Comment by kspacewalk2

I have more of an issue with the idea that you can make a previously dangerously fast street/road safer by mere virtue of reducing the speed limit, but leaving it physically designed as before. You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint. I wish North American traffic engineers (and municipal politicians) were better educated on the idea that the only reliable way to slow down drivers is to force them to slow down by making it physically intensely uncomfortable to speed, and that sending drivers to body shops after fender-benders with traffic calming features is preferable to sending vulnerable street users to the morgue. Alas, both occupations are still stuck in an outdated car-centric view of urban transportation.

This competency shortfall is present in other transportation- and infrastructure-related fields. See for example how badly North American construction companies and government bureaucracies handle big transit projects. Third-world levels of mediocrity compared to the cost-effective, competent management in, say, Spain or Japan.