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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Sing it with me, folks...
You ๐ can't ๐ reduce ๐ the ๐ speed ๐ limit ๐ without ๐ also ๐ changing ๐ the ๐ street ๐ 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.
And do you slow down? If so, we just need stupid cheap speed cameras and deploy them fucking everywhere
Speed cameras would be my suggestion to reduce speeding as a more immediate, but ultimately a Band-Aid solution.
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.
My apologies. English is not my first language. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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.
Then make nation-wide limit at 20 units of imperialism per hour
Found the rational one!
Just have a 20 mph limit in the city, and no speed limit outside the city. This would also require moving all the highways outside the city, but I think that would be an improvement.
How's that going to work? The car limits its speed on the basis of an onboard computer connected to the internet that knows your exact location? Kind of think we should be moving away from that kind of thing instead, cars that spy on you are creepy.
~~You don't need the Internet, only gps.~~ You can also design a system that only connects to the gps and internet network if you want to go over 20mph. That way the gps only tracks you on the highways or between cities.
But in general, driving a car is not a good option if you don't want to be tracked, because you need to display an identifying number at all times. It's common for police to use automatic license plate readers, and who knows how that data is stored.
The acoustic bicycle has been for a long time, and probably will be forever, the preferred vehicle for trouble making revolutionary types
I have a bicycle and use it more than my car but I still need a car and I don't want my car to also be a computer. There is no way a feature explicitly restricting your behavior is going to be designed in a way that respects your privacy, most new cars already store all data and phone home unaccountably, and they're obviously going to want to remotely upgrade where/what speeds are allowed in real time. Yeah there's license plate trackers and those suck too but they aren't always present everywhere or recording fine grain data to the same extent.
Until the people controlling the software can be trusted or the software/hardware is made entirely transparent IMO computers in cars beyond abs/transmission is bad and should be resisted.
Thats a good point. I guess it would be a sacrifice to need to do an update every time the map changes. And probably cities will want to expand their slow zone and not want cars to speed. So an internet connection is probably necessary, at least to update the maps each time you turn on the car.
I don't see why this would be the case. Either way, you can think of this feature as a smart override to a dumb speed governor. Therefore, the software exists to expand your behavior.
That is a big ask. Particularly given the fact that the market inexplicably wants their cars to be a computer. It seems to be the case that people who want their privacy respected need to sacrifice some conveniences. So you probably will either have to struggle to maintain an old car, do a lot of modifications to a new car, or not drive a car at all, if you want your privacy respected in the near future, regardless of whether speed governors become mandated.
Given that this is c/FuckCars, i'd recommend not driving a car at all. Perhaps a DIY ebike is a good car replacement.
You acknowledge that an internet connection would be needed. There's no chance these companies willingly make their software open source and if they did it wouldn't help with the user adversarial goal of speed limiting so that's an extra reason not to. So you've got an unaccountable black box with free reign to connect to company servers from your car, how do you expect that to go?
Yes, great, I'd love to, please give me the public transportation infrastructure I would need to make that happen. In the meantime let's do the speed limiting low tech and outside of my car with bollards or whatever instead of making the experience of needing to drive even more hellish and dystopian.
Even if you try to simplify the system to "20 mph limit in the city, and no speed limit outside the city," you still need an internet connection to tell you where the city limits are. This is especially true since they can change due to annexations.
Your right. I edited the comment
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.
I'm dubious and don't care enough to take the time. whatever mr traffic engineer, I guess we just can't have nice communities because it's even worse to TRY.
do you have any idea how pathetic it sounds? like a cult of apathy, doing anything is GOING TO COST MONEY genius..... and even if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still better to try than throw your hands up in the air and accept dead pedestrians all the time.
you do you tho.
Stupid science. What does it know?
oh now they're scientists? even though they've referenced no facts, zero studies, but hey, let's just make shit up ffs
I can't decide which is more pitiful - him lying about being a traffic expert, or your blind assumption that he's RIGHT because he's lied about being a traffic expert.
goddamn, what a huge bucket of dumb.