists to get up to speed. Speed enforcement is the simplest and fastest method to address the problem now. Sure, petition your local council to change what their standard road cross section is, but that won’t change anything for 15+ years. ___

and drivers have been allowed to creep the average speed to 15-20 over the limit, it can literally feel like you’re the one doing wrong when doing the limit as most other cars fly past you.

I agree. Other vehicles speed is a major factor in your comfort and safety when driving. Which is why this ticketing is soooo effective. Thousands of tickets, with 24/7 coverage, applied without needing a cop standing there and literally ticketing each one individually?

I’d lay good money that those areas will see a drastic speed reduction within the next month or two, once drivers receive their fines.

Do these designs have any impact on emergency vehicles? Or do they cost more to put in than a regular road? Do they make driving less efficient and cause more emissions? Can they be ignored like lights or stop signs?

I feel like speed cameras might be a better solution than speed bumps or other road barriers. Penalize the bad drivers up to and including taking away their driver’s license if they can’t comply with the rules, allow emergency vehicles to somewhat the need to do, and collect some revenue to offset the cost of enforcement of safety.

Traffic sign/signal camera are a good idea too. If you can’t/won’t follow the rules of the road, I think you should pay fines and eventually have your license removed. Cameras are a far more effective way to do that than officers.

Love that podcast and I remeber them comparing the mentality they use for roads and how delusional it would be for just about any other engineering field to follow that mentality.

Boy, nothing gets by you eh? I was pretty overt from the get-go that I tend to drive slightly above the limit when it is safe to do so.

As for people who can accelerate and people who speed being the biggest danger on the road, I’d say the people retarding the flow of traffic, the people who expect us all to be psychic and know when they’re about to change lanes without a blinker, and the people turning left on a long yellow light or sneaking in behind on the red are far, far worse.

It’s difficult living in a world of mentally slow people who can’t process for shit, so there’s no sense trying to argue with you here. Just keep driving like a putz and enjoy the fact that while you can’t grasp the concept of a blinker or reaching the limit, cops are aggressively going after people who can reach limits and are able to process things at an above average rate.

They can’t understand, much like they can’t process things when driving 80kmh. They are, no doubt, one of the people doing the limit in the inside lane with 0 intention to pass the car beside them and get back into the appropriate lane.

But here they are telling us how everybody else is a problem.

Hundo, and if the person I let in front of me drives like shit, I’ll hope that there isn’t also an idiot blocking me in so I can get around them.

Sure, if you’re going to make the city fully designed for pedestrians and cyclists, with proper public transit connecting cities that would be fantastic.

Shit, Europe also has the Autobahn, but we’d be fucked if we tried to have a highway like that over here.