The perfect way to control speeding

I know I promised to continue the blogs vs. magazines bit I started yesterday, and I will. but first I wanted to share something cool.

There are a couple of these radar speed signs on Market Street between my home and my office, and I have to say, I find them very helpful. For one, it makes my commute more fun, as I try to see how high I can make the number go. Two, when I drive by one, it spares me from having to look down at my dashboard to see how fast I am going, saving wear and tear on the dashboard. It's handy, I guess, but I wish it told me something more useful, like whether it's time to change my oil.

Seriously, though, these radar signs are just one vector in the science of "traffic calming," which I believe is the British phrase for "making sure asshole drivers don't break the god damned sound barrier rocketing through residential areas." Important stuff, to be sure, which is why I'm amazed that, in this case, the task is left to the most ineffectual, passive-aggressive way of enforcing the speed limit there is.

THE PARABLE OF THE RADAR SPEED SIGN
Me: [drives past sign at 33 mph]
Sign: You know, the speed limit here is 30. But just so you know, you're going 33. I'm just saying, is all. You can do whatever you want, I'm not here to judge. But you were going 33. And the speed limit is 30.
Me: Whatever. [continues on at 33]

It was difficult for me to imagine that this approach to traffic calming would work, as most people know they're speeding and don't care, and the radar sign offers no disincentive. I tried Googling up some stats on their effectiveness, but no luck; all I found was a bunch of pages saying, "yeah, sure, they're effective"-- mostly from the sites of radar sign manufacturers. (That's as deep as I searched-- I'm a creative director, not a reporter, and all I know how to do is Google).

Check after the jump for techniques that work better...

Okay, then, since I wasn't convinced, I decided to check out the not-at-all-passive, purely aggressive alternative: the photo radar. Cousin to the much-loathed red-light camera, it certainly provides a disincentive: Once you get a ticket mailed to your home out of nowhere, you'll probably take pains to avoid speeding in that spot again. However, while some studies show photo radar is effective in reducing speeding-related accidents and some don't, the tickets they dispense are apparently easy to fight and don't pass Ben Frankiln's civil liberties smell test.

On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the totally passive speed bump (aka speed hump). I like this approach-- lay a thick glob of asphalt across the street and forget about it. No moving parts, no electricity needed, no murky debates on the Sixth Amendment. And speeders aren't punished with fines-- they're punished with expensive damage to their suspensions. The perfect solution! Surely traffic is calmed and life is good with a few of the beasts sunning themselves on your street.

Oh, wait:

The Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal studied the impact that humps had on emergency vehicles in Portland, Ore....

...The Journal article, published in August 1997, concluded that each hump delays traffic up to 9.2 seconds. Along the nine humps on Lake Price Drive in Orange County, that could mean a delay of up to 82.8 seconds -- almost a minute and a half, each way. If paramedics deem it unsafe to ferry a patient across the humps for whatever reason, there really is no alternate route they can take without going several minutes out of their way...

...He continued: "I can say that the route taken to the hospital, although possibly longer, was determined specifically to avoid traveling back over those nine speed bumps. In summary, I can conclude that these speed bumps, although not completely hindering us from providing our service, do affect our response times and travel considerations when servicing this area."

Okay, so it turns out speed bumps are killing people because they delay ambulances and fire trucks. Sure, the traffic will be calm in your neighborhood-- calmly driving past the gutted, flaming shell of your house.

So what would be the perfect traffic-calming device? It would:

1. Provide real incentive for for speeders to slow (unlike the radar speed sign)
2. Have no effect on law-abiding drivers or emergency vehicles (unlike the speed bump)
3. Not involve the legal system and all its complexities (unlike the photo radar)

Well, a UK company called Dunlop Transcalm has come up with a clever solution. Its speed bump (also called the Dunlop Transcalm) is made of inflated rubber. If you run over it at a normal pace, it deflates through a valve, and you pass right over it with nary a jolt. If you Sammy Hagar over it, the air can't escape, and suddenly you have a head-shaped dent in your car's roof. As a bonus, the weight of vehicles like ambulances, fire trucks, and buses causes the Transcalm to deflate at any speed, so they're unaffected.

Now that's brilliant design. With nothing more techy than rubber, air, and some kind of valve, these guys have hit the traffic-calming sweet spot. And since we in San Francisco have been adopting such icons of British traffic as the roundabout and the London Taxi, I imagine I'll be bouncing over Transcalms on Market Street in no time. As if I'm not already late to work all the time as it is.

Comments

[Allister]

When I lived in Chicago, they would place dummy cop cars (dummy included) on the side of the highway. That was effective for me. Just seeing the cop car sitting there put the fear in me and I slowed down to a reasonable speed. Of course, the manned cop cars were just as frequent so that was an important fact that kept me in line.

[Tworzenie Stron]

Excellent article. Interesting subject.