Comment by Dig1t
13 hours ago
That is infuriatingly slow, driving 25mph in my hometown kills me.
Probably would be fine if I was in a self driving car and could just play on my phone going that speed, but actually driving that slow would suck.
13 hours ago
That is infuriatingly slow, driving 25mph in my hometown kills me.
Probably would be fine if I was in a self driving car and could just play on my phone going that speed, but actually driving that slow would suck.
I agree, but if the streets are set up accordingly, it's about as fast as you'd normally want to drive anyway.
For the standard US road with 12-foot-wide lanes and generally straight-ahead routes, 20mph does feel very slow. I've driven on some roads though where narrower lanes, winding paths, and other "traffic calming" features contribute to a sense that 20mph is a reasonable speed.
Yes narrower lanes is "traffic calming" in itself. Residential roads and city streeets should have different lanes than highways.
Making drivers miserable is part of the intention, they want people to drive less because it's annoying as hell for everyone else.
The intention is to prevent accidents. Encountering 30kmh zones in strange places means there have been loads of them.
That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure.
Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys.
This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be taking my life in my hands on some of the roads.
Even where public transport and cycling infra is more than adequate, you still have to restrict cars.
Otherwise some people will choose driving to an extent that it screws up the public transport for everyone else.
At least that's the lesson from London's buses. Paris built a more extensive metro system (London's tube is equivalent in the areas where it operates, but less than half the city is within 15 minutes walk of a Tube stop) so that part is deconflicted at least.
But Paris is running into the same issue as they try to build out their cycle network. It can't be done without restricting cars, much to the annoyance of those who've built lifestyles around driving.
Which really isn't at all necessary in a city like London or Paris, but that doesn't mean people don't do it.
Streets with low speeds are themselves decent bike infrastructure.
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And those with that intention are authoritarians that need to be kept out of government.
Authoritarian has a definition, it's not just "people who make laws that keep me from doing what I want."
People in the USA still complain in the same way today about laws mandating seat belt usage, but it's still not authoritarian. It's a net positive for the wearer and everyone around them, and it's incredibly childish to push back on something for no other reason than because someone is telling you to do it.
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I don't claim to have the perfect definition for authoritarian behavior, but I would say that intending to consolidate authority is pretty key to it. Which making drivers' life miserable isn't really connected to, or at least I really don't see it.
Otherwise, the typical government is a central authority made up of people, carrying out lawmaking, adjudication, and enforcement activities [0], and so basically all of them could be characterized this way, with sufficient bad faith. So I'm not sure that's a very meaningful claim.
It definitely could be a misuse of power regardless though, but there's no evidence that I see in your comment that would suggest it was the officials in question misusing their powers rather than aligning with community sentiment or interests.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
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But Finland is a democracy. People clearly voted for it.
Clearly it’s opposite of killing
i think a large part of this that often goes unstated is the suburban sprawl that causes people to need to drive longer distances near pedestrians to begin with -- do you live in an area with wide streets, many single-family homes, and parking lots? when i've lived in city neighborhoods with dense housing i've only had to drive far/fast to leave, and when i've lived in the middle of nowhere i wasn't at risk of flattening pedestrians
Try checking the average speed (total distance / total time) on your next outing. You might be surprised.
Not as painful as getting run over, apparently.
Whatever happened to "look both ways before crossing"? Stupidity kills, and maybe Darwinism needs to do its job a bit more these days.
Looking both ways is undone if drivers are speeding, not bothering to stop at stop signs and being generally unpredictable and dangerous.
Blaming pedestrians for getting run over by speeders that are too impatient to drive at safe speeds in residential areas is a ludicrous opinion to take.
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It may feel like you aren’t going very fast, but at the end of the day you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would and when applied at scale this could potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives a year depending on how widely this is adopted. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands, but I don’t know the numbers well enough to make a claim that high, seems steep at first glance.
Surely we can agree the pros outweigh the cons here? I can wake up 5-10 minutes earlier for safer roads.
> you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would
That depends on the total journey distance.
No, it doesn't. Those low speed limits are only used for smaller residential streets. It only impacts the part of your journey from your home to the edge of your neighbourhood, and the same at your destination. Regardless of journey distance, the vast majority of your trip will be spend driving on roads intended for through traffic - which will of course still have a higher speed limit.
Percentage-wise it is only going to meaningfully impact your travel time if you stay within your own neighbourhood. At which point the only logical response can be: why are you even taking the car?
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If you have to go a meaningful distance you are going on highways, interstates, etc. where this is irrelevant. Anywhere super dense where this would matter likely has a more robust train/subway system than other parts of the country. The % that falls in between is likely very small.
If we were a real country, we would actively hunt down people who express this sentiment and seize their vehicles until after they satisfy a psychological exam.
And then if they fail the exam, appoint to the public office.
Thereby increasing the number of officials without access to cars? A diabolical plan!
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Sorry to say but if we can reduce traffic accidents by a significant margin this way, people being annoyed at having to drive slower is a fine price to pay.
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Something tells me you play on your phone while driving anyways