The Wrong Way to Set Speed Limits [ST06]
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- Опубликовано: 13 май 2024
- Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bik...
Speed limits are important to keep our roads and streets safe but how are they decided? And what happens when a speed limit is set too high or too low? There are right and wrong ways to set our speed limits, and design our streets, but unfortunately North American traffic planners are firmly stuck in the 20th century when it comes to building safe streets.
To learn more about what's wrong with North American traffic engineering, check out the new book by Strong Towns founder Charles Marhon, "Confessions of a Recoving Engineer":
www.confessions.engineer/
Watch the rest of my Strong Towns series here: • Strong Towns
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References & Additional Reading
Understanding the 85th Percentile Speed
Strong Towns
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
ACCIDENTS ON MAIN RURAL HIGHWAYS RELATED TO SPEED, DRIVER, and VEHICLE
www.ohiomemory.org/digital/co...
Road safety - Speed
World Health Organization [WHO]
www.who.int/violence_injury_p...
DRIVING SPEEDS AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY
trid.trb.org/view/365827
Literature review of pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed
transportsafety.ir/wp-content/...
Paris passe à 30 km/h lundi : les habitants de la capitale plutôt favorables
www.leparisien.fr/societe/les...
Gezicht in de Carnegiedreef te Utrecht. [1969]
hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldma...
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:07 Introduction to the 85th Percentile Speed
1:24 Streets vs. Roads
2:10 Where the 85th Percentile might make sense (roads)
2:38 Where the 85th Percentile doesn't make sense (streets)
3:44 Momentum kills
4:40 Signs are not enough (driving is subconscious)
5:49 Bad speed limits (city streets)
6:39 Bad speed limits (rural streets)
7:32 Confessions of a Recovering Engineer
7:52 How to make drivers slow down
8:18 Good slow street design
9:05 Safe speeds by design
9:35 OK Boomer
9:55 Conclusion
10:36 Patreon Shout-out
10:48 Outro
![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n94-_yE4IeU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](/img/tr.png)
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ORzNZUeUHAM/mqdefault.jpg)
In southern Italy they have a fantastic and economic way of slowing cars down: they just don’t maintain the streets at all and let potholes grow everywhere. So drivers are in constant fear of damaging even their SUVs. Works perfectly.
Belgium also employs this method. The moment you cross the border from the Netherlands into Belgium you notice it right away.
Here in the US we take it as a challenge driving 70 mph down a 55 swerving to avoid potholes.
It is what people do everywhere. Especially in the great lake US because of the heavy snow that damages the roads.
@@KoeiNL To be fair though. The moment you cross from liege to maastricht over the A2, the following happens: alright highway road on the belgium sinde of the border, small sign on the left that tells you you have crossed the border and are now in the netherlands, 1000m of pothole road, big sign on the left that welcomes you to the netherlands and says what the local speed limits are, immidately followed by perfect and silent ZOAB. Pay good attention and you will notice that this ZOAB is gone within 10 minutes of you entering the country. It is only there to 'welcome' you in. I am absolutely sure that this is done on purpose by the Dutch only to maintain the immage of 'look we have perfect silent asphalt here and the highways in belgium suck'. Which might be true, but the worst patch of road is that 1,5 km on the dutch side of the border.
America : the sequel
Being a European and having played American Truck Simulator, I kept getting confused by the constant speed limit change, despite literally nothing else changing with the road. It feels so incredibly arbitrary.
it doesn't FEEL arbitrary. it IS arbitrary, they for the most part change because "someone said so I guess that's how it is". I know near my house there is a very long road (arguably maybe edging onto stroad territory as they build more along it) that is around 55mph, it will however randomly change to 40/45 (i forget which) for about 1/2 a mile. then go back to 55mph and eventually up to 65 as it fades of into nothingness a few miles further (it goes for a while but it doesn't really go to anything significant except the next highway exit). Along the entire stretch of road there isn't really much of a difference in terms of what is around to warrant the speed changes. arguably the section which is 65mph is the most dangerous as it is where a majority of the neighborhoods will merge into that street which is more-or-less the only direct route out of the small town. frankly its really concerning to see the road/stroad be so dangerous for literally no reason.
Civil Engineer here. The “sending your lowest paid intern out with a clipboard” part is hilarious and 100% what happens every time our traffic department needs to do a traffic study
Hes claiming the build a road then let people drive on it with no speed limits to find out the speed limit! HOW DEMENTED AND DELUSIONAL IS HE! They decide the speed limit beofre its opened to traffic you derp!🤦♂🤣
@@danquaylesitsspeltpotatoe8307 So if they opened it before setting a speed limit, will all hell break loose?
@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx Over here there will always be some 20, or so, year old in a Volvo going 200km/h down an avenue in the center of a town
I did this as a low paid summer intern for a department of transportation looking to examine how a change in speed limit would affect school zones. The police were called because of a strange man in a car outside a school with a black box in his dash.....
@@Eagle-rv3iy Maybe the DOT should start marking their vehicles lol
We had a highway/traffic engineering professor at UMaine who taught this exact approach. This was back in the 90s. And, probably to the surprise of nobody, he was from Sweden.
Dr. Per Gårder! He's still there and he taught me Transportation Engineering in 2009; learned some fantastic lessons from him and, yes, he was very critical of US roads and a big proponent of roadways using roundabouts and other systems that improve roadway functionality. Brilliant teacher.
Had no idea traffic designers would choose the speed limit based on the average speed of observed drivers on that piece of road.
that is absolutely insane to me.
It's the scientific method! Speed limits are discovered, not created 😂
Yup, that's just batshit insane stupidity for anything even slightest complexity.
People like to speed and make stupid decisions all the time.
One of the cities I lived in had a great example of it - we called it's Masters Turn. It's on 30,000 car/day crossing of major highways forming ring around the city. It's a two lane road with sharp bend and very little visibility (due to noise/crash barriers and bend radius) and thus 50 km/h speed limit.
You would think people would be smart to notice that their visibility drops to 5 -10 meters and they should actually drive the speed limit (or less).
You would be wrong - this intersection had multiple crashes per day (especially during autumn/winter) which ended up gridlocking entire city and generating hour long traffic jams.
Two years ago a speed camera was installed there - and the same week, number of crashes dropped from 1-2 per day to 1-2 per quarter. This intersection even had it's own Facebook page (with new crash video posted pretty every day, after the speed camera went live - the fanpage died due to inactivity:(
It makes sense on a rural or open road, it doesn't in the city,.
In one sense, that's actually an implicit agreement with the point of this video--the speed that drivers will go at is mostly an inherent property of the road design, so they're setting the posted speed limit based on the "natural" speed limit. All they need to do is close the loop: altering the posted speed limit should require drivers to already actually be going slower in the first place, due to changes in the road design, like what he explains in the video.
@@qidydl true, true.
I am a civil engineer in the United States, and while I agree that there are MANY issues with roadway engineering, I have to disagree that engineers are stubborn and stuck in our ways. Nearly every engineer I've talked to and worked with would love more progressive infrastructure. That includes engineers who have been working for 30+ years all the way to new grads. We are tested and KNOW that making a road tighter and more uncomfortable will lower the average speed of the road. The main issue is that we, as the engineers, aren't the ones directly paying for the road. Whatever municipality the project is in is footing the bill. We can suggest all day that creating a road with 11 foot lanes, divided bike lanes, and medians will improve roadway safety, but if the owner sees that as negatively impacting the service level of the road (which it doesn't) then they are MUCH less likely to go for it. In the end, as with most other things, money dictates the decision.
That is why those things should be done on a federal level.
Municipalities design and build streeds and roads. But what kind of roads can be used where and how they need to be designed is the same everywhere.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
Roads across the US are actually very very consistently designed.
However, some minor details or choices in road features might differ. I've seen a massive expansion of roundabouts that never used to be a feature in US roads just within the past 10 years.
But road signs are all the same across the US. The color used to draw lines and other symbols on the pavement are all the same across the US....
What the original comment is talking about is a lot of minor details like the lanes are a little more narrow.
For example, some car parks might feel different because one lot might be angled parking spots while other lots are straight. Or some lots might have more narrow parking spaces than others. My understanding of your reply in context of this car parks example is like someone saying, "all these car parks are so different from each other! This is why we need federal regulations over car parks so there is consistency in car parks!" But there really aren't enough differences to warrant those claims. And the same really is to be said for all the roads in the US
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 the federal government are even worse idk how adding more bureaucracy to an already bloated system would be better as it takes millions of dollars and years to replace small parts of road
@@zk0rned things are done pretty well and very efficient here by our government. Economies of scale and all that, plus it centralises things so nobody has to invent the wheel again which makes things a lot easier and cheaper so everything is kept up to date constantly.
Never hear anybody complaining about it really, so it must work pretty good.
I'd also like to add that changing a sign is WAY cheaper than redesigning the whole road, and US municipalities in particular usually have a very tight budget, unfortunately. So the safest decision often gets ruled out in favor of the cheap one.
5:24 "most people don't consciously think about what speed they're going"
Then there's me who checks my speedometer every five seconds because I'm paranoid about being pulled over for no reason
Same, I freakout if I see red and blue lights in the mirrors
@@jellyfishes800 Yeah. I've had that experience before.
Lmao, I also check the speedo frequently, but I still drive over the limit by like 5 or 10 km/h
I dream of a world where cops dont just pull over drivers for no reason. If theres no clear and present danger, theres no need for immediate intervention or fines.
And Stroads that change speeds constantly. You miss a sign because you're trying not to rear end someone or hit a biker. These are a problem with constant speed changes. And then I have to get my truck around the guy who just got pulled over by a cop, in stroad traffic.
I have to admit, I had zero interest in any of these topics until I came across your channel. Now I'm buying books and looking in to how I can help affect change. This is honestly the best series and channel that I have had the pleasure of viewing. You make the subject come to life and have relevance to your viewers. Keep up the excellent work.
Very true, up until now I paid no mind to city design but nowadays I am in awe when I see thoroughly designed street in my city, it is really eye-opening and goes to show the importance of good civil engineers
Same, every since I've discovered this channel I've started to see my city more as a, "wow we need change asap"
In France and other places in Europe, when you come from a country road with 80 km/h limit to a village with 50 or 30 km/h limit, they often have various kinds of bends, chicanes, dividers and poles forcing you to slow down. Very effective
Roundabouts.
@@Jacksparrow4986 Roundabouts with different diameters.
Or traffic lights in eastern europe and most of eastern Hungary
Which is, IMHO totally stupid idea. They should either build bypass with total ban on any sort of new development connected to it (I know about town where they got bypass in late 90's, ad build new development on it, had put some roundabouts there as well, and now are complaining about traffic jams.), or it is not that important road and then there is virtually no reason, I would say, for such dangerous thing. The first that should be done is upgrade of road network in such manner that it will fit 21st century standards. Even with all hype for mass transit, for cargo trains, there still will be demand for road traffic (unless it is banned and then we have much greater problem to solve) and in my opinion it is wrong to pretend that people in cars are in error when plenty of roads are about one car wide.
@@alphastratus6623 a roundabout with a different diameter around the same intersection
I'm quite amazed by the design of the signs themselves. If I were the driver in Canada, I would surely miss some 90% of the speed limits. They don't pop out and are put in corners. In contrast, every country in Europe uses a prohibitory round-shaped sign with a red outline to indicate a speed limit. They, for most of the time, stick out and are placed in easily accessible places.
Maybe this is another thing that the US and Canada need to look in to.
Yeah, I found it really annoying to drive in Canada this summer, after being in the Netherlands for a while. I was glad that the car I was borrowing had a heads up display that showed the speed limited (based on map data) so that I didn't need to look for signs. It's ridiculous.
Yeah. Every bit of advertisement is more flashy than the traffic signs, easily outshining them.
As someone who has lived in Canada all my life, I can concur many signs get covered by overgrown trees and bushes, and the white signs are hard to see at night against the snow in the winter sometimes. The only saving grace us that a speed transition to a lower speed always has coming change and a change begins sign so there are 2 chances to see them and slow down.
@@BlueScreenCorp In Finland and the other Nordics, the signs are like everywhere else in Europe, except that instead of a white background, they use yellow. This is specifically to make it stand out in a snowy environment. I cannot imagine how unreadable small black and white signs must get in Canada.
@@fdagpigj how do you deal with road works than? In Slovenia (and neighbouring countries as far as I know) we use yellow background specifically for temporary signs (most often road works).
But yes, I can totally understand your problem with white background and snow.
We had a road in my city that we thought had a short section with a speed limit set artificially low. We found that a speed limit study had been done and that the limit, by the 85th percentile rule, should be that same as the rest of the road. We asked the city raise the limit at a city council meeting and they refused. We then found that the city had been raising a significant amount of money through civil fines for speeding on that one section of road. We sued the city and won. We forced them to raise the limit to the same limit as the rest of the road.
Wonderful!
Profiting that way is just evil
good job
The town of canmore, AB in Canada derives more than half of it's income from speed fines handed out by camera's. I did some work there and was complaining to the crew about the impossible intersections there. There were extremely wide roads with multiple lanes, and a large, wide median strip, but the speed limits were extremely low (30 and 40 km/h, or 18-25 mph). I never speed in AB at all, because their traffic courts are ridiculous, the fines are ludicrous, and the police are complete dicks. So I would be approaching the intersections at exactly the limit, and as i crossed into it, the light would turn yellow for an unusually short period of time, before turning red while i was still less than half way across. Every intersection has camera's, and so I figured i was getting three to five red light violations every day on my way to work.
I was told that most people step on the gas to try and get through the intersection and get dinged with a speeding ticket, or as many as 5 tickets depending on which intersections they went through. There was just no way to clear the intersection without speeding when the light turned yellow if you weren't already halfway through it.
@@hosmerhomeboy just get everyone together and sue them to the ground
Y'all need to ask your state legislatures to enact anti-speedtrap laws like we have here in GA. If it's not Georgia State Patrol they can't pull you over until they clock you going exactly 10MPH or more over the speed limit. Have had a few tickets thrown out in court because of it and a few pissed off DeKalb and Gwinnett county cops.
I suspect that one of the big reasons why there is no incentive to change these bad streets/roads/stroads is that many municipalities rely on the revenue collected from speeding tickets.
It costs more for the police to be out to enforce.
@@Saucy-ws6jc That's a different color of money though. In America, spending money on cops is politically attractive
@@junahn1907 Obviously if a government gets money from a fine, they spent more to have a unit out there so obviously it cost more than made.
I drive all over the USA and this video shows a common problem, but it isn't everywhere. I do wonder about what you mentioned as some of those roads change speed limits so often, in busy locations (where you are likely to miss their constant change of speed) it does seem intentional. I see road speed limit signs like 45 mph with a 25 mph zone almost immediately behind it. That seems intentional. Once again, depends on where you are, but seems shady.
@@Saucy-ws6jc If you collect a single fine, sure, that will cost more to enforce than what you make, but if you get, say, 10 fines per day, that more than pays for the cost of the agent and patrol car out there. The average cost of a speeding ticket in the US is $150, 10 tickets that's $1500, with the average daily wage of a police officer hovering around $150 thats a nifty money source
The amount of common sense dismissed due to perceived sunken costs and bad habits of old school traffic design is unbelievable. Your entire channel is telling people very basic realities and solutions and yet I get a fresh perspective on something every time. Love it.
"Well a few decades ago, we created roads with poor design so obviously the only thing we can do now is to keep them as-is until the end of time!" -americans probably
The sunken cost fallacy is a really bad argument here. Cities and governments can do what the Netherlands have started doing ~40-50 years ago, and that is upgrading the roads to the new standard whenever you need to redo the roads. We keep a very updated infrastructure here because, since safety standards are constantly updated here, and most roads need work every 10-20 years most everything is updated and what isn’t is not far behind.
@@guy-sl3kr I think people just don't know any better, I certainly did not before discovering this channel
@@guy-sl3kr-Americans definitely
@@randomizednamme Better yet, people will make it a culture thing. Americans often proudly describes themselvs as carperson. It's ingrained into their identity just as their political standing.
Officer: Sir do you know how fast you were going?
Me: Lemme tell you 'bout a little thing about the Psychology of Road Design
Officer, an hour later after listening and not getting a word in edgewise: ok drive safe, I'm giving you a verbal warning
Something similar happened to me believe it or not. I was on my way to visit a customer in Madison Indiana. I turned down a big street from 65 and the speed limit dropped to 45. I ended up going 70 not realizing it. 2 regular cops and a k-9 cop later... I told the officer that driving the speed I was going felt right. He knew I wasn't local and he asked if I frequent Madison. I said no. The officers agreed to let me off with a verbal warning after the drug dog gave the OK that all my UPS packages full of electronics and computer gear weren't drugs.
In Australia, we tried a rule that you must slow down to 40km/h (24mph) if there are any emergency vehicles with flashing lights on the side of the road - for example, a police car giving someone a speeding ticket. The rule even applied on 110km/h highways (86mph). There was extreme pushback but the government trialed the rule anyway. The 1-year trial was ended early due to the sharp increase in rear-end collisions and videos of semi-trailers slamming their breaks to match the changed speed. In some cases you had one policeman writing someone a ticket and another in the same car with a speed gun out to catch those who didn't slow to 40km/h in time. It was a fucking mess.
And this is how we get infamous "speed traps". When the police in the town lower the speed limit to half the design speed of a road to meet their traffic fine quotas.
There is a 4 lane road in my hometown that changes from 55mph to 30mph for no descernable reason. I and my coworkers used to avoid it completely because its so hard to focus on maintaining a crawl on a wide road and the fine wasn't worth it.
"This approach seems reasonable, until you think about it at all."
This is amazing and widely applicable.
North American urban planning in a nutshell
@@Jobother its not only na trust me
True
IMHO for ROADS engineered CORECTLY it IS THE right way but the KEY being ENGINEERED
The best road sign I ever saw was at the edge of a small town in Missouri. It didn't say speed limit 35. It said the lights are timed for 35. I immediately slowed to 35 at the edge of town, stopped at one red light in the center of town and drove through about 10 other traffic lights all of them green.
That was an approach here in Germany as well. Worked to some degree.
But one small town I know of enhanced that idea. They had street based speed controls, not for a speed trap, but for several street lights with associated pedestrian lights.
Any time someone went over the speed limit for that area, they simply turned the next street light red, and the pedestrian lights green.
They even announced that fact at the entrance to the town. Since then that street has become much calmer as people have learned that it won't do them any good speeding as they will then be slowed to a complete stop at the next street light and have to wait an extraordinary long time for it to turn green again.
To ensure people didn't run those red lights they set up a Blitzer / a kind-of-speed-trap with a camera attached. But not for exceeding speeds, but for taking the picture of anyone running the red light, including their license plates.
As running a red light is punished a lot more rigorously than a small speeding ticket, most people inherently obey a red street light avidly.
@@RustyDust101 I had that idea one day in the car, just riffing on the phrase “red light cameras”. Normally cameras which photograph red-light runners, why not take some immediate action to slow things down? What town actually implemented it?
@@RustyDust101 that's hilarious
We have that here on the ring road in Eindhoven. A sign says how fast you should drive (50-55-60-65-70) to get all traffic lights green. It's very nice and fast! We had this already in the 1980's but the technology has improved a lot over the years
@@RustyDust101 That's fantastic! Good way to frustrate people who speed out of habit.
Also a good way to trigger red lights for more traffic light gran prix action (on roads with appropriately low witnesses and potential victims), not that I know anything about that of course...
Maybe the mismatch in speed design is intentional: the speed trap. Make your road subconsciously have drivers go fast, and place a single random sign informing them that the speed limit is much lower. Then the locale profits off of speeding ticket revenues. That's what's really going on.
when I was young in Victoria there is a stretch of "road" fully divided 2 lanes a direction HUGE shoulders great sightlines and BETTER then the hiway you exited to get on the road and the speed limit is 50 KPH and zero exits / intersections at all
When i was growing up i had to cross a low-speed, two-lane street on my way to school. It was quite a long and straight stretch of road so people often drove way past the speed limit there. At some point the crossing was re-built so it was only wide enough for one car to pass through. At the time I thought this was stupid, as I could not understand why the change was made. I now see it as a simple and clever solution to a problem, a solution which works on multiple levels. It forces drivers to slow down and to be more aware of their surroundings, it makes the street narrower where the pedestrians cross which in turn means less road for them to cover, and it makes the pedestrians more visible to the drivers as they are no longer only in the peripheral of their vision. A very simple, cheap and effective way to make it safer for children to go to school.
A better way would be to build a raised walk-over and ban pedestrians crossing at ground level.
@@dandiehm8414 No, that's too expensive. To Support wheelchairs you have to have elevators and soon you are at $1million per crossing. We are lucky if this is done for railroad crossings.
What's REALLY clever about the trees at 8:58 is that the firs four are spaced out and then they get closer together. This makes the driver feel like they are going faster than they are, and encourages them to slow down.
Wow, that _is_ clever!
I really wonder why does it even work? There is a road (more like a section of a road) that I know of in my country that has trees on sides. Speed limit is 90km/h. And guess what? Almost no one goes slower than 90-100km/h. Of course there are those who go 70 km/h for some reason and it creates dangerous overtaking situations.
Yeah... i thought exactly the opposite: look, a bunch of trees just to divide traffic from the bike lane. No incoming intersections, no bikes, no pedestrians.. I would speed up like crazy on that area.
@@olafs_valinieks dude most people on the road are air heads. Driving on autopilot. Of course it works.
@@mikemx55 it's not "oh trees" it's the fact that you're already driving past trees and *then* they get closer together. This makes you think that you are going faster than you are. It's a commonly used design trick and trees aren't the only thing - fence posts, blinders between lanes, anything vertical can be used. In Britain you sometimes get yellow rumble lines painted *across* the road on the approach to roundabouts at increasingly small intervals, which gives drivers visual, tactile and audible signals
"This method seems reasonable. Until you think about it. At all".
I've been having this realization about a lot of things lately, it seems.. :-)
lol, i kind of feel like the host is somewhat dramatic. "everything the world is build on is totally wrong", i mean it can be better but what we have today had to beat dirt roads with no street markings and we have dominated that.
No one ever looks for the unintended consequences.
Communism in a nutshell.
This sums up basically the entirety of US and Canada transportation infrastructure.
@@SergeantExtreme Wait, you're trying to make the point that the way the US makes their infrastructure is dictated by communism?
The 'before/after' image comparison at 10:04 ,is an incredible example on how to completely transform a neighbourhood's quality of life, just by redesigning the road access.
What I see often in Germany (where I live) are trees or flowerbeds blocking a part of the street to slow cars down. It also works pretty well and you can't decide to just drive over it. But I also think that speed signs like those in the video are designed poorely, because they are pretty difficult to see. If you have a fat red circle with a number in the middle like in Europe it would also be easier to notice them without actively looking.
If you're on a 65 mph highway and you actually go 65 mph, you will annoy something like 90% of the drivers there.
Guilty 😂
@UpNorth buses and trucks are the exceptions, we know you have rules and regulations hehe
That's another problem:
Bad driver's education and (probably) too few traffic controls with too little fines
You bet you will. I drive 60 on a 55 mph highway in New York and if I don't want to be tailgated I drive in the right lane. On the other hand sometimes I stick to the middle and the impatient driver can go pleasure him or herself.
Wait, 65? I thought that said 85.
The "design speed" of the road is such a good point you bring up. We have a road that enters into our neighborhood. The lanes are wide, it's completely straight and there isn't an intersection or anything until 3/4 a mile down. The speed limit is 30mph and it feels agonizing to drive down that road every time.
In my city, they don't want you to slow down. They want to speed so they can catch you speeding 🤠
@@sungleong oh hello, fellow german
@@sungleong Definitely a thing here too. Many small towns will make a significant chunk of their budget off speeding fines. The ones that are really evil about it will take a section of road that doesn't even need to be slower (say, part of a highway that passes through the edge of their city limits) and post a lower speed on that stretch, and just write tickets all day.
It's 1.2 km for anyone wondering
I don't like the idea of putting trees right by the edge of the street to make it look more confined, just because there are some driveways around. What's the point, give you the paranoid impression a kid might randomly pop out from behind a tree at any time? Yeah? Okay, now what if a kid actually does that?
Their point is to make people drive slower to increase safety by making the street less safe to drive on faster, again, tautologically, *_by actually making it less safe to drive faster on._* Some of the points are great, but that one bugs me. Also, they're constantly contrasting Canadian / American drivers to those in dense old European towns. He literally calls the force-you-to-slow-down designs "civilized" to point out our uncivilized arrangements, and sure there are things to learn, but all I can think of is the simple fact that things are so much more spread out, Americans I'd guess drive on average *_five times as far_* as Europeans every year. (That's my guess, am I far off?) Designing *_for_* faster travel while differentiating pedestrian and bicycle traffic seems to make vastly more sense than intentionally slowing everyone. Although, I should say once more, they are definitely correct in the distinction of streets: of course there are clearly places that *should* force slow traffic.
Another important consideration is highways where there are actually more collisions because the speeds are too low or suddenly drastically reduce for no apparent reason. Or there isn’t enough space set aside for longer exit ramps.
The sudden change in speed for no obvious reason is usually to prevent the congestion that causes accidents. Slowing approaching traffic allows the traffic ahead to get out of the way so that there's never too many cars close together. This is done with variable speed limits too, as a method to solve traffic jams. Sadly it doesn't work because people just drive the regular speed limit. Extended exit ramps have the same issue, with the more selfish drivers using this as an overtaking lane.
@@IOUaUsername interesting. I think more highways should take the German approach to keep cars far apart with higher, not lower speeds. Several studies have also pointed out that drivers are often less attentive at lower speeds rather than at higher speeds.
@@thejpkotor I am convinced it comes down to much deeper cultural forces than any amount of design. I used to live in Nairobi, Kenya where all cars have speed limiters and traffic moves at an absolute crawl most of the time. In some of the roundabouts it was regular practice to physically rub your car against others. And the per capita deaths in traffic were still much higher than the USA for example.
@@tobyvision doing a proper exam before someone gets their drivers licence handed might be helpful?
@@Sool101 absolutely. And this is certainly a problem in the USA. Our driver training is mostly a joke.
In Paradise California, there is a stroad that happened to be one of the only evacuation routes from the town. In an attempt to slow down traffic, they changed the road to be four lanes total to two lanes total. This became a major bottleneck that kept many from evacuating from the town in time while it was burning down. This needs to be kept in mind for these types of situations, too.
"narrow complex and twisty, most people will drive slowly"
*eurobeat intensifies*
Keep an eye out for a trueno delivering tofu.
Sounds like you live near the Dragon’s Tail.
@@STho205 I love the roads in this area! I’ve only been on the dragon twice, too many bad riders. I ride to have fun not to be dangerous. The beauty of the area can only be seen at a leisurely pace.
This comment paints such a vivid picture, I love it
the Midwest truck culture need I say more. to be honest if you make it clear a truck shouldn't go somewhere a way will be found.
On a Dutch driver's test you can actually get questions on the speed limit of a road/street without any road signs in the picture. You're ought to be able to recognize these types of roads consciously as well.
They also told me that in USA a unmarked residential street is 25 for example.
Dutch CAPTCHA must be really confusing
@@flitter5400 Eh, that really depends on the state or municipality. I'd guess the default of such a street to be 30 MPH. There has been a movement by some cities, in the past few years, to lower that to 25 or even 20 MPH (Boston and somesuburbs, Seattle; also Montreal in Canada, making 30 KPH the default and 40 KPH on the busier arterials.)
I find it telling that US residential speed of 30 MPH / 50 KPH is the speed Japan will use on busy multi-lane streets. Montreal's arterial speed of 25 MPH / 40 KPH is a school zone speed in the US...
@@Kryptnyt I mean, CAPTCHA usually asks for street signs, so if there are none, you can just not select anything :P
@@unicodefox Or you have to select everything
I've been thinking about this for a long time now and I'm glad you made an actual mini-documentary for it. What's worse is that they legit make these roads/streets feel safe to go fast but the speed limit is suddenly so low that you just get pulled over because you subconsciously drive fast. There needs to be a huge overhaul of roads and streets design.
I’m furious to learn how speed limits are set here.
Well it’s not true whatsoever so there’s that.
@@mackray7595 exactly this is just stupid euro nanny state propaganda
Where I live they are straight from arse, so it's not better, and are almost never adjusted. I hate to see 30 just because 2 yrs ago there was construction zone.
@@michawolinski314 well clearly you live in Europe because nobody in North America says "arse"
better than it is in Germany.
in Germany speed limits are set like this:
to start off: flat in town speed limit is 50km/h
when an accident happens, it's dropped down to 30km/h
if another accident happens, drop it down to walking speed.
so now we have roads that are chucked full of pointless speed limits because of some raging lunatic or a fucking idiot who's too stupid to look left and right before crossing the road, which leads to people routinely disregarding such speed limits because they exist for no god damn reason, to the point where people are speeding in spots that are actually dangerous because they don't know what's real any more.
I keep getting sucked into these mini-documenteries (or whatever the correct name is) even though I have nothing invested in the topics I keep watching them and finding them highly interesting and educational. Great work :)
They are called video essays :)
For me this is creating the urge to play Cities Skylines to apply the knowledge I gained =D I was kind of grossed out when watching a previous video I realised that I've always been building stroads in that game =D
Everyone has something invested in this topic. Too many people have a very narrow view of the world. Literally everything around us impacts our "quality of life." Cars are one of the biggest killers of human beings on earth. We are all invested in car infrastructure and car culture. Living next to high-speed vehicle traffic is detrimental to the mental and physical health of all people, even if they don't notice.
@@robthomas5827 Well yes, I didnt say it wasnt important. It just struck me how engaged I was to a topic that I myself just take for granted without reflecting over and that theirs some layers to this.
@Peter Evans Well as a person who have lived in both types of enviroments/countries I wouldnt say that this is missleading, Id say I agree with the points made. The US city I lived in had between 2015-19 about 40 fatalities per 10.000 people a year and where I live in Europe now that number is 2 fatalities per 10.000 people (both cities are in the 130.000 population size), so theirs gotta be something to this.
"this approach seems reasonable; until you think about it *at all*."
Good god, that line sums up so much about this world.
Back to front
The worst thing about finding your channel is that I can’t help but notice how terribly U.S streets are designed and how difficult it would be to change this. My favorite spot to visit in my state was an old European town called St. Augustine. I loved it because of the life radiating from the shops, the personality in the buildings and the ability to walk anywhere. it’s funny to think I drive 2 hours to experience something that is the norm for everywhere else in the world. Thank you so much for making videos on this topic, you really are making a change :)
Here in Australia apparently we go through a very long and detailed process of evaluating risks of all kinds, environment, and road function when determining speed limits. This arbitrary 85% rule just seems entirely insane to me.
The bit about roads with high speed limits in rural areas is so damn common in Texas. There is a small rural town that is on my commute to work and just before it the speed limit is 105kmh(65mph) but obviously most people are going 70+ and the highway goes right through the center of it. They have posted signs to slow down, if you do it though people behind you will pass you in the oncoming lane and honk like maniacs.
I am in a discussion on an other site where someone claims that lowered speeds and the speed traps are only there for extra money for the local police/town, as a kind of extra toll. He did not appreciate that lowered speed limits might be because the local situation may needed lower speed limits, like people living on those locations and slower traffic users using the same roads.
When I was driving through these towns I saw a film crew interviewing a woman. They were doing a local news story about drivers speeding through town. It's insane to me how common this situation is, but nothing is ever done about it beyond a few random speed traps by police.
@@willekevanderham5326 There are plenty of towns in the US that use their police (and speed traps) to blatantly extort people.
I know of many spots where nothing fundamentally changes about a road and the speed limit is randomly lowered by 15mph with law enforcement hiding on the other side. This particularly occurs on highways adjacent to towns experiencing urban decay and is fairly common in between large cities on the east coast.
These towns don't generate enough tax revenue so there is no point in stopping people from speeding, instead it is both encouraged and punished.
These are often small conservative towns/counties that do not tax their residents enough, and therefore have to make up that deficit. There are many towns where police funding itself relies on these traffic infractions.
This isn't a problem in most of Europe because the police aren't as corrupt and people actually pay taxes
It's because they'd rather have the speed trap and the revenue for the cops/city than make a safer design.
@@stuuuuuuuu last week tonight did an episode where there are small towns on highways that get over 50% of town revenue from traffic tickets. Their schools are basically funded by people getting caught speeding.
Certainly a perverse incentive.
I worked in the Civil Engineering industry for almost 15 years and your documentary series is more engaging and interesting than any single day I can remember. Except for maybe the Christmas parties.
Damn lol
Comments like yours are so helpful, because every time I see videos like this I think "this is so interesting, maybe I should work in traffic engineering!?", and I have to remind myself what a typical day on the job is actually like.
@@phueal Oh my friend, that's kind of you, but I insist that I am the last person to listen to on this. I worked with many people who loved the job and came to work excited most days, but I wasn't one of them. Unfortunately I was painfully lacking in self awareness for a long time, so I continued down the wrong road year after year.
@BanquetOfTheLeviathan get a new job now if you can, your older self will be glad you did I feel.
Are people in your profession finally changing?
I now realise why I’m having such a hard time keeping to the speed limit in Rotterdam compared to other parts of the country, its designed for cars like the American cities
In the US, I actually have noticed a place that consistently does change the road geometry in order to force a slower speed: entrances and exits to US military installations. There are also rumble strips, who I feels use is underutilized
That's really true. All over the base, there are tons of speed bumps: the soft ones you can roll over where the speed limit is a little higher, and the ones you have to absolutely crawl over at crossings. And then they use the jersey barriers to create those slaloms in and out to protect the gate guards. Otherwise, it's just too easy to speed. The roads are wide to accommodate all the industrial machines that have to fit through, making it super easy to zip around until you hit a speed bump, and add in demographic shift from the general population to the base and a need for those controls is obvious.
When your military is better at building roads then you 😂
This is something very simple that I wish people actually listened to: SIGNS ARE NOT ENOUGH.
Yeah, the three laws of traffic dynamics:
#1 - Paint is not infrastructure
#2 - Signs are not infrastructure
#3 - (Unenforced) Laws are not infrastructure
Very true.
The fundamental principle here that no one is saying is that people are too stupid to follow signs. I agree completely. I just thought someone needs to actually say it.
Yeah, my hometown decided to be bike friendly, which is generally great, but one of the dumb things they did was take many straight, wide, safe, arterial streets that were 35 mph and make them 25 mph. The result is that either you get stuck behind someone going so slowly you want to die, or you're technically speeding.
@@guru47pi As cycling commuter, and Dutchmen, I have to travel over some narrow (less than 4 meter wide) polder roads were the speed limit in mph is 38 mph. Now a lot of people actually slow down when passing me, but once in a while there is someone that does not or even continues speeding. When you're vulnerable, because on a bike, that is absolutely scary, as they pass quite close to you. So although I understand car drivers wanting to drive quicker, it is only possible if cyclists and pedestrians can use a separate path. If that is not possible, speeds above 25 mph are very dangerous, as any collision could also seriously harm car drivers. In those cases, the road could and should be adapted to prevent the loss of human lives. As someone driving a bike most of the times, I want to reach my destination safe and sound. When I drive a car, I want to get to where I need to be without killing or maiming anyone, as that guilt would be with me for the rest of my live. So that road design is needed, and as bonus, it makes driving much more comfortable.
In Texas, those descending speed limits going into small towns are ineffective for another reason as well - they're often times speed traps meant to generate speeding ticket revenue for the town. They're used precisely because they're ineffective. They want drivers who are unfamiliar with the area to keep going at or near the same speed they were going outside of the town, knowing the vast majority of drivers will simply pay the ticket instead of driving back out into the middle of nowhere to try and fight it. This is true of a lot of areas in the Southern US; I'm not sure if towns in Canada do the same.
Some towns in Canada do this, especially the smaller ones with a local police force. They also do it with photo radar and then blame the drivers for falling victim for the poor road design.
@@geobloxmodels1186 that documentary was about bootleggers too.
It's not just the southern US, it's all over. I live in Wisconsin and there are many small towns with speed limit changes designed exactly like this. Most of them also have some sort of obscured place for the cops to sit, just beyond the sign, so they can write ticket after ticket without actually making anyone safer.
As someone from Michigan who got slapped with a 240 dollar ticket on his first day in Texas after missing one of the 5 signs leading into a town (53 in 40 zone that had literally just begun), I can confirm this comment is accurate lol
In Canada we just do this, but we also make sure to put a tree or other object in front of the speed limit sign in order to further endanger the people in these small towns and get more people killed, so you know, we can bill a few more drivers with speeding tickets.
highways in the us fail in this regard massively. the lanes are so wide that it feels safe to be going 100 mph on them, but the speed limit is set at 70 or 75. I wish the engineers over here would start taking the same approach as the germans when it comes to highways
I used to think the speed limit was somehow based on stopping distance if there was a animal or person that came into the road. Great video, hoping we make progress to have better designed transportation systems.
I thought it was some complex formula that took into account the road dimensions, curvature, visibility, and brake length in sub-optimal weather conditions. Feel cheated...
@@minifix That formula is what a person's brain uses while driving. Thus, driving faster that the posted speed limit.
My home town in the UK, some years ago 80's/90's, decided it was to dangerous for pedestrians in the town centre, with the narrow paths/side walks and busy roads. So they ripped up the tarmac/asphalt and put in coblestones, much to the annoyance of the vehicle users and the business owners.
Slowly over time the town centre started to come back to life, it's almost at the point where you don't reeally see vehicle in the town centre, so much so, they did an experiment and banned cars in the town centre at curtian times of the day. The experiment was so popular, they are giving it another go, to see if it has the same success.
In my town in sweden we have certain streets in the center called "summer streets" where they close the street for cars during summer to promote pedestrians and biking. Cafes and restaurants are allowed to have a larger outside sitting area. Its a really nice way to get the city more beautiful during summer when people are more likely to walk the streets.
Edinburgh started down the path but decided "I know, how about we let buses run right through the central street". Sounds not too bad if your mental image is one of a bus every few minutes... however, the way they've designed the whole public transport system is to have every bus route end up coming along that one road - so it's basically full of buses. Kinda annoys me as they could have had it nearly traffic free, just the (now) trams and then a lovely pedestrian area, opens up opportunities to do all sorts of stuff. No idea why it is so centralised as a transit system, every nice city I've visited has not had such a hub based model but we're doing nothing at all about it
This is truly interesting. I didn't thought of cobblestone having this effect. But it makes complete sense
@@Swansniff2 In UK they are the PLAY Streets cars ONLY to access homes on the street
@@Swansniff2 We have some very good streets but there are also a lot of cities that suffer from being designed for cars too
They did the same thing in Seoul--they recently lowered all of the speed limits in and around the city without changing anything about the roads. So now you've got ridiculous situations where you're on a super-wide, relatively straight, eight-lane (four lanes each way, that is) road on which you could very comfortably drive 90... but you are expected instead to be driving 60. I actually tried doing that once, just for kicks, and it feels like absolutely _crawling_. I would say it has actually made the roads more dangerous, because you have a small fraction of people who diligently stick to the speed limit constantly in danger of being run over by everyone else. So you get more cars weaving in and out of lanes, thus increasing the risk of accidents.
It's not so bad in or near the city center, where high traffic volumes make lower speeds inevitable, but on orbital roads or roads out of the city, where there is generally less traffic, it's a different story.
That's fucked! Much love to Korea.
Sounds all too familiar. Go look up the NJ Parkway and imagine driving 65 on that - never mind the fact you could only do that if you were the only car on the road. The speed is minimum 75, preferably 80/85 and the signs are just there so the state police can sodomize you
Same (to an extent) in Australia. Roads and "streets" are super wide. I'm from Europe and when I first arrived in Aus, as someone without any motorised vehicle, the width actually shocked me because I barely had time to cross the streets in the whole duration of the green light. Absolutely ridiculous. It also increases distances traveled on foot for no good reason.
We have the same thing on the Scajaquada Expressway. It's a highway that cuts through Delaware Park (wtf?). A narcoleptic driver went off the road, killed a kid, and now the wide highway is a 30mph road where everybody still goes 45 until the cops show up
Absolutely, if it feels like you're impeding traffic by going the speed limit, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place :(
As someone with very high driving anxiety, living in the rural southern US, this channel is slowly but surely convincing me I need to move out of the US entirely
Same. I live in the south and hate driving. This fall I'm going to the capital city in my state for college, and I'm really looking forward to living in a more urban environment; even if it's not that big of a city.
Yes please do
I love this series! I'm amazed at how everything mentioned in the first six episodes concerning roads, streets and stroads - as well as the change in speed limits from 90 to 70 to 50 in rural villages AND running a highway through the middle of the city - is completely applicable to Sweden.
3:31 I'm super glad the little bird managed to avoid a fatality.
I knew there was gonna be a comment on it. You didn’t disappoint!
I agree. That bird almost went in there under the tram by itself
Glad it wasn't just me.
Yesss my thoughts exactly lol
Indiana has a genius way of making drivers feel unsafe and slowing down: the reverse speed bump, AKA potholes
Ah yes, Indy potholes. To steal another's joke: Britain may drive on the left side of the road, but we proud midwesterners drive on what's left of the road, which is usually nothing. The intersection of 16th and Central Avenue, my beloathed.
Just like New Hampsire Bridges or Michigan's highways.
Florida too!
Classic Indiana, they'll slow you down either by not maintaining roads for 5+ years or setting up construction zones and abandoning them for months on end
It seems Indiana took this very old technique from Russia. Our roads without any potholes are such rarity, it should be protected as endangered species 😂
the funny thing is that I rarely drive subconsciously. I often speed and that makes me super hyper aware of my surroundings and speed, my eyes are scanning every second, and I'm fully focused and engaged. Even when I'm not speeding, or there are a lot of cars around me, I'm still consciously checking my surroundings and speed.
You might think I'm stupid, but I drive a lot worse when I'm driving subconsciously and with the traffic. I make horrible decisions and take wrong turns multiple times.
We just started seeing new "street calming" zones in my rural Ontario town. This includes chicane (serpentine-like) curves in the road on and curb bulb-outs (extensions that expand sidewalks or curb lines out into the parking lane to reduce street width. So far I dont think it's going over so well, as there has been an article released that residents have been complaining about them. Lol
"they're not obsessively checking their speedometer or reading every speed limit sign they pass"
me, a new learner driver, who is doing that: ah
Please don't stop doing that lol. Most folks tend to do the whole "learn it until you pass a test then promptly forget it" thing.
My cousins driving instructor would have him verbalize everything he sees..any road sign any person and cyclist so it becomes habit...i know our traffic could use an upgrade but i dont trust most drivers to begin with...too many risk takers these days
I mean, as long as it doesn't make you eventually too tired to a point when you might do something worse than just break the speed limit. It's never good to be too obsessive with one thing since that just means you're missing the other. Eventually you should be able to judge speed and notice any signs instinctively so you could focus more on... let's just say, more unpredictable parts of driving, like other participants
@@MrCh0o lmao if your passengers are making your driving experience "unpredictable" then you're one pushover of a road captain. Unruly passengers of my car will get the boot every single time.
And if you're talking about other drivers then it's good practice to drive as if everybody driving around you are drunk and incompetent.
@@PhantomPh1re Yeah they are definitely referring to the latter. As a newish driver in my first three years driving I had 2 people run into me, and I have yet to cause a crash or even get a ticket for anything even though I definitely speed at times. The two people who ran into me, one was just in a parking lot so not much damage, but the other totaled my car. Since then I have gone another couple years and haven't had anyone hit me yet, fingers crossed they don't come close, but I cant even say that because literally yesterday a driver cut me off turning left, cut it inside in front of me out of nowhere and would have hit me if I didn't swerve over... But yeah, back to the speed limit topic, I definitely speed but I also definitely go like 10 under in actual residential streets because well, its safe. Point being the speed you drive is just something you do, like making your bed, whereas people running into you is something you need to be aware of and is 1000 times more important than your speed, because you know when you are driving too fast, natural human instinct to fear death in a car...
5:25 Damn, this is why I find driving so exhausting. I actually do check for speed limits, and notice almost all road signs. I also frequently check my mirrors to make sure I know the positions of all cars around me. I actively drive because a lot of other drivers suck, and I hate it.
I was about to point out this timestamp for an entirely different reason -- is that guy in the hideous orange truck ahead lost? Or has he just suffered a severe head injury, thus the choice of vehicle color and rear-window decoration?
I barely check my speed here in the Netherlands. As he illustrates in his video, the street design here makes you automatically drive the max speed limit! It’s crazy to me how America is still stuck with the same terrible design..
I live in the NL, and I am *also* an active driver. I can not relate to people who enjoy driving and find it relaxing. The Dutch road design does help, but I am way too paranoid about sucky other drivers to fully relax. Plus I always leave too late, so I have tendency to push the speed limit a little, and with the amount of speed camera's around, it pays to pay attention ;)
@@egregius9314 Flitsmeister aan en gassen toch? ;)
@@Random.ChanneI That’s what happens when you don’t update your infrastructure for 40+ years.
Thank you for your refreshing, no-nonsense approach to driving and the science behind it. You've turned something I wouldn't normally enjoy watching into something that is fascinating, interesting, and educational.
I can't fathom what I just heard about subconscious driving. That explains a lot. I didn't know I'm that special as I am always aware of what I'm doing and of my surrounding. I also follow the current speed limits at all time. Maybe that's why I hate driving but I make it a bit more comfortable by using and setting cruise control even at shorter parts of my route. For example, the place where I live (somewhere in Germany) has some 30 kph streets with (intentionally) right before left crossings. I set the cruise control to 33 and don't have to worry about keeping up the right speed after such a crossing.
everyone has to pay attention while driving. I think he is talking about those moments when your also thinking about other things as well. Are you so focused that you don't have a single thought not related to the road while driving? very impressive if so.
@@crazyguy30048 Right, everyone has to pay attention but just look at how many people don't.
Yeah, I'm with you. I use cruise control whenever possible so my speed is guaranteed to be correct and always pay attention to my mirrors. But I think many people just drive whatever speed they are comfortable with and honestly don't look in mirrors or signs. Just today I was behind someone who was driving precisely 45 in a 45, but when the limit increased to 55 the car in front of my remained at 45, which is annoying because it's the one fast section of my usual drive. And then when the speed limit dropped down to 35, the car continued driving at what appeared to be 45 until it was out of my sight. It simply didn't matter what the signs said, they just drove whatever speed they wanted to.
@@cassieberringer7427 I feel you. That's annoying af.
In Nepal we've come up with system which forces even the most stubborn of the drivers to slow down. We call it the no road policy. It's quite simple actually. What the government does it that it does nothing. So the road eventually gets filled with potholes to the point you can say "there are some road in the potholes" and you won't be wrong.
This way, nobody can go faster than the half of the rated speed limit. And in the monsoon, we have to befriend fishes to help us locate any sign of road.
EDIT: spellings cause English is not my first language
😂😂 nice sense of humor!
Based.
Also it's very cheap and a good example of a lean state!
Dang and all these years I though South Carolina roads were just poorly maintained on accident. Turns out we were ahead of our time 😂
The dreaded statement "but I'll talk about that in a future video" It means more videos (hooray!) But it also means I gotta wait for this interesting and insightful content
Now that I have an editor, I'm hoping videos will come out quicker. ;)
@@NotJustBikes how quick?
IKR? I have the same reaction: "Yay moar videos" and then "Noooo, I have to wait!"
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 The words of an addict to his videos. I can relate. LOL.
@@jpalmer1967 i like him because he's constantly trashing my crappy hometown of London Ontario.
I love this RUclips channel, I can't tell you how informative it is to reality and its just a gold mine.
Here in New England, what I notice is they put up a radar "Your Speed Is ___" The problem is, it doesn't actually measure normal driving speeds, but instead causes people to intentionally lower their speeds so as not to trigger the flashing lights. It artificially reduces optimum speed.
I just checked and the Dutch traffic signs also look more in your face. Those speed limits signs in Canada are ease to miss, they look flimsy.
They're really easy to miss. It was so annoying to drive in Canada this summer after getting used to driving in the Netherlands.
Canada should completely overhaul their traffic signs, among other things
Even as an American visiting Canada (Alberta) I feel like I hardly saw any speed limit signs, they are very easy to miss but also felt a lot less numerous than in the US
in general almost all American/ Canadian road signs seem way to small with only black and white colours! nothing compared to the colourful, easily readable signs in Europe!
Based Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals
"Why not just fire the intern and make shit up!?!"
I lost it...
I thought they already did that.
Yeah, they did that a long time ago. Speed limits are now set by sheriffs departments seeking revenue by making speed limits unnecessarily low so they can ticket everyone.
Thank you for this video. You have given me clear talking points when approaching my town council on the matter of our "quiet" residential street being used as a high-speed bypass for downtown.
I'd love to see you do a video on my home city of Milton Keynes in the UK. It's a really unique place in that it was a "designed" city and is considered a "new" city. We have a grid road system where the speed limit is 60 or 70mph, and they all surround residential estates/districts where the speed limit is 30mph inside. It makes getting around so quick and easy.
The trees beside the road not only slow down drivers, they're a safe buffer for pedestrians should a car veer off the road. Also they look nice. EDIT I'm wrong, trees are not safe lol
And in the Netherlands every bit of green counts towards the mandatory percentage of green that a city is required to have. Not a big problem for rural towns, but the bigger cities make every bit of green count. It's like playing Cities: Skylines irl: the more green, the more valued the land is and the richer the people are.
And in urban centres a good tree canopy is a good method of reducing street-level heat.
In an off center collision or if a car leaves the roadway sideways, the car can spin around the tree and take out pedestrians. That was my least favorite part of the video. No need to get homicidal with the drivers. Just give them good visual cues that they need to slow their pace.
And obscure pedestrians from view
In the netherlands a lot of trees at the side of the road are being removed again now when they get their 30 year redesign.
Trees are dangerous and cause a lot of fatality's. So they stoped using them many years ago.
It took me about a minute to realize that the 85th percentile rule was an actual thing and not a joke... Wow!
Yep, same here. I’ve never heard of it. It sounds really stupid and could presumably lead to five or six different speed limits. Where I live, there are basically 3 speed limits and you can generally work out what applies to your location without needing signs.
It's actually part of EU recommendations on speed limits too.
@@troyjollimore4100 It is as conveniently old as the US method and research which it adopted... and in the EU it was never implemented. It was a recommendation, not a directive.
@@troyjollimore4100 No, it was not. It was introduced as a formal recommendation in the early 1990s, well after the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Cars have undoubtedly improved a lot since then too, but there are plenty of cars from the 1970s that remain a pleasure to drive (if not necessarily to sit behind in traffic, given the amount of pollution that they spew out).
@@troyjollimore4100 "It"; the recommendation to use 85th percentile - which is what we are discussing - is one. Speed limits across much of Europe were set from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, well before the recommendation from the EU. Many of them were definitely not set on the basis of "85th percentile", such as the limits on French and Italian motorways (130 and 140 km/h respectively), which were significantly higher than the _maximum_ speed of the typical car in France or Italy back then.
Name one 1970s car that was fun to drive? Fiat 124 Sport. Alfa Romeo Spider. Lancia Fulvia HF 1.6. Jaguar E-type. Volkswagen Golf GTI (I & II). Ferrari 246. Just to remain within those I have tested (and I could list at least as many for the 1980s, and for the 1990s). As comfortable, secure, economical, capable as a 2020 car? No, definitely not. But at least as much fun - and possibly more, since the car's limits are that much lower.
I’m Autistic and even short trips exhaust me because I never reach a point that I feel safe subconsciously driving and I’m paying attention to literally everything. I had a severe accident last year because the one time my judgment lapsed because I was driving home after a long shift, caused me to not realize until too late that the driver in front of me on a curved road had put on their brakes. It’s a problematic road because it’s designed to go fast but the curves lower visibility of traffic ahead. If even someone who constantly pays attention struggles to drive safely then am I an unsafe driver or is the road itself simply unsafe?
"It's time to stop blindly following the guidelines of the previous century"
Aaaaaand you jut summed up the problem with pretty much all of American domestic and fiscal policy
This is a great vid, and one of my pet peeves as a transportation professional. The problem in a lot of places (including where I live in the US) is that we have these 6-lane stroads with a design speed of 50mph, that initially have a 50mph sign, but the county has now realized that they can just stick a 30mph sign on it, along with a speed camera, and just collect money from drivers. So now there's a financial incentive to keep the bad stroad design.
I am in no way recommending that anyone break the law, but it certainly is physically possible to damage the speed camera without being detected. If that was done repeatedly, the local authorities would eventually be forced to give up on their efforts.
Fun fact:
After the dutch grand prix in f1, the day before this video releases, so many cyclists took their bikes out to the races that there was a bike traffic jam leaving the stadium. Some people said it was because the trains weren't running enough or with high enough capacity, but still, seems like a good problem to have.
Only in the Netherlands.
@@Emily-ou6lq sorry, I'm American. Race tracks are technically considered stadiums here.
Ah they meant the tiny train line to Zandvoort from the neighboring bigger city. As a lot of train stations also rent out bikes, I bet there was a rush on them at the city of Haarlem.
Just 9km, nice trip through the sand dunes. I'm sure people loved it on that warm day.
Haha, yes! I can imagine in some vivid detail. Bike traffic jams are still annoying though, like when you can't make the greens because of it.
@@nosten5276 I'd still rather be in a bike jam than a car jam tho. Social interaction and clean air.
@@lsbigworld6672 Social interaction and clear air? B-but if you’re socializing and breathing in good air how can you complain about being in traffic endlessly!
Me and the boys in our supercars drag racing down a newly built road for an entire day to create a 120mph residential street
Great video! In rural Colombia, small towns take this into their own hands by constructing makeshift speed bumps-typically several lines of thick rope-that are placed when entering the town from the road/highway.
I suspect the mentality of "personal responsibility" comes up a lot when talking about a systemic approach to safe traffic speeds. Rather than ensuring that the environment is shaped to be conducive to safer speeds, it's less work and responsibility to just throw some signs up and finger wag when people don't obey them.
Yea I get that feeling a lot myself. It works in 99% yey! :D ...but the 1% left goes on and kills pedestrian or a cyclist, naay :(
Yes. The default message from police, politicians, and the public is always stuff like "please everyone pay attention!" "drive safe!" "look both ways!" There is never an acknowledgement of systemic problems; it's all a lack of personal responsibility.
Its sad north America is broken . I just I new article about some one sadly died in Ontario again. The street design will stay the same. Nothing will be learned. This person was just riding home on there bike and now they don't exist anymore. The driver of the car must live with this guilt for ever.
For conservative governments, the ideal government is one that has to do absolutely nothing, yet still gets paid for it.
And of course, gets to award lucrative contracts to their friends & family, with as little strings attached as possible.
@@m.p.baldnessdyslexic88 America is broken, but Ontario is in Canada.
Well the most famous one is.
My parents were driving in Ireland and outside of cities and towns, the speed limit was effectively however fast you're comfortable going. My dad nearly crashed trying to go the speed limit before he gave up, and he's a quite talented driver.
As someone who lives and drives in Ireland, you need to know the roads very well to be able to drive the speed limit, even then it can be dicey. Always feel bad for tourists trying to drive themselves around the roads here. Its like putting a new driver in the middle of a race track. Also good luck when you meet a tractor out there on the narrow ones.
@@TehbearofDoom I love driving in Ireland/Scotland/Wales you actually need to think for yourself while driving and read the road and corners coming up.
In stead of the Netherlands where every little corner has a speed recommendation so people don't have a clue anymore and when there is a corner without a sign they crash instantly.
I always have a good laugh driving in the UK and see a Dutch license plate, crash waiting to happen in 1.....2..... :)
@@Flaggyt Hmmm, Ireland is not part of the UK. I’m not saying you implied it is but I’m employed by the government of Ireland to police the internet for any real or perceived suggestions that might potentially give that idea. Thank you, I’ll leave you off with a warning to be more explicit next time👋🏻
I'll take the risk of getting yelled at and drive slower I don't care. Worst case scenario, I get a ticket for going too slow. Don't care about those.
I don't understand this. Is this a maneuvering thing? People going way faster than you?
I commute south into Baltimore nearly every day on highway 83; 3 lanes each way, concrete divider down the center, and a speed limit of 55. Provided traffic isn't congested, the far left lane will go 20-35 over, and if the person in that lane is going "too slow" they will consistently get passed in either of the right two lanes if the other drivers can get away with it. At night the left lane is usually 30 over at minimum, with the odd driver doing 90+ while weaving in and out of all 3 lanes.
Literally none of the interstate highways in my city go below 75 miles per hour in the right lane. I-44, I-55, I-170 and I-64 all go around a constant speed of 85 miles per hour while I-270's left lane can go 100 miles per hour or more
I had a similar situation in my city in Germany where they changed a street design to add a bus stop and now you can actually cross that road very comfortably. Previously, you'd better run across it so drivers don't hit you at 60km/h. Now they all drive ~40km/h even tho the speed-limit is still 50. Oh and if busses stop, all the drivers have to wait behind it because there's a middle island with gras now. I love that
I work in construction and this sounds a lot like what I learned about safety there: People make mistakes, so you have to make sure these mistakes don't have serious consequences. If a construction worker steps back (for whatever reason, maybe because he/she is startled by something or he/she is distracted) there should be something to prevent him from falling down (or stepping on a busy road or....). You just can't expect people to be fully focused 100% of the time, so do something to make sure people don't make mistakes or that the consequences aren't so bad.
You can’t expect people to focus for 20 seconds on the road. You have to drive like everyone else is drunk.
@@MrWhite-pn7ui cities belong to pedestrian and cyclists, drivers should be the one conceding priority to them instead of the other way around
@@m32c50 I think you have to facter in that pedestrians are dumb and are the same people we put in cars but cars are harder to stop.
@@MrWhite-pn7ui I know you are being a troll but I wanted to point out roads existed for thousands of years before cars.
@@MrWhite-pn7ui Road taxes aren't taxes to be spent on roads, just like tax over potatoes isn't used to improve potatoes. It's a government revenue stream, just like any other. The government raises taxes, and spends them as they see fit. Road tax may go to hospitals (tho to be fair, cars run people over, and cause lung cancer on a large scale, so this isn't even too unreasonable), or to childrens playgrounds, schools, unemployment benefits, museums, etc.
If anything, the existence of road-tax, and the non-existence of walking-tax shows that societies, generally, consider walking to be more beneficial than driving. Taxes are used to steer behavior, so higher road taxes show that we as a society want to steer the behavior of individuals within it to use the train, bus, bike, walking instead of driving by car.
Not defending the practice, but just FYI, road design in the US funded by federal dollars is required to be designed to federal standards (which is stick in the 60s). So even though engineers want to change this it has to come from the top down.
Totally agree, engineers would generally like to build sound infrastructure, companies generally don’t care.
Here regulations are also very strict and set on a national level.
That is how you create universal infrastructure and make sure every municipality build it the way you want it,
8:20 the entrance into Ommen had me shocked it's so simple and it's so brilliant. I'm American and I'm so used to high-speed roads and freeways just going Straight into downtown streets with no mechanics to actually communicate to slow down. And there's no slowing down process. It's just you're going 50mph and then suddenly you're in a 25mph street and have to slam the brakes
As a civil-geotechnical engineer who have been working in transportation projects for many years, I really enjoy your videos.
"It's not the 1960ies anymore" I immediately remember countless conversations or situations to which this would have applied.
i wish it were
@@1marcelfilms Racism is just one problem with the US in the 1960s
Please make a video like "Why the most bicycle friendly country builds new highways". Many people thinking, that new highway means, that they politics are against bicycles. But after I visited the Netherlands, I understood, that highways are part of good bicycle infrastructure. It's better to create roads and streets instead of stroads, like you telling in this video :)
Well that's kinda what my "invisible infrastructure" video is about.
The Netherlands even have bicycle highways ;)
Unless an old guy drives with a bike on the highway because he doesn't know where he is anymore. Trust me this happens
Lookin' forward to the follow-up videos; the series is excitingly educational and entertaining!
great video, Adam!
I wonder if part of why this isn't happening in the US is pressure to have lower speed limits than road design speed to help generate revenue via speeding tickets from drivers who missed the signs. this feels like a conspiracy theory, but areas I've lived in recently have been so ticket-happy I cant help but wonder whether that has a significant impact.
This video is simply impeccable. Having moved to the US recently, I never find myself driving the speed limit, because the roads make you feel like you’re supposed to go faster.
Yep. You're supposed to "go with the flow of traffic" you can actually get a ticket for driving speed limit if you're moving slower than traffic. I noticed this immediately when I first got my license as a teenager, people will honk at you for going speed limit.
@@ChawletMelk This not speed limit this is speed suggestion.
@@ChawletMelk Speed differential, not speed, kills. That's why it isn't a good idea to mix bicycles and cars.
I mean I don't really drive according to the speed limit here in the Netherlands either. Only in towns. But roads where its max 80km/h? Nope drive 90 there. The highway where its max 100? Nope drive faster than that. Dutch roads are so safe for speeding that the speed limits set are ridiculously slow. Here 80km/h roads should be city roads that are max 70km/h now. And 80km/h roads should be 100km/h. And the highway which is 100 and 120/130 between 6am and 7pm should be 150 everywhere besides a select view spots like bridges and highways intersecting. But sadly we wouldn't change this probably.
The car lobby is incredibly strong in the USA. The Ford Motor Company invented the word "jaywalking" and got it made into a crime. We could have built cars that were incapable of speeding DECADES ago.
My city here in Brazil. Streets with a 50kph limit with tones of potholes and speedbumps. Going higher than 30 is living on the edge
That's one way to "design" roads :/ Maintenance is very important to keep people safe and traffic flowing.
Didn't Canada make stickers that are looking like holes?
“They’ll slow down either because they don’t feel safe, or because they’re afraid of damaging their car”
You left out a third one: “Or because they see a cop”
I find it annoying that in my country you can see speed limit signs before you get into urban areas, but when you leave those areas there aren't any signs to tell you when you can accelerate again. So some people start accelerating before the town ends, some others keep at slow speeds after, it's really confusing.
“I have 20 years experience in…” will be the downfall of the US eventually. Far too often people are getting rewarded for using the same thought process their entire career.
I have 20 years experience of doing nothing. I do it very well
The US has lots of innovation and lots of innovative people and companies. They're, at the very least, above the world average in that regard.
@@Monaleenian ???
@@austinmenezes8074 why are you doubting him? he has 20 years experience asserting things to be true.
@@jameswagner2232 hes right though. In the internet & technology sector the U.S. is undoubtedly the most advanced, and a lot of other sector companies are definitely at the top of innovation. However there are a lot of things america is stubborn about, and "muh roads" is one of them. Having the right to drive your charger 50 mph over the speed limit is something most americans pride themselves after. putting money in the public sector (which roads and city infrastructure obviously are) is also not something that's very american. most of the innovation comes as a result of privatized investments. as a result, the public sector is stuck 50 years in the past. See: the postal service, public transport, the DMV, hell literally anything that I do that's government related is cumbersome, yet I can browse any youtube video on my iphone from anywhere instantly, that's america
"A hospital! What is it?"
"It's a big building with patients in it. But that's not important right now."
Nice use of Leslie Neilson quote from 'Airplane.'
I was _this_ close to using a clip from Airplane! there, but I try to resist using copyrighted material from major studios. :(
Hahah yea came straight to the comments to see if anyone else caught that
So in Poland, since they cannot reshape the roads really for most out of city/rural areas, the designers decided to add some chicanes. Works pretty decently to force a slowdown. Speed bumps would do as well but are more expensive to implement.
In Australia we use pneumatic tubes and a small computer that detects speeds, and also use the speed that about 85% of people are going roughly. They also are determined by visibility, width, shoulders, number of driveways and many many other factors.
Edit: we also survey all through roads on a regular basis, and re-engineer them if there is consistent speed violations and a disproportionate collision rate.
Edit 2: it's also worth mentioning rumble strips. A lot of our roads use audible road lines, and some areas use rumble strips that are very good at getting drivers attention and making them slow down
The road surface difference in the Netherlands really helps as well! In residential areas the streets are usually brick instead of asphalt, which makes drivers "feel" their speed more
The winters in Toronto wreak havoc on our roads and I wonder how bricks would respond. There are a very small few sections of Toronto that have brick but it's so small it's barely worth mentioning
I was looking at the street markings in Amsterdam in the video. Here in Calgary for example, the street markings are invisible for 4 months out of the year as they are covered in snow. What's it like in Amsterdam in the winter?
@@Alacritous we do this nifty thing called clearing the roads, also we dont solely rely on road markers, like the street design tells you if you have one or multiple lanes or whether there is a bicycle lane.
@@RichardHartl There are forms of asphalt concrete that are patterned after brick roads, giving you the feel of a brick road, but the material advantage of asphalt.
@@Alacritous Street markings are usually complementary. Other design elements will give visual context. Continuous sidewalks for example legally and physically indicate priority. And interections with traffic lights will have road markings as well as signs, basically a 3 layered back-up. If those all don't apply there's a general rule as well; traffic from the right has the right of way, trams have priority over anyone else.
In the US, when the street design doesn’t match the “desired” speed, that’s an opportunity to set up a speed trap. And that’s just a microcosm of how everything is done here
In the Netherlands cops like to put speed traps everywhere. And stand with their speed cameras around every corner lol. They are so shitty here.
And then there is Germany where they simply don't care enough to do that and would rather let the stationary speeding cameras do that. While they focus on criminal activities and the like. Way better system.
@@Pand0rasAct0r_ The Netherlands isn't perfect indeed. There is a speed camera in the 73k inhabitants strong Almelo that is earning an estimated €1 million per year.
under-rated comment!!!!!
@@RoScFan I'd say that depends on where the money goes after the local government gets it. As long as it goes back into community improvements, I think it's fine. Improvements like making those speed traps unnecessary by redesigning streets so they don't easily allow higher speeds than what's actually safe.
7:50 I've been thinking about this in light of my time in Germany, where the road comes into a village and becomes a street, winding around with visual obstructions and such. You have to slow way down and start thinking about your every move. Meanwhile, I'm back in Alabama in a hellscape of stroads where walking or biking aost never feels safe even if there's something worth going to within that distance.
I appreciate that my GPS always shows the speed limit of the road on my screen. If I'm in an unfamiliar area or the limit signs are spread too far apart, I can always do a quick speed check. I think self-driving vehicles are an insane idea but I would welcome a system that combines the two and makes your car slow down to match the zone or perhaps just sets off a certain alert sound that indicates your speed exceeds the limit in that area.
We could have built cars that were incapable of speeding DECADES ago.
I saw the videos title and remember what my driving instructor said when I was going for my license, “signs do not stop people but put a building or tree near them and watch them slow down.”
Yes, that is exactly correct.
The only part of this video that irked me was at the very end, you seemed to lay all the blame on the engineers. In Seattle, I've seen many cases where good road design was proposed, but then shot down by angry residents who have gotten used to the old ways of road design. If you don't have buy-in from residents, you'll usually end up with a very short career.
Basically, if you want streets to be streets like you want streets, there better be lots of high speed roads available as an alternative. Nobody wants it to take longer to get from point A to point B.
The whole city has a 25 mph speed limit
@@wahid5923 it's less the speed limits, and more the redesigning or reclassification of roads that seems to be more problematic. Especially if such redesigns take away street parking or add more crossing points for pedestrians.
Every so often it's the people who make things worse because they're stupid
Part of my Senior Thesis as a civil engineer was to help out a small residential area with their flooding problem. We provided an initial solution of a curb and gutter. Residents said no, curbs are ugly. Ok, large french drains leading to their various retention ponds. Nope, to expensive. Ok, we can put a giant dam at the top of the hill which no one owns and where a large majority of the rain water is coming from, hopefully it holds and doesn't redirect the water to the other houses nearby (spoiler, it fails and floods the area even more). That last one wasn't our design. We made several cost effective solutions of the first 2 but in the end we turned in our notice to be removed from the project and left. If they implemented only 25% of our solution, flooding in the worst part would have been reduced significantly, but since half of the residents were not heavily affected by the flood, it wasn't their problem so they would only pay pennies.
Stroads don't just happen because somebody plans it. They happen because stores and schools want convenient high traffic locations, so they build them on busy roads. So the solution isn't to stop building high traffic roads, but to ban driveways being added to them. A land parcel might originally span from a street to a road, and a property developer asks the local government to let them split it into two, with one fronting onto the street and the other fronting onto the road. This should never happen, and instead they need to use a bit of their land for a driveway from the street to the road-adjacent land. This is what's done with land next to a train line, and roads should be treated the same.
I'm a boomer and I agree with this video. Trust me when I say that most of us are frustrated with that mindset but it is the government at all levels that is resisting the change. The question is why? Standards, budgets, resistance to out-of-the-box thinking? Unfortunately, most people in our government have the same mindset as those in the book 'Anthem' where it took 50 years for a committee to approve the use of candles.
Mind to share the synopsis of Anthem? I was interested in the candle bit.