I’m more of a “let’s make the road narrower, put more trees” kind of guy myself. If you want people to not go fast, then don’t make it look like an airport track. Urban area? Use rising crossings. And more trees. And narrower roads (by adding a cycling path).
Fuck cars, not people, or something like that.
Yeah, but the same drivers who complain about speed cameras would also flip out over eliminating car lanes.
Some people driving through a neighbourhood and they are five, 10 kilometres over, they are getting nailed. It’s not fair. So, I’m dead against this photo radar that they have.
Ford is upset that people are being caught and appropriately punished for breaking the law. Imagine if we had this attitude elsewhere, oh it was just fraud of 5-10% of their profits (okay bad example) or oh it was just 1 or 2 assaults.
He also complains that hes seen speed traps outside of school zones, as if school zones are the only reasonable place to enforce a legal speed limit. I swear car dependancy is slipping into the point of becoming a mental illness.
He’ll spout the same crap when he gets pulled over and he’s 10% above the legal limit for blood alcohol content.
10% over is a very conservative estimate there.
Enforcement is only one part of solving the problem. Changing the status quo takes time and effort, not slapping in some technology sold by a company.
Punitively enforcing speed limits with zero consideration for the factors that lead people to feel it’s acceptable to speed only serves to hurt the anti-car movement. The premiere’s comments demonstrate that point. What effort has been made to divert traffic away from schools? What traffic calming measures are in place? What has been done to separate pedestrians and cyclists from the road in a safe manner? What standards are established to ensure that speedometers in vehicles have sufficient accuracy to avoid a ticket?
Infuriating the drivers isn’t the answer.
I sure hope all the people that are against speed cameras are the same people that support traffic calming measures like raised mediums, planters and trees, narrower city streets and lanes, dedicated and protected bike lanes, raised pedestrian crossways and crosswalks, wide sidewalks and dedicated pedestrian only zones.
Too many roadways in north America lack proper classifications, we have suburban streets designed like throughway roads, we have roads acting like full on hwys, and don’t get me started on all the strodes everywhere!
Streets are desitnations. Streets are multi use and serve the local area. Shops and homes face streets, streets can have stop signs or signalized intersections. Streets have sidewalks and in some cases the full street is the “sidewalk”. Streets generally do not exceed two lanes of dedicated traffic. Speed limits range from 10-40kph
Roads are throughways, roads dont have signalized intersections, instead they opt for roundabouts or off ramps where needed. Homes or shops do not face roads and driveways do not connect to roads. Pedestrian sidewalks do not run along roads, instead trails or paths may be located adjacent to a road with dedicated seperate crossing such as bridges or tunnels. Roads generally do not exceed 3 lanes of dedicated traffic. Speeds limits range from 50-80kph
And hwys are for long distant travel. Which I believe most people are accustomed too already. Speed limits range from 80-110kph
How to redesign a strode into a actual street.
Example of a actual road.
Another example of a street vs a road.
Ah, another fan of notjustbikes, I see!
I am certain that the anti-camera crew aren’t in favour of proper classification system, but I try to spread the word.
I don’t like the first conversion example. There is nothing in the middle that you couldn’t put on the side.
Instead of turning the middle part into pedestrian zone, I’d rather they chop off the outer lanes and extend the sidewalks, so there is more space in front of the businesses and houses where people live. Also, putting the trees on the sides instead of in the middle gives shade and sound-dampening where it is most needed.
It also means you only have to cross one two-lane crossing instead of 2 one-lane ones. Two lanes is small enough for a crossing.
As an extra, it also benefits cars, since it’s much simpler having one 2-way street than two 1-way streets.
I have a ticket I’m awaiting a trial for. 79kph in a 60kph zone that is built exactly like the 80kph zone just before it. It’s basically a 4-lane highway, complete with a ~20ft grass median and it only has one speed limit sign over the course of about 3-5km.
The city switched the speed limit signs eight years ago, according to Streetview. In that time they have done not a single damn thing to actually indicate that the road needs slower traffic. Sure, they could tighten the road with low hedges in the green median and get rid of the huge “on ramp” merge lanes on all the intersecting streets, but what fun would that be? The city refuses to take safety seriously but expects me to? Really?
I had another ticket for ~45kph in what turned out to be a 30kph zone. The road in question is four-five cars wide and the picture is comical as it showed just my little car in a sea of asphalt.
I don’t mind slowing down, really I don’t, but it feels less like they care about safety and more about pretending to care with bullshit speed limit signs on roads built for MUCH faster traffic. I don’t hate the concept of speed cameras, but I detest the idea that they are somehow standalone solutions and that there are seriously people who preach safety while doing nothing meaningful. They’ll trash public transit, fight bike lanes, lose their shit over a pedestrian street, and cry like babies when they can’t easily park their SUVs downtown and then freak the hell out over cars goong the speed the road was designed to accommodate. Fucking insane.
While I agree we should also be putting in place effective structural interventions, this is a good example of how people are held to a completely different standard of behaviour once they get into a car. Speeding is illegal. Feel free to lobby for that to change, but right now it’s against the law. We wouldn’t suggest the enforcement of any other crime should be avoided in case it “infuriates” the perpetrators, and speeding should be the same. Motor crime is crime.
A lot of laws are enforced with a lot of leeway. It allows a judicial system to function. Inflexible enforcement has never worked to create societal change.
The article does address this some, but the cost of bringing just 1 road up to safer standards is more than operating a dozen cameras. We’ve been paving, zoning, and expanding unsafe roads for decades, its gonna take time to reverse that. One decent solution recommended is to use the revenue from the cameras to improve road safety, this is what my area does and I support the cameras.
the cost of bringing just 1 road up to safer standards is more than operating a dozen cameras
Absolutely. It also makes sense to wait for the 20 or 45 year mill and resurface or utility repair so that you aren’t tearing up a road for nothing*.
That said, you can also narrow a road with paint in 1-2 years by adjayting existing lines for zero new dollars.
Were also still building NEW roads with standards we know are unsafe. It costs 0 dollars on a new road.
*by nothing I mean finacial costs, not the human life and limb costs.
We need to readdress the planning and design landscape as a whole. Its very resistant to change because these have been the standards for years and planners arent brave enough to try something new, or they don’t get approval when they do want to challange the status quo. We have to start trying new solutions because the current standards arent only unsafe, they are unsustainable from both an economic and environmental point.
We don’t even need to do new; lots of the world has proven and new trials on safe streets ongoing.
Yea but those solutions won’t work here because north america is too big /s
this is happening in west coast, bay area . speed camera has caught people on an empty street(rarely visited by car as far as traffic goes), even going slightly above the speed limit.
I’m not sure what “rarely visited” street you mean, but San Francisco has placed its speed cameras on heavily traveled high-injury corridor streets. And as far as I know, there are no other cities in the Bay Area currently doing speed cameras.
