EDIT: since apparently a bunch of people woke up with the wrong foot this morning or forgot to check the group they’re in:
This is a joke. Do not steal or vandalize speed enforcement cameras (or anything else for that matter). That’s against the law and you will likely get arrested.
If you’re addicted to crack or any other drugs, please seek professional help.
Essentially, yes.
Besides, speed cameras, especially in NA, enforce by punishment. Punishment that some people are unable to afford, because for some reason they coddle billionaires while letting a fifth of their citizens rot in the gutter.
Meanwhile, a traffic calmed school zone enforces proactively. Are you sure you’d like to risk scratching your brand new $50k truck’s pristine paintjob? A properly traffic calmed street will force drivers to face that question, and in many cases, they’ll answer the question with “no”, and slow down. Mission accomplished.
Punishment that your don’t need to pay if your just respect the legal speed. We’re not talking about someone stealing food because they can’t afford to eat, we’re talking about someone driving a car and being unable to get their foot off the gas pedal for a bit. Your reaction to that is “People shouldn’t take their responsibility to respect the law, it’s the state that should spend money to make it so they don’t want to drive like morons!” while ignoring the fact that speed cameras are proven to be effective at keeping people under the sites limit and cost way less than just rebuilding roads. Add to that the fact that your solution means years or even decades of people driving too fast for safety while roads are getting rebuilt based on their speed limit and there’s nothing to enforce the speed limit in the meantime because “speed cameras aren’t the solution”.
If you’re unable to slow down just because the road is wide enough that you feel safe driving fast then you’ve got no business owning a car.
Counterpoint:
How often do you think most people watch their speed gauges?
You and I might do so regularly, but you sure as hell cannot say that for sure about every other person on the road.
Furthermore, how obvious is the speed limit?
I can tell you with certainty that, outside of a few, mostly European, places, this may be unclear. North American traffic engineers happily design roads with speed limits anywhere between 40 and 80 km/h, with no changes to the cross-sectional geometry of the (st-) road.
Systemic speeding because of misguided road design is more common than you’d like to admit. And a few cameras probably only do so much to fix that.
The speed limit needs to be indicated in order to be valid so that’s a completely ridiculous point you’re trying to make.
If people don’t pay attention to their driving they need to be penalized for it because no matter the road design, they’ll commit infractions and no matter the road design, speed limits need to be enforced otherwise they become suggestions.
See another of my comments with sources proving that speed cameras do reduce speeding by a wide margin, proving that drivers pay enough attention to their speed that when they fear they might be penalized for speeding, they slow down.
And putting up signs and cameras literally only does so much to convince people to slow down on wide, straight roads. How likely is the average driver in your area to speed? I can assure you, half of the road users are worse than that.
If we’re going to start pointing to other discussions, make it as easy to find your point as you can. Case in point, what I’m talking about.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Case in point, what I’m talking about.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“How likely is it that drivers are speeding?”
Much more likely if there’s nothing to punish them for doing so.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/7705481
Not Just Bikes isn’t the fucking second coming off Christ, you need to push your reflection a bit farther than his message.
You never replied to the “Ok, but what about between now and when all the roads have been redesigned?” part, weird right? That’s decades and trillions of dollars you’re saying we should spend to reach a solution, so, what happens in the meantime?
What’s your REALISTIC solution that works NOW and can be QUICKLY applied EVERYWHERE?
And “realistic solutioins that work now and can be quickly applied everywhere” are far too easily quick fixes. And nothing is as permanent as a quick fix.
Besides, at least one of your sources is a Canadian car journalist, someone who’s probably personally invested in sucking GM’s metaphorical dick.
And let’s also face it, Canada, a country where a city of half a million people was “too small for a rapid transit network,” while cities a third its size have about as much, if not more, absolute track mileage and ridership on their tram network than Toronto.
Who’s the biased one here, mister pot, accusing the kettle he’s black?
You still don’t present any solutions and you dismiss sources based on your personal bias against car journalists and a country without presenting any actual evidences that’s they’re wrong (because you won’t find any).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090447923000436
Again. We live in the here and now, what’s your solution to speeding drivers that can be applied to save lives NOW while roads are getting redesigned?
Two words: Jersey barriers.
You can at least create the chicanes by putting up concrete barriers. Just as simple as a moveable speed trap, achieves much of the traffic calming effect, no extra police resources needed.
EDIT: In fact, now I think about it, using planters will have most of the same effect, while looking prettier.