The irony is that more infrastructure related to walking, bicycling, and mass transit will lead to safer streets. It is less expensive overall, results in fewer cars on the streets, and improves the driving experience for those that need to drive.
@@BobbyT.I literally got in an argument with someone the other day and they came right out and said “I like things the way they are. I don’t want it to change” Complacency is a hell of a drug
This is what pains me the most, it is literally a win without compromises for everyone. This should be a no-brainer policy win, but thanks to decades of propaganda and cultural normalization, we have to wade through a sea of miss-information and the miss-informed just to make any little progress we can.
On my commute there is an uphill stretch with 4 traffic lights, unless they get a lucky break with 2 or more green lights I am pretty much keeping up with them on my 3 speed bike as I come up to the same red light as they are.
That Hoboken stat is astonishing. If anyone is familiar with the city, they'll know that there are a ton of bars, and lots of drunks walking around after dark. for not a single person to have been killed in all that time shows they are doing something really well
@@imjustheretobeentertained and that's a good thing. where I live people who want to go to the bars pile into a car and drive off to get plastered......
I've been saying for a few years now how absurd it is that the moment e-bikes and e-scooters started getting popular, every legislative body in the country had a collective mental breakdown over the supposed safety concerns, apparently oblivious to the irony that people are killed by cars every single day. Many manufacturers do put speed governors in their cars, but they're usually limited to well over 100 mph, or even over 150 mph, speeds that are extremely difficult to attain on any public road even with serious effort, and much faster than the fastest posted speed limit anywhere in North America.
The logic is that e-scooters don't come with seat belts or airbags, and cars do. Cars also come with a telephone directory size book of safety rules manufactures have to follow, and e scooters don't. You can argue that makes them just like bikes, but traditionally bikes don't spontaneously catch fire because of a soldering defect. It was in many ways an over reaction, but it was also not completely without merit.
@@johnroutledge9220 You do realize that cellphones, computers, and other consumer electronics also sometimes catch fire due to manufacturing defects, right? Indeed, these devices all use the exact same type of battery (lithium ion). Talking about increasing consumer safety regulations on their manufacture is reasonable, but wanting to ban them entirely is as absurd as wanting to ban all cellphones.
Ebike cuts out at 25kph, and honestly it works very well. Only need the assistance for going up steep inclines, where I am likely to be well under 25kph. Otherwise, I turn it off to preserve battery. If cars were goverened to 20, I could keep up wiith them on a bicycle.
i usually feel safer "jay walking" than i do in a crosswalk. some crosswalks are at four way crossings and they feel tremendously unsafe with cars turning, usually view of pedestrians is blocked by their windshield frame or they are just not paying attention/don't care.
@@petekrz I feel the same way. When I try to cross international drive in Orlando Florida on the crosswalk as a walker on the green signal, I was in great danger of cars turning right and almost hitting me.
Same. I often have to wait for cars turning right before I can safely cross the road. Crossing a divided road is easier than a multilane undivided road because of the limited time the traffic light gives people on foot to cross.
Yep. It's so sad this is the case but it really is. When I walk to the gym or grocery store, I wait for the light that is a pedestrian only light, even though the cycle is longer than if I crossed at the busy 4 way intersection down the road, because even crossing at that intersection on one side I've had so many near misses (either right on red only looking to the left for incoming traffic and not to the right at the crosswalk their about to cross, or left turners who just check for oncoming cars and don't see me in the crosswalk until they've already started the turn), I couldn't imagine crossing it twice.
It's also because drivers can make both a left turn on red (if they're already in the intersection) or a right turn on red (at any time), and so at no time does a pedestrian have full and exclusive right to the crosswalk.
The 85th percentile speed limit thing drives me nuts. I did a big study on it for my job about a decade ago. It’s entirely based on a single study from the 1960’s on a single-lane in each direction rural arterial with no median. I even tracked down an interview with the author of the study in question and she was quoted as saying that he never intended it to be the gold standard of setting speed limits on freeways and urban streets, or even on rural roads.
Confirmation bias. There is a study I like, I take it for everything! Do you know that the speed of washing machines should be determined by the 85% of the speed when they start throwing clothes around?
@@steemlenn8797 As with most empirical rules, there isn't a compelling reason to further hash it out because you don't expect more study to change the results much. It would be a decent assumption if it wasn't iterated into design rules that result in 3000-trip-a-day roads being constructed with such long sight lines that it's perfectly safe for a halfway competent driver to do 50 mph.
@@mihodaLook up the “Solomon Curve” The original study was 1964. Also, I mistyped “she” in my original comment and RUclips isn’t letting me fix it, but the author was a man.
The whole direction of that rule is wrong - a desired speed limit must be set before the road is even designed, as this is the primary variable for the style of road. And when those 85% are speeding, then the design must be fixed, not the speeding be legalized.
@@matthewshultz8762 I did not know that. They do allow vehicles to be imported with permits for special events. Probably the most well known was for filming somewhere in time
I visited there with a relative, and I really enjoyed renting a bike and riding along the Circle Road round the island . So pleasant without cars, no danger with cars no noise just nature in the sound of the water.
The problem with vision zero is that it requires a truly holistic approach to city design, whereas the politicians point at the traffic engineers and say "have them fix it" without addressing any of the underlying problems. You can't solve the problems created by car-centric low density sprawl connected by stroads without addressing, well, the car-centric low density sprawl connected by stroads.
You can't address car-centric low density sprawl without first addressing the sub-human conditions working class people have to put up with in cities. There's so much talk on channels like this about how to make it more difficult for people to drive so they will be forced to live in cities, Yet i see very little talk of trying to make cities actually desirable to live for people who don't make a lot of money. The fact is i can rent a 3 bedroom house with a front and backyard close to a decent school and raise my family in it just 90 minutes from the city centre and it costs less then living in a single bedroom apartment in these dense urban centres. Hell NYC is talking about having people live basements and L.A is talking about introducing "pod" living and if you don't understand how disgusting that is you're obviously not going to be the person forced to live in those conditions. If Urbanists want to attract people to cities, instead of complaining about cars and stroads they need to start pushing for legislation which raises the minimum standards for dwellings not lowering them as a simply way of claiming you've met "affordable housing" goals.
@@louiscypher4186 The best way to improve conditions in cities is to introduce more housing to ease demand. That way people won't be fighting tooth and nail to live in closets and basements, just to be in cities. With lowered demand, landlords will be encouraged to actually improve their properties to gain higher paying tenants. Step 1 to gaining more housing in city centers is to get rid of car centric development regulations in those areas, such that land reclaimed from cars can be used for new construction. This includes things like minimum setback distances, minimum parking requirements, massive multilane roads, restrictions on multifamily housing, etc. With your solution of "minimum standards" all you've done is further increase the costs associated with owning real estate in cities (whether via lost opportunity costs of e.g. divying a unit up into smaller units, or costs of minimum furnishings) and made those dwellings even more desireable, which will lead to even higher rents without addressing any of the issues with availability.
I appreciate the move to make cities more liveable but doing it by stuffing people into large cases filled with sardine cans is not the way, I live on the outskirts of suburbia. I live in a traditional boring fairly new development. Within 10 minutes of walking or less on my bike, I am riding along a river surrounded by small forests or walking past small farms. I can breathe, it is quiet, and most importantly it is safe. Packages can sit on doorsteps overnight or even for a week without fear of theft. 10 miles away is a medium-sized city with one of the highest property crime rates on the west coast. I can take a walk at 2am(I rarely sleep) and is quiet and safe. I am less than a 10-minute drive on streets from seven grocery stores and lots of other types of stores. Unless I am getting a lot of stuff or something heavy, I just walk. It is very walkable here. In my neighborhood, kids can play freely, staying out past dark. There are no Karen's or Ken's on my street so they have free reign in all of the front yards. There are three nice parks within walking distance for them to play at. I have a 4 bed, 3 bath house that I paid $245k for in 2018. It is a decent-sized yard, I have a small garden with multiple above-ground planters, 6 rose bushes, rhubarb, grapes and raspberry and strawberry patches that produce from late-June through the first frost in late October. You want this "fixed"? In the nearby city, rent for a one-bedroom is more than my mortgage, insurance and property taxes combined. If the people in those apartments are lucky they have an 8x4 balcony and just one meth-dealing neighbor. You are not going to convince people who live in more open spaces that are quieter and safer to give that up to suffer in high-density cities.
@@proot. In my 55 years, I have never lived in an area that had a massive increase in housing where it became more affordable. Not once. New, big apartments get built and they charge higher rent than the rest of the area. The rest of the area points to that as a reason to raise their rent. Show me a high-density city that is not extremely expensive in the US. Just one. Without a car, people are trapped in their neighborhoods and whatever transit corridors are nearby. People in these cities can't easily go camping, hiking, or even take their kids for the weekly grocery trip and haul back a half a dozen bags. Walkable cities, while nice to walk through limits one's options to live a full life. Public transit is mostly fine to get to work and if it is really good, go out for an evening. Other than that it is awful. You are advocating for a terrible existence constantly surrounded by people and noise and limited movement. pass
I'm reminded of a fatality last week that made the national news...a man was killed while returning to his car after helping some ducks across the road in Rocklin, CA, a suburban bedroom community outside of Sacramento. The location (Stanford Ranch Road and Park Drive) is an intersection of two stroads where the design fails to discourage drivers from slowing down.
@@kb_100because that teen in Stanford Ranch was obviously a farmer carrying a load of feed for the cattle on his family farm. Americans NEED 6,000 pound lifted trucks.
@@brianmiller5444 it's important to drive around in 6000 lbs of steel all year in case you suddenly feel the urge to build a deck and need to buy lumber immediately.
I remember a former coworker/traffic engineer laughing that every time someone (usually a local politician) asked/demanded a speed study, the guaranteed result woulf be higher speed limits. Sadly he was right.
I went to a county meeting over a proposed speed limit lowering. It's on a rural road with no accident problems, no schools, no pedestrians, no churches, etc. They lowered it from 55 to 45 and years later traffic goes the same speed but enforcement has increased. Speed limits are there for revenue generation, not safety.
Neighboring Jersey City, NJ has also reached 0 deaths on city streets. It has a much larger population, much larger roads that were put on extreme road diets, extensive traffic calming, daylighting, and leading pedestrian signals. (NJ actually has a state law it’s illegal to park with 25ft of a crosswalk/ intersections, Hoboken just started enforcing the existing law strictly) Hoboken and Jersey city started working together to connect their cycle lane networks etc… It’s turning into the largest continuous area in the USA with successful vision zero implementation where pedestrians don’t get killed just using the sidewalk. New Jersey also passed one of the strictest “Safe passing” laws last year. It’s illegal to get within 4 feet of any pedestrians or cyclists, illegal to pass them at more than 25mph, and you are not allowed to pass them unless it’s a legal passing zone. (That means you need to slow down to whatever speed a cyclists or pedestrians is going and not pass them until there is a passing lane.)
All of this looks like they they've completely thrown out their old design guides, took a few Europeans (Dutch, Swedish, German… whatever) and adapted those to US situations only where necessary (like a bit wider parking lanes). I only wonder, why the bike lane is on the left in a one-way street? I've never seen this here and it's a bit confusing but to some degree also makes sense (less dooring danger…).
@@kailahmann1823 maybe bike lanes on the left on a one-way street make more sense in the US because right turns at a red light are usually legal here?
@@kailahmann1823 bike lanes are typically on the right side because bicycles are slower traffic and slower traffic is usually put on the outer side, away from the middle of the street. On one-way streets, bicyclists can ride on either side if there is no bike lane, as either side will be on the side of the road and not in the middle. Car drivers, however, are in the practice of expecting things dangerous to them to be on the left side, because on a two-way street the opposing traffic is on the left side. Bike lanes are then put on the left side of one-way streets because that is the side to which car drivers have learned to pay more attention.
@@lurch789 speed does kill. The higher the speed the higher likelihood of death when a collision occurs. There are far more traffic deaths at higher speeds than there are at lower speeds. The lower the speed the higher the likelihood of survival. Even in Germany you can't drive 120 km/hr on neighborhood streets. It's on stretches of highways that the speed limit is removed.
You're so right. I live next to a two-way big street, basically a stroad. People go too fast on it, it makes even walking alongside it unconfortable because of the noise, people honking, motorcycles weaving in the bus lane. It's very annoying, and an unpleasant environment. And in the end you make a very fair point abour the death toll, that as a society we find "normal"... it's not. It's not normal. Also, are the USA responsible for exporting their car centric vision for cities to the rest of the world ?
Yes. Especially the vacation island territories and Mexico. Just annihilating forests to pave over it while the road is already choked with traffic mainly from tourists going to the same place. Very sad. Especially thinking about many of the people born there not making enough to afford a car.
While you're correct in saying that the aparent acceptance of death tolls is not "norma", I would add that a similar pattern seems to apear in other areas. We do the same thing with guns or Catholic priest child abuse, for example. Just ignore that issue because it's messy and no one wants to really deal with it, and move on to make a bigger deal about something far less significant. It is not actually, and should never be, normal.....but by definition, it seems to have become so.
I grew up in Metro-Detroit amongst the endless 1-mile-square super blocks of arterial stroads. Myself and everyone I talked to just expected to drive at least 10mph over the speed limit on every street all of the time. I then moved to Vancouver, BC. Vancouver has its share of stroads (it’s in North America), but it has far fewer of them north of the Fraser River, and even the ones it does tend to have narrower lanes. I naturally find myself driving at or even below the speed limit most of the time. It has nothing to do with the signs or the enforcement, and is simply about the width of the lanes. It isn’t rocket science.
I'm glad I'm not alone in noticing this. EVERYONE here in Metro Detroit drives 5 mph over the speed limit on streets, roads, and stroads and 10 mph (or more) over the limit on freeways.
@@BigDonkMongohell yeah. The lodge is bad Fucking ass though. I just wish Detroit would have a little something more than freeways. Like a nice couple of rail lines along the freeways? Idk I love Detroit through all of its faults lol.
Yah. Vancouver is significantly better then most North American cities. Translink even offers one of the best transit systems out of any in the US and Canada. Over in maple ridge it's a bit worse as we are much more of a suburb.
This is actually perfect timing with a accident near me that happened. A 6 year old boy was hit on his bike crossing a intersection with his parents. His bike got destroyed but he only had minor injuries. It was a hit and run too. The police department got him a new bike and he’s riding again thankfully. Another interesting factor with this crash was it was a a intersection that isn’t set up properly for the amount of traffic. It’s a 4 way stop sign next to a school and creek trail. It connects up with a highway, which just had a bunch of new housing development built on one end. There is enough car traffic to warrant a traffic light. There aren’t even any flashing crossing lights just a crossing guard when schools out. From what I’ve heard and read, residents have been demanding a safer intersection for years since now and only in the past 5 years had traffic really picked up. The cities response was that they don’t have the resources right now for one, and it would take about 9 months to get one installed because it would needed to be added to the budget. Yet they kept planning for new hotels and retirement homes and single family lots while only adapting to traffic safety needs when they have to. Why? There’s no money for repairs because there is so much, only for new investments that “look” like a nice return. More and more of these forgotten intersection are going to come into light over the next years
This is most likely an exemple of what Not Just Bikes describes in this video : "Why Américain cities are broken" ruclips.net/video/7IsMeKl-Sv0/видео.html
Ponder this--: Children are 25% of the population- 100% of the future? And what is the rate of childhood deaths by car accidents/ collisions,etc! Have the politicians factored that statistical factor into the cost/benefit analysis?? Thank you 😇 😊!
When I lived in Okazaki, Japan, there was a local committee that met every month to discuss neighborhood problems. Usually they had nothing to discuss and and went drinking afterward. But I brought up to them that a lot of people were avoiding the major streets and taking a neighborhood road because there weren't any traffic lights on it. When drove on the street they drove at a high speed. We didn't have power to order police to patrol the street more. Police don't really do that here very much. (A city's revenue doesn't depend on the number of tickets the police can write. If it did, the people here would revolt!) But we could request to the city to put in a traffic light or speed bump. The intersection was also 1 block from the local school and there had been several close calls. That was enough for the city. We got a traffic light just to slow down the speeders. (Personally I would've gone with the speed bump, but the traffic light cost more and I think the city got a kickback from the company. Yes, that's how things work in Japan. There is a level of corruption here).
Also speed bumps f**king suck and penalize good drivers more than bad drivers. Speed bumps do surprisingly little if you speed excessively, often you'll just glide right over them.
My neighborhood in Seoul was bisected by a narrow two lane street, with no sidewalks. Despite all the speed bumps, it was a deadly speedway frequently used to bypass the parallel stroad. It motivated me to learn some choice phrases in Korean so I could yell at, especially, taxi drivers. A local bar owner gave me a road cone for my birthday. Your channel is my new favorite, I missed my calling as a city planner, or traffic warden!
Two things not mentioned about how just lowering the speed limit without infrastructure changes helps. First a lot of people will only drive a certain amount over the limit, usually 10. So dropping it to 20 will get the average driver to go only 30. Second in the US at least the speed of a road dictates what types of changes you can make to it. So lowering it allows you to make incremental design changes that will slow people down. Yes you could just redesign the whole road and change the speed limit at the same time but as was already noted that's expensive.
I'm skeptical of the first claim. We have data-collection methods that objectively report how fast people drive at a given location, which is far more credible than some subjective proxy that is prone to reporting bias (we are likely to THINK that we are only doing 10 MPH over the speed limit when, in reality, we may be traveling faster). Practical solutions should be based in science and observable data; wishful thinking...such as lowering speed limits without doing anything else...is how we kick the proverbial can down the (st)road to become the next generation's problem.
I would challenge how much of an effect that would truly have beyond a certain threshold- for example, lowering a speed limit from 45 to 35 might get a large enough portion of drivers to slow down to have an effect, but if you took a 6 lane stroad and set the speed limit from 45 to 20, I would wager that a majority of people would drive the speed they felt 'comfortable' driving, and would only adjust speeds if there was a visible cop (and then speed up again right afterwards). I think that this is a problem that is fundamentally intersectional (hah)- you can try to attack it from one angle, but unless you can adjust things in concert with one another, you're just putting lipstick on a pig. A speed limit adjustment, plus easily deployable traffic calming (jersey barriers, painted street parking), plus things to discourage driving THROUGH an area vs around it (congestion pricing, changing roads to be one way, speed tables) should produce large effects. And I think that the more small scale interventions you can do and show that the sky isn't falling just cause you have to take a roundabout way to your destination, the easier it will be to implement the expensive and truly difficult things like street redesigns, pedestrianization, and things that make it harder to drive.
@@sirrebral IMO +10 is a fair approximation of observed behavior, when the road design is consistent with the speed. I agree that it's not going to work on multilane roads without a lot of enforcement. I took the comment as referring to traffic-calming devices, especially central islands and elevated crosswalks/intersections, which designers tend to not want to permit until the road gets down to the neighborhood level, even though they can be safely used at thru-traffic speeds.
@@mf--there will never be enough enforcement, which is expensive and requires more manpower than many resource and personnel constrained police departments have these days. Plus, increased contact with police leads to other, often dangerous results. Especially when there is racial bias, which there almost always is.
i've been a "man i wish public transit was better" guy ever since i got in my first car accident and realized i am definitively not an "above average driver" 🙂
There seems to also be a critical mass needed for quantity of non-4 wheel traffic before drivers are in the habit of checking. I live in rural Canada along a 2 lane 50 km/h (30 mph) highway and as one of the few who drives a non-F150 (motorcycle, bicycle, subcompact car) I often have people pulling out in front of me as if I'm invisible.
Everyone else drives an F-150.........one person drives a smaller vehicle. But it's everyone else's fault that the one person feels unsafe. That's idiotic progressive self-centred thinking, right there.
I know I'm part of the problem. But I can't help but to see how fast I can go past a camera in the old town that shows you how fast you are going. It's quite difficult, since it's a cobblestone road and I'm usually riding a unicycle
Those signs around here only show your speed up to 5 over the speed limit, at which point they switch to saying "Slow Down" in an effort to prevent people from trying to set the high score.
What's a real cherry on top is when the city places a nice bench right up next to a stroad as if anyone wants to sit there in all the noise, exhaust, nothing to look at but concrete and cars, and potentially have someone fly off the road doing 50mph and take them out 🤣
There’s a big discussion going on in Germany at the moment concerning the topic of lower speed limits. Federal law currently states city speed limit is 50 kph (~35mph), unless there are a few specific reasons to have a lower one (usually 30). A growing number of cities want to be able to set the limit to 30 (~20 mph) wherever they see fit. Because currently they are often forced to post a higher speed limit, even if the city and residents agree on lowering it. Some want to go further and set the base limit for their city to 30 and post 50 where it’s permitted (currently the speed limit is 50, if not otherwise postet).
I hope one day in the future we will look back and laugh about how could people live everyday having to deal with possible lethal situations everytime you have to cross a street.
you know that you can just look to your left and to your right before/when crossing the road? I know a lot of people here will call me a monster for saying that but YES, I think that pedestrians should use their eyes... Some dumb people might even say that this is"blaming the victim" but no, this is just telling the victim that he wouldnt be the victim if he did something so simple like looking to his left and right almost all accidents with pedestrian could be avoided if the pedestrian just looked and made sure that the person in the car can see him and will have enough time to stop But sadly less and less people nowaday cross the street responsibly, because there is some dumb "trend" that all people in cars are criminals which means that the pedestrian is never at fault so he can just jump in front of the car without even looking, because of course"hurr durr car bad" And i know you will just say "thats why everone should drive 10km/h to be 100% sure that they can stop in case someone decides to jump under your wheels!!! " but where does it stop? Maybe people should be banned from leaving their homes because its so dangerous??? edit: damn the angry "car bad" mob here is insane, reasoning with these people is so pointless....
I think the "muh freedom" reaction often comes from a place of insecurity: "are you saying I'm too stupid to drive safely?" Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
@@gjits5307 regular retesting or ongoing driver training could help. Living in a nation where everyone getting a licence needs to have first aid training (8 hours) is preferable to not doing so but data suggests utility of that reduces after 2 and 5 years. I hope to see change on the subject
What blows my mind is that 40 or 50 years ago vehicle-related death rates in the US were clearly lower than in Europe, and now they are something like three times as high. As cars have gotten safer, while Europe has also improved things like speed enforcement and traffic calming, while the US has backed off of enforcing traffic laws and has been very half-hearted about traffic calming, and much of it is because people seem to think they have the right to drive faster.
I think going back to no turn on red would help a lot as well. If I had a nickel for every time someone almost murdered me turning right on red I would be rich. Also, with technology today, perhaps we could have governors that stop cars from running red lights and/or pedestrian crossings.
In Seattle, no right on red is now standard policy, implemented each time the traffic control equipment at an intersection gets overhauled. The drivers do it anyway. At one of the recently remodeled intersections on my commute, I now stop in the left turn box for the bike lane on the crossing street. That causes me to plug up the corner, and make an illegal right on red impractical.
"If I had a nickel for every time someone almost murdered me turning right on red I would be rich." So 10 cents would be "rich"? Having no turn on red is just needlessly stacking up cars waiting for nothing 99.9999% of the time.
@@xandercruz900 clearly, you've never ridden a bicycle along traffic in urban area in the US. It's pretty common round' these parts, at least where I live. Like, happens almost daily common.
@@traviskitteh I've rode a bike plenty of times. I also rode DEFENSIVELY and didnt think by the protection of a traffic light, I am immune to stupid people. And if you are riding on the street....why are you riding to the right of a car in the right lane anyway?
Regarding the perceived speed limit, there is a stretch of road in Las Vegas (technically unincorporated Clark County) right off the I-15. It starts with 3 lanes that do not travel in a straight line, likely intended to reduce speed once the area is more developed, however since open desert is on both sides it often sees highway speeds in a 45 zone. Then in transitions to a 35mph zone with 2 schools along it and a 3rd not far from it. Cars frequently travel 60+ in this area including a number of FedEx vans (which I have watched one go at least 65mph through both active school zones). While I could complain about how the section of road has non-ADA compliment crosswalks, missing sidewalks, or how it has a bus only stop which has never once had a bus stop at it, unlike developed roads it is still being worked on. This is what infuriates me the most, since trying to bring up the issue with the people who are planning and developing the area choose to ignore the hazards or concerns of the nearby residents. The stroad I am talking about Starr Ave. between Bermuda and the I-15. The worst thing is that an arterial roadway (one often shown on the channel for good reason), St. Rose Parkway, already is a high speed connection to the I-15.
Yes I know that road, live very close by. It's insane, but so are many of the roads here in Vegas. Roads have 3 lanes, then suddenly only one lane, or has 3 lanes and still the same width but suddenly NO lane markings. Never seen roads anywhere else as bizarre as they are in Vegas (maybe all NV?). And all the pavement, unless it's just freshly paved, is SLICK AS SNOT! The streets and freeways here are ridiculously slippery, as slick as roads in other states that are wet. Slick pavement, crazy huge roads with lanes that make no sense, plus the 'wild west' culture all make getting around here quite treacherous.
Another way to dramatically reduce pedestrian deaths as well as car crashes is to turn intersections into roundabouts, aka traffic circles. Fully 50 percent of all traffic fatalities are from people speeding through an intersection to beat the red light. Roundabouts are enormously effective in calming traffic.
I can already hear the objections. "What if I need to get to the hospital fast? Huh?" Like that is such a common situation it makes sense to organize everything around it. But of course, getting to the hospital ALIVE might be an important priority in that situation as well.
Also there are these things called ambulances, the drivers of which have the additional training necessarily to identify when and how to use exemptions to the traffic laws to get the patient to the hospital safely and without overwhelming the hospitals limited resources to deal with patients in critical condition by creating more patients in critical condition that will also need to be rushed to the local hospital. There is a reason why in first aid the first thing you learn is not put yourself in a position that will create more casualties, it is counterproductive.
It's already illegal to speed, even in cases of emergencies. So, a speed control device is still useful. Course, you could call an ambulance, then the medical team comes to you.
@@famitoryThis is true, but I think the EMT’s should also have the right to refuse to take you if you’re not in critical condition or an emergency situation. Right now they can’t really do that, and if ambulances are free I could see that really straining their ability to respond to all situations.
2024 we get different speed limits for different cars. A 3 series even if it's going 40 when a truck is going 30 can stop faster, see earlier, and hit lighter.
We have had freight trains and much larger vehicles than SUVs for over a century, and we knew how to keep pedestrians safe from them. You gotta keep them separated
Sedan/compact car design: slow and angled so hitting a person causes them to fall over onto the hood Truck & SUV (AKA truck with back hatch instead of bed) design: big flat surface to push a person down and underneath the car Whhhyyyyy is this still legal, why aren't you required to have a higher tier of license to drive one of these stupid things?
It’s usually the poorly educated low brow people who drive pick up trucks and big SUVs. There is a channel on RUclips called notjustbikes where he points out that the car companies admitted to targeting “assholes” to sell big vehicles to
speeders generally ignore speed limits, so it makes no difference if it is 30 mph or 20 mph. if you really want to slow them down, reduce four lane roads to two lane roads. That makes roads safer, and reduces congestion.
Some people are willing to speed, but not excede the speed limit for that much, so they will still speed, but not as fast. Also some people will follow the speed limit and will slow everyone down.
@@OnkelJajusBahn if you are slowing everyone down by going the speed limit, that is a good thing. If however there are four lanes, then speeders just use the outside lane as a high speed passing lane, which is extra dangerous for bicyclists.
That's not 100% accurate. Lots of drivers exceed the posted speed limit, but most only by a calculated amount they think they can get away with. If the posted speed limit is 15, very few people will drive more than 30. If the posted speed is 30, lots of people will drive as high as 35 or 40. It does have a very significant effect. Still, this is obviously not enough, and you're absolutely right that more effective traffic calming measures exist and should be used in tandem with lowering posted speed limits.
There's a movement in my city called 15 is plenty where they are trying to lower the speed limit to 15 on most roads. They have started making the streets thinner or adding protected bikelanes but have not yet lowered speed limits
Germany has been blocking some cities from setting the default for 50km/h (20 ish miles) to 30 (slightly less than 15), requiring justifications for every single street 😞
@@lurch789 Driving that slow is less about actually hitting something being safer and more about not hitting something at all. The ability to react fast enough is significantly better at 15 than 60. I can cruise on a bicycle at 15. You don’t need a seatbelt at that speed. I don’t need a helmet at that speed, I wear one more because it’s bright yellow and being seen is the most important part of cycling on roads.
A man driving a minivan was killed here last week when he was T-boned by a guy driving an F-250 Super Duty going 50 MPH (under the speed limit). If he had been going 20 MPH instead, even in that completely ridiculous vehicle, the victim would still be alive. Hell, there probably wouldn't have been a crash in the first place, because slower speeds leave more time for braking. Our current road speeds aren't even safe for the people IN CARS, let alone pedestrians and cyclists.
Modern cars have speed governors to prevent them overrunning the speed ratings of their tires. But a governor for an H rated tire can be set as high as 130MPH and for V ratings, even higher.
I'd love to see something examining whether one way streets or two way streets are safer for cyclists and pedestrians. My city wants to change most of the one way streets to two way to ease driver frustration, but I feel like this will be much less safe for pedestrians and cyclists dealing with cars coming from all directions. I feel safer biking on one way streets. The flow of traffic is predictable, cars can pass me easily if they want. If they become two way, that won't work well.
i prefer biking on 1 way streets as well, although I usually go the wrong way. That way cars should always approach me from ahead, where I can see them with plenty of time for evasive maneuvers, should that be necessary
The downside to current one-way streets for safety is that it's simpler for drivers, which leads to higher speed and less attention. One way streets need to work even harder to force drivers to be alert and safe.
I particularly don't like 2 way streets with only one lane in each direction, add in parked cars on the sides and cyclists have absolutely nowhere to go. And cars stuck behind you get extra frustrated because they can't pass you at all.
In regard to speed governors, I think that the resistance will be close to that of what happens when we discuss guns in this country. In regard to New York City, I can say that in my neighborhood, one type of infrastructure has made a major difference: speed cameras. In the Rockaways, on Seagirt Boulevard, a main route at one end of the peninsula, people regularly were driving 65 and over in a 30 mph zone. Dropping the speed limit to 25 just meant that those of us trying to keep close to the speed limit were constantly threatened with being rear-ended by lunatics. Putting in speed cameras along the Rockaway peninsula instantly changed that. The traffic moves along at the requisite 34 in a 25 mph zone (i.e. just under the ticketing threshold). I don't feel the same pressure while driving, and I have not seen the speed freaks out zooming along. New York City has delusional traffic engineering in many ways. The fact that eye-level traffic lights aren't required (a truth across NYS) is a real problem in a city where you are often making complex traffic decisions very close to an intersection, where it is impossible to see the overhead lights. The fact that the paint used for highway marking is noticeably less reflective than the kind used in other states creates insanity when it rains. There are a profusion of other very stupid decisions in the city. But speed cameras do work as a kind of external governor, and they should be expanded.
Same mess in Portland Oregon. There are NO eye level traffic signals which leads California drivers (CA requires eye level traffic signals) that are following a big rig to accidently run red lights at major intersections. You cant see the road markings here when it rains And the view of pedestrians waiting to cross at a crosswalk is obscured by parked cars at over 99% of our intersections. Not to mention emerging from a side street onto a collector street with cars parked up until the intersection
@@frafraplanner9277 I have sympathy for New York's rules allowing cars to park all the way to the stop sign, because yeah, parking, etc., blah, blah, but it's clearly dangerous. It would be politically impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, but it's so freaking dangerous.
@@frafraplanner9277 As a fellow Portlander, thinking about it, I haven't felt the lack of eye-level traffic signals for most situations, at worst it's that the light turns green while I'm still looking at oncoming traffic. That said, Portland absolutely needs to adopt the crosswalk daylighting they do in Hoboken, omg. It would make it so much safer for drivers too! It blows my mind how there doesn't appear to be any rules about parking in front of stop signs either
@@Dysiode I'm from California, so when I started accidentally running red lights because of a truck/van in front of me, I eventually figured out why California traffic lights have that unique "look" that other states dont Also, it can be hard to see stop signs sometimes because of Portland exemption from the state law on parking before a stop sign. It's ridiculous
A quick skeptical anecdote about the "20 is Plenty" movement. A couple of years ago, Minneapolis passed a citywide 20 MPH speed limit ordinance. I've observed that very few people (myself included) actually drive that slowly, but most of us have slowed down a bit. But it seems that the reckless drivers have gotten even more brazenly reckless in their annoyance at being behind slow cars. As I just witnessed today while I was out for a run during the hour between seeing this video had gone live and watching it: on West River Parkway (which already had a lower-than-normal 25 MPH speed limit before), it is now fairly common to see people aggressively passing slower cars, even if those "slower" cars are already going ~10 over. Bear in mind that not only is there an implied "no passing" rule within city limits, this particular road even has a solid double yellow line to make that rule explicit. I'm not saying we shouldn't lower the speed limit; I'm just skeptical of how much impact doing that, with no additional infrastructure changes, can have. To be fair, Minneapolis has also added a lot of "road furniture" (as the European cycling TV commentators like to call it) in various places to further regulate speed. But on the parkways, we just have this minor speed limit reduction, and my impression (no hard data) is that it has *increased* reckless driving.
Then we gotta start identifying those reckless drivers and removing licenses. Take them off the roads completely if their response to "slow down" is "speed up".
@@youtubeuniversity3638 That's easy to say, much harder to implement, especially in a city that is already dealing with the effects of overly aggressive policing.
Widespread adoption of roundabouts would also help encourage drivers to slow down, much more than any posted speed limit. Many drivers feel they "have" to speed between stop signs, or even between speed bumps. Just last night I was passed on the right by a driver going at least 60 in a 45 MPH zone, who then ran a red light. This is a street where homeless people are rampant and I'm much more worried about colliding with one of them than a cyclist at night.
roundabouts are great. recently one was built near my work. oh how people complained, and the locals disparaged each other so much: "people will be confused, it's going to be a disaster" and they still do that even though it seems to have worked seamlessly and the intersection is doubtlessly safer.
@@adjsmith - In my opinion, drivers in the States drive single-lane roundabouts easily. The trouble is multi-lane roundabouts. However, by adding separate paths for right-turning vehicles, a single-lane roundabout can work very well for moderately-trafficked streets. There is one on Carlsbad Blvd. (former U.S. 101) north of Carlsbad, which handles three different streets. It works well, even though many of the drivers (and cyclists and pedestrians) are visitors unfamiliar with the area, and it is regularly used by buses and emergency vehicles. It is fed by three two-lane streets, with the space formerly used by additional lanes given over to sidewalks and bicycle trails.
On a bicycle, I find roundabouts terrifying. I've even one of the old school John Forester Vehicular Cycling guys, since the '70's. Maybe it's just as I'm getting old, I don't have the nerves of steel anymore. The drivers are looking for cars. Bicycles are invisible to them, so their entrance to the roundabout is a rolling stop on steroids, right at me. In addition, in the Seattle area, I find most drivers don't go around the roundabout for their left turn. They momentarily pretend Seattle is a left hand drive place and cut the short way across. That's the scariest situation of all. With my yellow jacket and flashing front light, they still can't see me, and suddenly I've got a fast moving car in my lane, coming right at me, and they can't swerve to their right, because of the roundabout curb on their right, and I can't swerve to my right, because of the curb at the edge of the road on my right. I hate roundabouts! I stick to the arterials as much as possible, because they don't have roundabouts.
The two problems with roundabouts are 1) they can be problematic in heavy traffic (I know, the irony...) and 2) they're troublesome when your bike network is essentially integrated into your car network. NOW, that said, obviously the solution is to reduce traffic by introducing better land use and transportation policy (more mixed use, bike lanes, better more regular transit, safer environments for pedestrians), in which case roundabouts can be a useful tool in the system, but as it stands, they are sadly not too effective in the U.S. beyond simple, single lane traffic circles.
@@nickmonks9563 I don't know how you ride or on what, but roundabouts slow cars down enough that cyclists can ride with traffic. They work extremely well with e-bikes. As I said, single lane circles but they can be supplemented with right turn lanes, what traffic engineers call a "free right"; that often allows a single lane circle to handle more traffic than it would otherwise.
"You'd assume the government would do something about it." Uhm, alcohol, guns, unaffordable health care ... ... I for one am making no such assumption.
The government tried to get rid of alcohol it went terribly caused an over incarceration problem and made a lot of gangs wealthy and then they tried with drugs and it was even worse
The government did try to "do something" about alcohol once and it led to a mess that led to the current failure that is the drug war. Trying to ban alcohol would go over even worse now than in the 1920s.
The one cavet I'd add to speed governors is that, on interstates/proper highways, it can be safer to go above the speed limit briefly when passing to reduce your time side to side with another vehicle or 18-wheeler. For example, if they're going 68 and you're limited to the limit at 70, you're at a greater risk than if you speed up to 75 to pass them.
Holy heck someone with a brain. As a truck driver stuck at 65, it's always so infuriating when some car capable 100+ blocks up the passing lane(s) at 66~67. There are a million little things I wish drivers knew, but the main one is to pass at 5+ mph difference. If another truck is governed, I'll slow down a bit so just they can complete their pass faster.
This is why autobahns have no limit entirely. Yeah it enables high speed all the way but for most drivers no limit really means you can speed up to overtake and everyone spreads out in their own space. A herd of vehicles all driving slowly together on a freeway seems more dangerous
I watch a few of your videos every day and they are all so well done and thought provoking. I never knew about speed governors and now I'm curious if I'll see them implemented in my lifetime.
I run against a lot of resistance from people when I mention that speed limits are too high. They argue that they're going somewhere. And I counter with you'll get there going 25mph or 45mph only at the first speed you and everyone else will get there alive. They think _their_ time is more valuable than others'. Don't get me started on how they react when I say we need bendy roads.
And then point out how much faster it would be if public transportation were prioritized and people weren't stuck motionless in traffic a large fraction of the time. That is quite a conversation ender.
@@knutthompson7879 I had a related thought recently. If the traffic systems you design have huge numbers of cars sitting at multiple intersections for minutes at a time you have failed at making a decent transportation system.
The only objection I'd have to speed limiters is if they're hard limiters: The one time when it's not just perfectly reasonable but right-out morally and whatnot required to exceed the speed limit is to avoid a crash by accelerating that can't be avoided by breaking... but that's only for very short periods of time and feel free to blare increasingly annoying warning sounds for every second you're over the limit. Hard limiter only after 10-20 seconds or so, should be plenty.
Here in the suburbs of Chicago, they build 4 or 5 lane roads with 10' wide lanes and plant a 45 mph speed limit sign on it like they expect people to not drive 55-60 mph or more on them. Up in Wisconsin you can find narrow 2 lane residential roads with no shoulders and 45 mph speed limit signs, but you'd be wary to go faster than 35 mph. Road builders and the guidelines they go off of don't seem to take the psychology of feeling safe while driving into account and work off of arbitrary numbers.
In the short term, there may be some technology hurdles in implementing speed governors. I've driven in cars that attempt to read the speed limit signs with cameras and show them next to your spedometer, and I've seen how apps like Google Maps attempt to show you the speed limit of the road you're driving on. I would say either of these solutions only have maybe an 80-90% accuracy. Especially since there is a lot of grey area you might need to account for. Like, you just turned off a 30 MPH street onto a highway on-ramp and you need to speed up to 65. In the former example, the car won't think the speed limit is changed until after you merge onto the highway and pass another speed limit sign. Lots of edge cases that might make hard cap governing challenging to implement well. As much as I don't love them (even though I rarely speed in cities), speed camera might be a better solution. Focus them on stroads and other urban/suburban areas where they're most needed. The better next step is to redesign the streets/stroads to encourage lower speeds though. Including stuff like more/better pedestrian crossings, increased visibility, all that good stuff. Even simply narrowing the lanes can do a lot. It can be expensive and take time though to do it well, which is why cameras could be an interim solution. I personally am not in favor of them in environments like freeways though. Keep people slow in the city, but fast on true highways is okay with me.
Are people intentionally plotting murders via automobile-to-other rammings? Like 1st degree premeditated stuff? And target specific people by name? And not just Mafia stuff?
That's why they called "accidents". Unless you were doing premeditated plotting of individually targeted murders by ramming, no one intends of plans or desires to get an accident. Otherwise they call it an "on purpose"
No, more like a harm through gross negligence. In some countries could be called manslaughter. There is a competitive social pressure from other drivers to operate their vehicles outside the safe operating envolope determined by response times and physical laws. The high posted speed limit simply grants permission for this.
The term "violence" usually implies someone causing someone else's physical harm. In theaters, if not causes willfully it's usually classified as peril if there is not sentient will if causing physical harm. In the US, the term is "vehiclular homicide". Whether it's vehicular manslaughter or murder, both use the same term. Yet the difference depends on intent. Maybe violence can be accidental. I always though peril was natural/intrinsic danger, and violence had willful intent to cause danger/harm.
I'm one of the rare truck drivers that supports the speed limiter mandate and it makes me very unpopular with my colleagues. Every heavy American truck made since 1999 has a speed limiter in it, but only a couple Canadian provinces require a specific limiter setting (105kph/65mph). In the USA & the rest of Canada the setting is up to the owner. I hope the new FMCSA rule actually has teeth and slows down semis to a reasonable highway speed, but I half expect the Administration to fumble it and pick something silly like 75mph. 65 to 70 is the general industry consensus but 55 to 60 would be better for emissions & overall safety.
@@Nat3ski That is the wildest aspect to me, all the people saying it won't help or that it will make things worse and even be more dangerous, they're all talking theoretically like we aren't one of the last countries on Earth without speed limited trucks. Everywhere that has implemented speed limiters in trucks has had immediate and quantifiable safety benefits, even in Ontario where there's only about 80% compliance with the mandate, they've seen huge reductions in at-fault crashes involving trucks.
There's an owner operator group that loves to argue that the speed differential is too dangerous like there aren't autobahns in Germany & Austria where semis are doing 50mph (80kph) next to cars doing 80+mph (130+kph) every single day.
@@EllieODaire "they're all talking theoretically like we aren't one of the last countries on Earth without speed limited trucks" Ah yes, typical American "there's nothing we can do to prevent this problem that only occurs in our country" mentality. Gotta love it. And in case anyone missed the sarcasm, by love I mean absolutely despise.
11:00 nailed it. Literally everyone that drives, me included, care more about not getting a ticket then safety. I can assure you of this because I bought a white crown vic 14 years ago and had for a year. I never seen such good driving in my life driving around a decommissioned cop car.
The video we need! Every since I started driving, I wondered why the heck do I have the ability the go over 100 mph in a 2+ ton metal cage? Yet, here we are speeding governing scooters and ebikes?! Driver entitlements run deep in American culture and its this deeply felt emotional infrastructure that must be overcome to stop the needless death and suffering.
@@smileyeagle1021 Yup. No silver bullets, but a host of things that would help: small displacement motors, graduated licenses for larger and larger motors, more frequent re-licensing, taxing vehicles w/o governors, tax breaks for speed limited vehicles, etc.
You will be delighted to learn that mods working around speed governors on scooters and ebikes are common, popular and accessible. A buddy of mine has an ebike where the app has a checkbox that straight up says "I'm driving on a private road; let me speed."
@@mrowlbert "more frequent re-licensing" And the re-licensing should include re-testing too. I was shocked the last time I had to renew my license and they're just like "okay that'll be $xx, stand there for the new photo" and that was all.
I’m shocked the truck speed isn’t enforced in the US. Here in France, truck speed limit is REALLY respected. You can be sure all semi on the freeway are driving at 90km/h no more, no less. They have a tachymeter memorizing the truck speeds on a period (hours or days?) and can be controlled at any time by the cops. Very effective
Needed this today after a cyclist got hit on our route headed to school for the kid. I guarantee nothing gets changed about the intersection and everyone goes back to their lives. Probably just user error! Nothing we can do to stop things like this happening again!
Vision Zero came to my city a few years ago, and ironically, I hated it a lot more when I was just a pedestrian & public transit user. I really resented no longer being allowed to cross at uncontrolled intersections when it was safe, having instead to push a beg button and wait for a light to permit it. However, when I got a car, I Vision Zero didn't bother me any more, because the "pedestrian safety" measures are so car-centric, I think they actually make car traffic flow more smoothly.
Cleveland decided in 2018 to have a "vision zero" policy and we've had a _lot_ of meetings. Yup. Many many meetings. And finally we got consultants to write an Action Plan last August. So good, now there's an Action Plan. The lack of urgency though.
Thank you for this video. I’ve been quietly mentioning the need for some form of coercion to get drivers to follow speed limits to anyone who’d listen for the last six or so years.
I live in Hoboken and cannot agree more with all of the work that our city has done; but yeah, it's a mile square city, which makes a lot of these kinds of changes feasible to implement because it's just so small. I walk the length of the city on a near daily basis (although it's usually my the waterfront)
here's an idea: physically separate the "go fast from here to there" areas from the areas people actually do things. stroads aren't caused by building a highway through a shopping mall. they are caused by building shopping malls on highways. and stop using induced demand as an excuse not to build roads just to move cars from point A to point B. a town near me built a bypass. and guess what the induced demand from that bypass did. it made the town walkable, because most of the people who just want to get to the other side of the town use the bypass.
I don’t do much city driving. When I do, I acknowledge my lack of visual cue recognition for that environment. I turn off the radio and don’t attempt to carry on conversation with passengers. I also take extra looks at interactions and try to spot visual obstructions that could be hiding pedestrians. The locals get upset because of my cautious driving, but I try to remain calm and polite. I think my disabled veteran tag reduces people’s road rage.
I had to pick something up from Hoboken a few weeks ago. Trained from Brooklyn over there and walked the rest of the way, about 25 minutes. It's an amazing city. Never felt unsafe walking around there, and there were lots of families with small kids out walking as well. Seeing how people were acting when crossing and how they were handling their small children speaks volumes to the traffic engineering going on there.
I've seen multiple articles saying that lowering posted speed limit does slow down traffic. Obviously people aren't all keeping to the speed limit, and maybe the proportion of speeders increases, but the average speed does go down.
City I live in, St. Albert a bedroom City for Edmonton, they’re way of dealing with vision zero is changing residential roads to a slower speed, no left turn reds on the main road, and busy intersections, most roads have curves for traffic calming.
The TxDOT crash reporting system doesn't capture most of the bike/ped location data in my city. So we can't improve if you can't even locate problems. We have 15ft wide lanes on a residential collector, same width as a highway, where people regularly speed (and has a higher than average crashes) and the city staff doesn't think this is related.
The municipality of Amsterdam is going to lower most speed limits on major inner city roads to 20 mph later this year, which seems totally fair as you can’t even do half that in average speed during the day, plus it’s way safer.
Disappointed that the video didn't cover the topic raised on the thumbnail: "Is 20 plenty." I drive a street legal electric buggy (NEV/LSV GEM car) - it's mostly a recreational vehicle, but I occasionally use it as practical transportation. It has a top speed of around 25 mph. (Faster downhill.) I'm amazed that when driving within the city limits of Rochester NY, how adequate this speed feels and how I usually have no trouble keeping up with traffic.
It's so weird when you think about it that e-bikes and scooters have governors but cars do not. Can't have other modes of transportation that interfere with my freedom to drive!
@12:38 We do put speed governors on e-scooters because that's a safety problem but 4,000 pound vehicles going at 60 MPH in the city, that's just as God intended.
That 85th percentile rule is maddening. “You don’t want to make 80-90% of the drivers criminals!” Well, if you want speed limits to ACTUALLY shape behaviour you would. In the UK when they mandated seatbelts a lot of people got tickets the very day it was instituted. When they reduced rural roads from 40 to 30 for pedestrian safety lots of people got tickets because they hadn’t read the signage in decades. Same for when it got reduced again to 20.
There are some really dystopian effects of governor laws. Personally I'd much rather we implement checkpoint speed cameras, but people hate those and throw them out whenever they're implemented.... I still think that'd be easier to implement.
They'll suffer a similar fate as relight cameras. Mailing a ticket is not being legally served and can be ignored. Also, revenue hungry cities would be encouraged to set even more speed tape than they currently do.
As a cyclist, I'd love to see the urban focus shift away from car centrism, but I will not demonize the motor vehicle as so many cycling advocates do. Cars do not kill. Bad driving kills. Carelessness, on everyone's part, kills. A key reason so many people are killed in cars and by cars is that it's way too easy for motorists in the US to get and maintain an operator's license--the states' standards are simply too low. Penalties for bad driving and unauthorized driving are way too soft. There are speed-mitigating measures we can take, and all the truly effective ones are engineering and design changes, not rule changes. Physically limiting motor vehicle speeds has been around a long time; e.g., most countries in Europe mandate limiters on over-the-road trucks. But in the US, at least, the auto industry lobby makes sure that legislators' palms are sufficiently greased to preclude speed-limiting and/or acceleration rate limiting technology from ever becoming a thing on private cars and trucks. The same lobby fights against any legislative initiative that would do anything to make driving in our cities less attractive. Get rid of that lobbying force, and the problems will quickly be solvable.
The "cars don't kill people, people kill people" argument has always been flimsy because if you remove cars from the equation there's not suddenly going to be something else that fills the murder void. I agree with everything else you said but it's undeniable cars, as an independently owned and operated vehicle, are going to kill people much more than anything else on the road simply by design, especially as they get bigger and heavier.
@@user-xsn5ozskwg But cars operate with drivers, not by themselves. And "murder" is very rare with motor vehicles. Most deaths are by accident. Further, if you adhere to the bigger and heavier rule for causing deaths, then commercial trucks would be the major killers, not cars. Who's going to advocate for removing those trucks from the roads? From some areas within cities, maybe. But even then, how will you get Twinkies to the Piggly Wiggly without trucks?
I actually asked some of my city officials recently what we can do to address speeding, the police chief said "hire more patrol officers" but admitted they would need easy more than they have budget for. I asked about speed cameras and they just said they aren't planning on using them. No luck either change road design, in fact they have a "modernization" effort underway which pretty much just means widening roads and adding lanes 😢
Recently moved to a midwestern city that’s a suburb of the capital, and this is one of those wealthy, rapidly growing cities in terms of development. Almost every intersection that was a light or stop sign is now a roundabout, and they’re building a ton of those street side apartments with shopping underneath (and a parking garage inside lol). They, like, almost get it. Traffic accidents have decreased significantly since they started introducing a bunch of roundabouts at least. I’ve started walking a lot, and it might not be so bad with small lanes and clearly defined pedestrian crossings if people in their huge Cadillac SUVs weren’t hellbent on taking those roundabouts as fast as possible.
Enforced governors on cars will no doubt be linked to either a dedicated network or your phone. Each car will be inspected to check the system just like emission controls are regulated. Cars will be regulated in speed by a central system mapping your location and giving it the max. speed for that area. Ungoverned cars will be captured on speed sensor camera's and when found impounded.
I believe that the automobile manufacturers have a vested interest in making bigger and faster vehicles, and that is the reason that things are getting worse for those of us that would rather walk, or bike to get somewhere.
Video Idea: Usefulness of Greenbelts to restrict urban sprawl or generally combat environmental degradation via housing development. While Greenbelts are often touted as the environmentally friendly win-win compromise between development and sustainable land use, case studies have thus far resulted in mixed results depending on the jurisdiction. A lot of the time, the success of a Greenbelt relies on its governing body (municipal, regional, state/provincial, or federal) to enact zoning/development regulations that inhibit sprawl, rather than finding the easy way out of a housing crisis. Additionally, the trade offs between long term vs. short term prosperity tend to influence government actions within protected areas.
The governors on scooters make them more dangerous because they can't keep up with even the slowest city driver on the street and that forces people to use them on the sidewalks, where pedestrians are.
Driving faster doesnt get you there quicker. It only mean youll wait longer at the next light (or even if you squeak by that light, then the one after it). When driving, ive found adaptive cruise control to be a great way to keep myself from drivong too fast. (Not sure how to get enough other to do that though.)
Speed limits in Auckland have been cut in several major tranches over the last few years. These changes have generally not been accompanied by infrastructure changes. DSIs have reduced on those parts of the road network. The first tranche was based on low hanging fruit, i.e. basically finding roads where the general driving speed was well below the speed limit anyway. However, I think it suggests that actually drivers pay attention to speed limits as a whole and therefore simply changing the speed limits works to some extent in suburban and urban roads.
The problem that I have with technological solutions like speed limiters is that technologies can always be circumvented and technologies always eventually fail, but they are regarded by people who do not have more than a superficial, marketing-level understanding of technology-and this includes most people who claim to be technology professionals-as magical panaceae. I'm not saying we should not employ these technologies to any extent, but that we should not and must not rely upon then as primary deterrents. Furthermore, the more advanced the technology, the more risky the implementation. There are a lot of people advocating for "geofencing" governors, but there's no plausible way to institute a failproof geofencing technology on a moving vehicle.
On city streets your speed is governed by cycle times at stop lights, sure, you can speed and get through one light, but then there's a good chance that you'll just get stuck at the next one. This is why it isn't significantly faster to drive a car vs a bike on most city streets. So if speeds were limited to 20 mph in cities I doubt there would be much impact on car throughput, while there would of course be a huge impact on safety
I’m recovering from a hit and run in the crosswalk. Thanks for talking about the issue. Especially with drunk drivers on the road, making everyone else pay the price, sometimes with their lives, seems a little ass backwards 🤕🤷♂️🤦♂️
in NYC we tried to collect data from driver's via their OBD-2 (data) port to measure hard breaking events to identify high-injury nodes ahead of time. For whatever reason, it was decided that this needed to be paired with rewards via a driver's insurance company and the auto-insurance regulations completely sank the project.
Yeah I remember my insurance company trying to push one of those data collectors on me. Big button promising lower rates and whatnot for using it. I click the button to learn more. And then it's like "lol ack-shully we don't have any discounts but you can still install it if you'd like" So obviously I didn't install it.
I find driving stressfull, particularly at high speed or in congested traffic situation. Consciously trying to manually adjust my speed as the speed limits change adds to the stress. I am looking forward to the time when speed limiting technology come standard on most cars. This will reduce my driving stress.
A few days ago I saw a headline about "Los Angeles(?) fining drivers lot that drive just a bit over the speed limit". As long as you have that mindset, you don't need to wonder about traffic casualties.
I’m in Germany right now. Didn’t need to come here to know how valuable public transit is. But there is exactly one reason why speed governors should not be in vehicles. I want you to follow me on this for one second. You’re at home, and your small child - or fully grown adult relative for that matter - slips and falls, knocks over a glass, and cuts themselves. They are bleeding BAD, and it is not stopping. You have two options: speed to the hospital which takes you five minutes, or wait on an ambulance which takes eight minutes (that is the actual US average). Your relative is bleeding so badly that you genuinely think three minutes could be the difference. You grab your kid, grab your keys, and GO. Now I want you to picture that as you are rushing to get your dying child to the hospital, some asshole decides to swerve back and forth in front of you, keeping you from passing them, keeping you from breaking any road rules. It takes you seven minutes to get to the hospital instead of five. Your child - your beautiful, sweet child, only ten minutes ago playing, only three minutes ago talking to you - is dead on arrival. I want you to imagine how you would feel about that asshole while your child lay dead in your passenger seat. That asshole, is the speed governor. I will never advocate for any rule being blanket broken by society on a regular basis; however, if you actually try to tell me that you would follow every single road rule with your dying child/spouse/even just a random stranger in your vehicle, you are lying or you are legitimately unprepared for the realities of planet Earth; you can decide. When a life is on the line, you BETTER be willing to do ANYTHING to save it. That means going 45 in a 25. That means running red lights when it’s all clear. After all, rules don’t exist for smart people; rules exist for dumb people. You’re smart enough to know what you are capable of. It is a matter of fact - indisputable, undeniable FACT - that you can strictly limit the speed at which cars travel in cities without needing to install speed governors. Germany is doing it right now. You can go 300kph in Germany, but through the city you’re lucky to hit 30kph. That is because of road design and traffic segregation, NOT mechanical speed governors. All I’m saying is, if you want speed governors, you need to put an ambulance station literally on every single corner of every single city in the United States FIRST. Now tell me, what do you think is the smarter investment of resources? Nothing in life is black and white. But within the grey, there is the determination of life and death.
If your child is bleeding because of glass, when are you just take a turn the counter bandage and stop the bleeding instead of spending that time speeding
fun fact, formula 1 car have those. as the pit lane speed is regulated and cannot be above a given maximum. yes, still way faster that what you want in a city, yet is there for the shame reason "fast cars + traffic + people on foot = accident prone environment"
@CityNerd please do a video on island cities, or cities confined by geography. There is definitely a difference between “island” and “frontier” philosophies. Houston, Texas is an example of the latter. Perhaps the nature of living on island, with clearly defined limits, leads to better urban planning.
There are other factors of island life that does not facilitate this happening. Source - Lived in Bermuda (essentially a small town of ~45,000). Limited Public transit. No speed limit enforcement. Lots of driving under the influence.
Great idea. For example, San Francisco is defined by water on three sides and a mountain on the fourth. Yet every time Ray makes a video using statistics of any sort, he lumps it in with the rest of the region and then compares it with other cities that have few or sometimes no natural barriers. There is a reason S.F. is one of the most dense cities in the U.S. and it isn't that its creators were visionaries.
Vancouver Canada is a prime example Pacific to the west North shore mountains NORTH and USA south and "respect" for FARM LAND North America's "top 10 urban centres and top ten LEAST AFFORDABLE housing creating exceeding long commutes out of the valley - the ONLY affordable part
@@ericandbeethoven Bermuda’s problems would probably spread if it were not an island, but good urban planning might be easier with defined limits. A lot of cities delay addressing underlying problems by simply growing.
Imagine all the extra road space, parking space, reduced fuel use, reduced collision mass if adult size mopeds were encouraged. 200cc and less, no paperwork, insurance, license. People would flock to them.
The irony is that more infrastructure related to walking, bicycling, and mass transit will lead to safer streets. It is less expensive overall, results in fewer cars on the streets, and improves the driving experience for those that need to drive.
Exactly not sure why people who primarily drive are so against public transit it helps everyone out.
@@BobbyT. It increases crime by allowing the criminals to travel to your home. #sarcasm
@@BobbyT.I literally got in an argument with someone the other day and they came right out and said “I like things the way they are. I don’t want it to change”
Complacency is a hell of a drug
This is what pains me the most, it is literally a win without compromises for everyone. This should be a no-brainer policy win, but thanks to decades of propaganda and cultural normalization, we have to wade through a sea of miss-information and the miss-informed just to make any little progress we can.
@@ericandbeethoven There are police on bicycles too.
While cycling, you'll be passed by aggressive drivers, and catch up with them at the next traffic light.
On my commute there is an uphill stretch with 4 traffic lights, unless they get a lucky break with 2 or more green lights I am pretty much keeping up with them on my 3 speed bike as I come up to the same red light as they are.
Unless the lights are synchronized for traffic, where cyclists get stopped at almost all of them.
Happened to me last week riding a bike on Sunset through Los Feliz, lol
If you carry an automatic centerpunch, you can issue an aggressive driver a ticket when you catch back up.
I always give them a big smile when I catch them at the next light and they seethe with rage.
That Hoboken stat is astonishing. If anyone is familiar with the city, they'll know that there are a ton of bars, and lots of drunks walking around after dark. for not a single person to have been killed in all that time shows they are doing something really well
possibly because those drunks are walking around, not driving around like in more car-centric locales
@@brokenrecord3095 well there is NO! parking so you have to walk or uber home
@@imjustheretobeentertained and that's a good thing. where I live people who want to go to the bars pile into a car and drive off to get plastered......
Well now that you say that, you've got me wondering if potential fatalities were just shifted to other locations outside the small city limits. . . .
it's a tiny city on the hudson river. it's the size of a NYC neighborhood and easily walkable
I've been saying for a few years now how absurd it is that the moment e-bikes and e-scooters started getting popular, every legislative body in the country had a collective mental breakdown over the supposed safety concerns, apparently oblivious to the irony that people are killed by cars every single day. Many manufacturers do put speed governors in their cars, but they're usually limited to well over 100 mph, or even over 150 mph, speeds that are extremely difficult to attain on any public road even with serious effort, and much faster than the fastest posted speed limit anywhere in North America.
The logic is that e-scooters don't come with seat belts or airbags, and cars do. Cars also come with a telephone directory size book of safety rules manufactures have to follow, and e scooters don't.
You can argue that makes them just like bikes, but traditionally bikes don't spontaneously catch fire because of a soldering defect.
It was in many ways an over reaction, but it was also not completely without merit.
@@johnroutledge9220 Yeah but they didn't apply the same reasoning to motorcycles so it's all bullshit.
@@johnroutledge9220 You do realize that cellphones, computers, and other consumer electronics also sometimes catch fire due to manufacturing defects, right? Indeed, these devices all use the exact same type of battery (lithium ion). Talking about increasing consumer safety regulations on their manufacture is reasonable, but wanting to ban them entirely is as absurd as wanting to ban all cellphones.
Maybe they didn’t want to make the same mistake their predecessors did and just say ‘go for it’ … see how well that worked out with cars etc…
Ebike cuts out at 25kph, and honestly it works very well. Only need the assistance for going up steep inclines, where I am likely to be well under 25kph. Otherwise, I turn it off to preserve battery. If cars were goverened to 20, I could keep up wiith them on a bicycle.
i usually feel safer "jay walking" than i do in a crosswalk. some crosswalks are at four way crossings and they feel tremendously unsafe with cars turning, usually view of pedestrians is blocked by their windshield frame or they are just not paying attention/don't care.
Same here. Especially with a street that has a median; I only need to worry about vehicles coming from 1 direction at a time.
@@petekrz I feel the same way. When I try to cross international drive in Orlando Florida on the crosswalk as a walker on the green signal, I was in great danger of cars turning right and almost hitting me.
Same. I often have to wait for cars turning right before I can safely cross the road. Crossing a divided road is easier than a multilane undivided road because of the limited time the traffic light gives people on foot to cross.
Yep. It's so sad this is the case but it really is. When I walk to the gym or grocery store, I wait for the light that is a pedestrian only light, even though the cycle is longer than if I crossed at the busy 4 way intersection down the road, because even crossing at that intersection on one side I've had so many near misses (either right on red only looking to the left for incoming traffic and not to the right at the crosswalk their about to cross, or left turners who just check for oncoming cars and don't see me in the crosswalk until they've already started the turn), I couldn't imagine crossing it twice.
It's also because drivers can make both a left turn on red (if they're already in the intersection) or a right turn on red (at any time), and so at no time does a pedestrian have full and exclusive right to the crosswalk.
The 85th percentile speed limit thing drives me nuts. I did a big study on it for my job about a decade ago. It’s entirely based on a single study from the 1960’s on a single-lane in each direction rural arterial with no median. I even tracked down an interview with the author of the study in question and she was quoted as saying that he never intended it to be the gold standard of setting speed limits on freeways and urban streets, or even on rural roads.
Confirmation bias. There is a study I like, I take it for everything! Do you know that the speed of washing machines should be determined by the 85% of the speed when they start throwing clothes around?
Title and author of the 1960s study?
@@steemlenn8797 As with most empirical rules, there isn't a compelling reason to further hash it out because you don't expect more study to change the results much. It would be a decent assumption if it wasn't iterated into design rules that result in 3000-trip-a-day roads being constructed with such long sight lines that it's perfectly safe for a halfway competent driver to do 50 mph.
@@mihodaLook up the “Solomon Curve” The original study was 1964. Also, I mistyped “she” in my original comment and RUclips isn’t letting me fix it, but the author was a man.
The whole direction of that rule is wrong - a desired speed limit must be set before the road is even designed, as this is the primary variable for the style of road. And when those 85% are speeding, then the design must be fixed, not the speeding be legalized.
Mackinac Island won the debate in favor of horses and pedestrians 100 years ago and banned cars from the island
Until Mike Pence broke that streak in September 2019 with a motorcade
@@matthewshultz8762 I did not know that. They do allow vehicles to be imported with permits for special events. Probably the most well known was for filming somewhere in time
I visited there with a relative, and I really enjoyed renting a bike and riding along the Circle Road round the island . So pleasant without cars, no danger with cars no noise just nature in the sound of the water.
The problem with vision zero is that it requires a truly holistic approach to city design, whereas the politicians point at the traffic engineers and say "have them fix it" without addressing any of the underlying problems.
You can't solve the problems created by car-centric low density sprawl connected by stroads without addressing, well, the car-centric low density sprawl connected by stroads.
You can't address car-centric low density sprawl without first addressing the sub-human conditions working class people have to put up with in cities. There's so much talk on channels like this about how to make it more difficult for people to drive so they will be forced to live in cities, Yet i see very little talk of trying to make cities actually desirable to live for people who don't make a lot of money.
The fact is i can rent a 3 bedroom house with a front and backyard close to a decent school and raise my family in it just 90 minutes from the city centre and it costs less then living in a single bedroom apartment in these dense urban centres.
Hell NYC is talking about having people live basements and L.A is talking about introducing "pod" living and if you don't understand how disgusting that is you're obviously not going to be the person forced to live in those conditions.
If Urbanists want to attract people to cities, instead of complaining about cars and stroads they need to start pushing for legislation which raises the minimum standards for dwellings not lowering them as a simply way of claiming you've met "affordable housing" goals.
@@louiscypher4186 The best way to improve conditions in cities is to introduce more housing to ease demand. That way people won't be fighting tooth and nail to live in closets and basements, just to be in cities. With lowered demand, landlords will be encouraged to actually improve their properties to gain higher paying tenants. Step 1 to gaining more housing in city centers is to get rid of car centric development regulations in those areas, such that land reclaimed from cars can be used for new construction. This includes things like minimum setback distances, minimum parking requirements, massive multilane roads, restrictions on multifamily housing, etc.
With your solution of "minimum standards" all you've done is further increase the costs associated with owning real estate in cities (whether via lost opportunity costs of e.g. divying a unit up into smaller units, or costs of minimum furnishings) and made those dwellings even more desireable, which will lead to even higher rents without addressing any of the issues with availability.
@@proot. Many cities can hardly supply and treat water for all their residents now. They can't just add a couple million more residents into the mix.
I appreciate the move to make cities more liveable but doing it by stuffing people into large cases filled with sardine cans is not the way,
I live on the outskirts of suburbia. I live in a traditional boring fairly new development. Within 10 minutes of walking or less on my bike, I am riding along a river surrounded by small forests or walking past small farms. I can breathe, it is quiet, and most importantly it is safe. Packages can sit on doorsteps overnight or even for a week without fear of theft. 10 miles away is a medium-sized city with one of the highest property crime rates on the west coast. I can take a walk at 2am(I rarely sleep) and is quiet and safe.
I am less than a 10-minute drive on streets from seven grocery stores and lots of other types of stores. Unless I am getting a lot of stuff or something heavy, I just walk. It is very walkable here.
In my neighborhood, kids can play freely, staying out past dark. There are no Karen's or Ken's on my street so they have free reign in all of the front yards. There are three nice parks within walking distance for them to play at.
I have a 4 bed, 3 bath house that I paid $245k for in 2018. It is a decent-sized yard, I have a small garden with multiple above-ground planters, 6 rose bushes, rhubarb, grapes and raspberry and strawberry patches that produce from late-June through the first frost in late October. You want this "fixed"?
In the nearby city, rent for a one-bedroom is more than my mortgage, insurance and property taxes combined. If the people in those apartments are lucky they have an 8x4 balcony and just one meth-dealing neighbor.
You are not going to convince people who live in more open spaces that are quieter and safer to give that up to suffer in high-density cities.
@@proot. In my 55 years, I have never lived in an area that had a massive increase in housing where it became more affordable. Not once.
New, big apartments get built and they charge higher rent than the rest of the area. The rest of the area points to that as a reason to raise their rent.
Show me a high-density city that is not extremely expensive in the US. Just one.
Without a car, people are trapped in their neighborhoods and whatever transit corridors are nearby. People in these cities can't easily go camping, hiking, or even take their kids for the weekly grocery trip and haul back a half a dozen bags. Walkable cities, while nice to walk through limits one's options to live a full life. Public transit is mostly fine to get to work and if it is really good, go out for an evening. Other than that it is awful.
You are advocating for a terrible existence constantly surrounded by people and noise and limited movement. pass
Dude, I can remember being told when asking for a light at a busy intersection that not enough people had died there yet to warrant one.
I'm reminded of a fatality last week that made the national news...a man was killed while returning to his car after helping some ducks across the road in Rocklin, CA, a suburban bedroom community outside of Sacramento. The location (Stanford Ranch Road and Park Drive) is an intersection of two stroads where the design fails to discourage drivers from slowing down.
I think he was struck by a teenager in a full sized pickup truck. If it had been a Honda Civic he might have survived.
He was a noble gentleman, sacrificing his life to ensure those ducks' safety!
But seriously, we need to make our streets and roads safe enough that nobody (human or avian) has to worry about getting killed while crossing them.
@@kb_100because that teen in Stanford Ranch was obviously a farmer carrying a load of feed for the cattle on his family farm. Americans NEED 6,000 pound lifted trucks.
@@brianmiller5444 it's important to drive around in 6000 lbs of steel all year in case you suddenly feel the urge to build a deck and need to buy lumber immediately.
I remember a former coworker/traffic engineer laughing that every time someone (usually a local politician) asked/demanded a speed study, the guaranteed result woulf be higher speed limits. Sadly he was right.
According to Andres Duany's book Suburban Nation, "Traffic studies are bullshit."
🤬
I went to a county meeting over a proposed speed limit lowering. It's on a rural road with no accident problems, no schools, no pedestrians, no churches, etc. They lowered it from 55 to 45 and years later traffic goes the same speed but enforcement has increased. Speed limits are there for revenue generation, not safety.
Neighboring Jersey City, NJ has also reached 0 deaths on city streets. It has a much larger population, much larger roads that were put on extreme road diets, extensive traffic calming, daylighting, and leading pedestrian signals. (NJ actually has a state law it’s illegal to park with 25ft of a crosswalk/ intersections, Hoboken just started enforcing the existing law strictly) Hoboken and Jersey city started working together to connect their cycle lane networks etc…
It’s turning into the largest continuous area in the USA with successful vision zero implementation where pedestrians don’t get killed just using the sidewalk.
New Jersey also passed one of the strictest “Safe passing” laws last year. It’s illegal to get within 4 feet of any pedestrians or cyclists, illegal to pass them at more than 25mph, and you are not allowed to pass them unless it’s a legal passing zone. (That means you need to slow down to whatever speed a cyclists or pedestrians is going and not pass them until there is a passing lane.)
All of this looks like they they've completely thrown out their old design guides, took a few Europeans (Dutch, Swedish, German… whatever) and adapted those to US situations only where necessary (like a bit wider parking lanes).
I only wonder, why the bike lane is on the left in a one-way street? I've never seen this here and it's a bit confusing but to some degree also makes sense (less dooring danger…).
@@kailahmann1823 maybe bike lanes on the left on a one-way street make more sense in the US because right turns at a red light are usually legal here?
@@kailahmann1823 bike lanes are typically on the right side because bicycles are slower traffic and slower traffic is usually put on the outer side, away from the middle of the street.
On one-way streets, bicyclists can ride on either side if there is no bike lane, as either side will be on the side of the road and not in the middle. Car drivers, however, are in the practice of expecting things dangerous to them to be on the left side, because on a two-way street the opposing traffic is on the left side. Bike lanes are then put on the left side of one-way streets because that is the side to which car drivers have learned to pay more attention.
@@lurch789 speed does kill. The higher the speed the higher likelihood of death when a collision occurs. There are far more traffic deaths at higher speeds than there are at lower speeds. The lower the speed the higher the likelihood of survival. Even in Germany you can't drive 120 km/hr on neighborhood streets. It's on stretches of highways that the speed limit is removed.
"everyone I've ever met is an above average driver" love it
You're so right. I live next to a two-way big street, basically a stroad. People go too fast on it, it makes even walking alongside it unconfortable because of the noise, people honking, motorcycles weaving in the bus lane. It's very annoying, and an unpleasant environment. And in the end you make a very fair point abour the death toll, that as a society we find "normal"... it's not. It's not normal. Also, are the USA responsible for exporting their car centric vision for cities to the rest of the world ?
Yes
Oh yes! So many countries all over the world take after USA car model.
Yes. Especially the vacation island territories and Mexico. Just annihilating forests to pave over it while the road is already choked with traffic mainly from tourists going to the same place. Very sad. Especially thinking about many of the people born there not making enough to afford a car.
yes so many countries have ruined their urban fabric copying the American model. Its only recently that their all moving back from it.
While you're correct in saying that the aparent acceptance of death tolls is not "norma", I would add that a similar pattern seems to apear in other areas. We do the same thing with guns or Catholic priest child abuse, for example. Just ignore that issue because it's messy and no one wants to really deal with it, and move on to make a bigger deal about something far less significant. It is not actually, and should never be, normal.....but by definition, it seems to have become so.
I grew up in Metro-Detroit amongst the endless 1-mile-square super blocks of arterial stroads. Myself and everyone I talked to just expected to drive at least 10mph over the speed limit on every street all of the time. I then moved to Vancouver, BC. Vancouver has its share of stroads (it’s in North America), but it has far fewer of them north of the Fraser River, and even the ones it does tend to have narrower lanes. I naturally find myself driving at or even below the speed limit most of the time. It has nothing to do with the signs or the enforcement, and is simply about the width of the lanes. It isn’t rocket science.
I'm glad I'm not alone in noticing this.
EVERYONE here in Metro Detroit drives 5 mph over the speed limit on streets, roads, and stroads and 10 mph (or more) over the limit on freeways.
yea baBYYYY M-10 SUPER SPEEDWAY
on the real I wish we could narrow the roads here in michigan. they're mostly potholes anyway
@@BigDonkMongohell yeah. The lodge is bad Fucking ass though. I just wish Detroit would have a little something more than freeways. Like a nice couple of rail lines along the freeways? Idk I love Detroit through all of its faults lol.
Yah. Vancouver is significantly better then most North American cities. Translink even offers one of the best transit systems out of any in the US and Canada. Over in maple ridge it's a bit worse as we are much more of a suburb.
@@Nicholas.mala1997 the wide medians on Detroit arteries would be good for rail lines
This is actually perfect timing with a accident near me that happened. A 6 year old boy was hit on his bike crossing a intersection with his parents. His bike got destroyed but he only had minor injuries. It was a hit and run too. The police department got him a new bike and he’s riding again thankfully. Another interesting factor with this crash was it was a a intersection that isn’t set up properly for the amount of traffic. It’s a 4 way stop sign next to a school and creek trail. It connects up with a highway, which just had a bunch of new housing development built on one end. There is enough car traffic to warrant a traffic light. There aren’t even any flashing crossing lights just a crossing guard when schools out. From what I’ve heard and read, residents have been demanding a safer intersection for years since now and only in the past 5 years had traffic really picked up. The cities response was that they don’t have the resources right now for one, and it would take about 9 months to get one installed because it would needed to be added to the budget. Yet they kept planning for new hotels and retirement homes and single family lots while only adapting to traffic safety needs when they have to. Why? There’s no money for repairs because there is so much, only for new investments that “look” like a nice return. More and more of these forgotten intersection are going to come into light over the next years
This is most likely an exemple of what Not Just Bikes describes in this video : "Why Américain cities are broken"
ruclips.net/video/7IsMeKl-Sv0/видео.html
I guess the city values new hotels, more than a six-year-old and other children’s lives by crossing safely.
Ponder this--: Children are 25% of the population- 100% of the future? And what is the rate of childhood deaths by car accidents/ collisions,etc! Have the politicians factored that statistical factor into the cost/benefit analysis?? Thank you 😇 😊!
Any new development approval should require adaptation of the road infrastructure to be completed before new construction can begin.
Typically, installing a traffic light requires at least one fatality (not joking).
When I lived in Okazaki, Japan, there was a local committee that met every month to discuss neighborhood problems. Usually they had nothing to discuss and and went drinking afterward. But I brought up to them that a lot of people were avoiding the major streets and taking a neighborhood road because there weren't any traffic lights on it. When drove on the street they drove at a high speed. We didn't have power to order police to patrol the street more. Police don't really do that here very much. (A city's revenue doesn't depend on the number of tickets the police can write. If it did, the people here would revolt!) But we could request to the city to put in a traffic light or speed bump. The intersection was also 1 block from the local school and there had been several close calls. That was enough for the city. We got a traffic light just to slow down the speeders. (Personally I would've gone with the speed bump, but the traffic light cost more and I think the city got a kickback from the company. Yes, that's how things work in Japan. There is a level of corruption here).
Also speed bumps f**king suck and penalize good drivers more than bad drivers. Speed bumps do surprisingly little if you speed excessively, often you'll just glide right over them.
7,400 of those vehicle deaths are pedestrians, which is up from 4,109 in 2009. That's two 9/11s a year on innocent civilians just trying to live
“But ma freedom to drive whatever I want will not be infringed!!”
-some dude with a giant truck
@@lacosta0892Always the giant truck they don’t use
The lawn darts example is perfect. Some industries letting people die is just fine and others and has to be banned. Insane logic
if anyone gets in the way of my big dumb truck, it's a crime against SOCIETY!!!
Lawn darts should never have been banned.
My neighborhood in Seoul was bisected by a narrow two lane street, with no sidewalks. Despite all the speed bumps, it was a deadly speedway frequently used to bypass the parallel stroad. It motivated me to learn some choice phrases in Korean so I could yell at, especially, taxi drivers. A local bar owner gave me a road cone for my birthday. Your channel is my new favorite, I missed my calling as a city planner, or traffic warden!
Two things not mentioned about how just lowering the speed limit without infrastructure changes helps. First a lot of people will only drive a certain amount over the limit, usually 10. So dropping it to 20 will get the average driver to go only 30. Second in the US at least the speed of a road dictates what types of changes you can make to it. So lowering it allows you to make incremental design changes that will slow people down. Yes you could just redesign the whole road and change the speed limit at the same time but as was already noted that's expensive.
I'm skeptical of the first claim. We have data-collection methods that objectively report how fast people drive at a given location, which is far more credible than some subjective proxy that is prone to reporting bias (we are likely to THINK that we are only doing 10 MPH over the speed limit when, in reality, we may be traveling faster). Practical solutions should be based in science and observable data; wishful thinking...such as lowering speed limits without doing anything else...is how we kick the proverbial can down the (st)road to become the next generation's problem.
I would challenge how much of an effect that would truly have beyond a certain threshold- for example, lowering a speed limit from 45 to 35 might get a large enough portion of drivers to slow down to have an effect, but if you took a 6 lane stroad and set the speed limit from 45 to 20, I would wager that a majority of people would drive the speed they felt 'comfortable' driving, and would only adjust speeds if there was a visible cop (and then speed up again right afterwards).
I think that this is a problem that is fundamentally intersectional (hah)- you can try to attack it from one angle, but unless you can adjust things in concert with one another, you're just putting lipstick on a pig. A speed limit adjustment, plus easily deployable traffic calming (jersey barriers, painted street parking), plus things to discourage driving THROUGH an area vs around it (congestion pricing, changing roads to be one way, speed tables) should produce large effects. And I think that the more small scale interventions you can do and show that the sky isn't falling just cause you have to take a roundabout way to your destination, the easier it will be to implement the expensive and truly difficult things like street redesigns, pedestrianization, and things that make it harder to drive.
@@sirrebral IMO +10 is a fair approximation of observed behavior, when the road design is consistent with the speed. I agree that it's not going to work on multilane roads without a lot of enforcement.
I took the comment as referring to traffic-calming devices, especially central islands and elevated crosswalks/intersections, which designers tend to not want to permit until the road gets down to the neighborhood level, even though they can be safely used at thru-traffic speeds.
@@josephfisher426 enforcememt is the only way to get people to at least approach 5 over in these low speed areas.
@@mf--there will never be enough enforcement, which is expensive and requires more manpower than many resource and personnel constrained police departments have these days. Plus, increased contact with police leads to other, often dangerous results. Especially when there is racial bias, which there almost always is.
i've been a "man i wish public transit was better" guy ever since i got in my first car accident and realized i am definitively not an "above average driver" 🙂
I've wrecked 3 cars my man you just gotta get back on the horse and ride. Wise men are made by poor decision
All counterarguments: “But what about muh car and muh need for speed?”
cry harder.
There seems to also be a critical mass needed for quantity of non-4 wheel traffic before drivers are in the habit of checking.
I live in rural Canada along a 2 lane 50 km/h (30 mph) highway and as one of the few who drives a non-F150 (motorcycle, bicycle, subcompact car) I often have people pulling out in front of me as if I'm invisible.
fr
Everyone else drives an F-150.........one person drives a smaller vehicle. But it's everyone else's fault that the one person feels unsafe. That's idiotic progressive self-centred thinking, right there.
I know I'm part of the problem. But I can't help but to see how fast I can go past a camera in the old town that shows you how fast you are going.
It's quite difficult, since it's a cobblestone road and I'm usually riding a unicycle
Those signs around here only show your speed up to 5 over the speed limit, at which point they switch to saying "Slow Down" in an effort to prevent people from trying to set the high score.
Had us in the first half, not gonna lie 😆
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie
Had us in the first half not gonna lie
What's a real cherry on top is when the city places a nice bench right up next to a stroad as if anyone wants to sit there in all the noise, exhaust, nothing to look at but concrete and cars, and potentially have someone fly off the road doing 50mph and take them out 🤣
There’s a big discussion going on in Germany at the moment concerning the topic of lower speed limits. Federal law currently states city speed limit is 50 kph (~35mph), unless there are a few specific reasons to have a lower one (usually 30). A growing number of cities want to be able to set the limit to 30 (~20 mph) wherever they see fit. Because currently they are often forced to post a higher speed limit, even if the city and residents agree on lowering it. Some want to go further and set the base limit for their city to 30 and post 50 where it’s permitted (currently the speed limit is 50, if not otherwise postet).
I hope one day in the future we will look back and laugh about how could people live everyday having to deal with possible lethal situations everytime you have to cross a street.
you know that you can just look to your left and to your right before/when crossing the road? I know a lot of people here will call me a monster for saying that but YES, I think that pedestrians should use their eyes...
Some dumb people might even say that this is"blaming the victim"
but no, this is just telling the victim that he wouldnt be the victim if he did something so simple like looking to his left and right
almost all accidents with pedestrian could be avoided if the pedestrian just looked and made sure that the person in the car can see him and will have enough time to stop
But sadly less and less people nowaday cross the street responsibly, because there is some dumb "trend" that all people in cars are criminals which means that the pedestrian is never at fault so he can just jump in front of the car without even looking, because of course"hurr durr car bad"
And i know you will just say "thats why everone should drive 10km/h to be 100% sure that they can stop in case someone decides to jump under your wheels!!! " but where does it stop? Maybe people should be banned from leaving their homes because its so dangerous???
edit: damn the angry "car bad" mob here is insane, reasoning with these people is so pointless....
dont feed the troll guys^^
also every time you share the unfiltered breath of another human being
@@faustinpippin9208 nice work blaming the victim. The burden should always be on the perpetrators of crimes dude.
There used to be road deaths from horses. It's always been there, but now with cars it's worse than ever.
I think the "muh freedom" reaction often comes from a place of insecurity: "are you saying I'm too stupid to drive safely?"
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Either that, or the utter ignorance and blindness to alternative transit methods replacing cars as the default.
Yeah! Sane people demand limits! It keeps us safe and makes the world a better place!
Most drivers believe to be better than average
@@fionafiona1146 exactly, and half of them are wrong.
@@gjits5307 regular retesting or ongoing driver training could help.
Living in a nation where everyone getting a licence needs to have first aid training (8 hours) is preferable to not doing so but data suggests utility of that reduces after 2 and 5 years.
I hope to see change on the subject
What blows my mind is that 40 or 50 years ago vehicle-related death rates in the US were clearly lower than in Europe, and now they are something like three times as high. As cars have gotten safer, while Europe has also improved things like speed enforcement and traffic calming, while the US has backed off of enforcing traffic laws and has been very half-hearted about traffic calming, and much of it is because people seem to think they have the right to drive faster.
I'd prefer the built environment would make inappropriate speeds untenable. Regulators can be removed, modified, etc.
I think going back to no turn on red would help a lot as well. If I had a nickel for every time someone almost murdered me turning right on red I would be rich. Also, with technology today, perhaps we could have governors that stop cars from running red lights and/or pedestrian crossings.
In Seattle, no right on red is now standard policy, implemented each time the traffic control equipment at an intersection gets overhauled. The drivers do it anyway.
At one of the recently remodeled intersections on my commute, I now stop in the left turn box for the bike lane on the crossing street. That causes me to plug up the corner, and make an illegal right on red impractical.
Right turns in general are dangerous because drivers *only* look for that gap in traffic on their left. Everyone to their right had better wait.
"If I had a nickel for every time someone almost murdered me turning right on red I would be rich."
So 10 cents would be "rich"?
Having no turn on red is just needlessly stacking up cars waiting for nothing 99.9999% of the time.
@@xandercruz900 clearly, you've never ridden a bicycle along traffic in urban area in the US. It's pretty common round' these parts, at least where I live. Like, happens almost daily common.
@@traviskitteh I've rode a bike plenty of times. I also rode DEFENSIVELY and didnt think by the protection of a traffic light, I am immune to stupid people.
And if you are riding on the street....why are you riding to the right of a car in the right lane anyway?
Regarding the perceived speed limit, there is a stretch of road in Las Vegas (technically unincorporated Clark County) right off the I-15. It starts with 3 lanes that do not travel in a straight line, likely intended to reduce speed once the area is more developed, however since open desert is on both sides it often sees highway speeds in a 45 zone. Then in transitions to a 35mph zone with 2 schools along it and a 3rd not far from it. Cars frequently travel 60+ in this area including a number of FedEx vans (which I have watched one go at least 65mph through both active school zones). While I could complain about how the section of road has non-ADA compliment crosswalks, missing sidewalks, or how it has a bus only stop which has never once had a bus stop at it, unlike developed roads it is still being worked on. This is what infuriates me the most, since trying to bring up the issue with the people who are planning and developing the area choose to ignore the hazards or concerns of the nearby residents. The stroad I am talking about Starr Ave. between Bermuda and the I-15. The worst thing is that an arterial roadway (one often shown on the channel for good reason), St. Rose Parkway, already is a high speed connection to the I-15.
Yes I know that road, live very close by. It's insane, but so are many of the roads here in Vegas. Roads have 3 lanes, then suddenly only one lane, or has 3 lanes and still the same width but suddenly NO lane markings. Never seen roads anywhere else as bizarre as they are in Vegas (maybe all NV?). And all the pavement, unless it's just freshly paved, is SLICK AS SNOT! The streets and freeways here are ridiculously slippery, as slick as roads in other states that are wet. Slick pavement, crazy huge roads with lanes that make no sense, plus the 'wild west' culture all make getting around here quite treacherous.
Another way to dramatically reduce pedestrian deaths as well as car crashes is to turn intersections into roundabouts, aka traffic circles. Fully 50 percent of all traffic fatalities are from people speeding through an intersection to beat the red light. Roundabouts are enormously effective in calming traffic.
I can already hear the objections. "What if I need to get to the hospital fast? Huh?" Like that is such a common situation it makes sense to organize everything around it. But of course, getting to the hospital ALIVE might be an important priority in that situation as well.
Also there are these things called ambulances, the drivers of which have the additional training necessarily to identify when and how to use exemptions to the traffic laws to get the patient to the hospital safely and without overwhelming the hospitals limited resources to deal with patients in critical condition by creating more patients in critical condition that will also need to be rushed to the local hospital. There is a reason why in first aid the first thing you learn is not put yourself in a position that will create more casualties, it is counterproductive.
It's already illegal to speed, even in cases of emergencies. So, a speed control device is still useful. Course, you could call an ambulance, then the medical team comes to you.
The problem solves itself. I live in Philly and there's a lot of hospitals close together to accommodate the density.
they need to make american ambulances free to use so people aren't trying to drive themselves to the hospital while passing out
@@famitoryThis is true, but I think the EMT’s should also have the right to refuse to take you if you’re not in critical condition or an emergency situation.
Right now they can’t really do that, and if ambulances are free I could see that really straining their ability to respond to all situations.
30 mph in a big SUV or F-150 hits different than 30 mph in a Compact car......literally.
2024 we get different speed limits for different cars. A 3 series even if it's going 40 when a truck is going 30 can stop faster, see earlier, and hit lighter.
We have had freight trains and much larger vehicles than SUVs for over a century, and we knew how to keep pedestrians safe from them. You gotta keep them separated
@@linuxman7777 Agreed, let's keep all the SUVs in a camp outside of the city
Sedan/compact car design: slow and angled so hitting a person causes them to fall over onto the hood
Truck & SUV (AKA truck with back hatch instead of bed) design: big flat surface to push a person down and underneath the car
Whhhyyyyy is this still legal, why aren't you required to have a higher tier of license to drive one of these stupid things?
It’s usually the poorly educated low brow people who drive pick up trucks and big SUVs. There is a channel on RUclips called notjustbikes where he points out that the car companies admitted to targeting “assholes” to sell big vehicles to
speeders generally ignore speed limits, so it makes no difference if it is 30 mph or 20 mph. if you really want to slow them down, reduce four lane roads to two lane roads. That makes roads safer, and reduces congestion.
Some people are willing to speed, but not excede the speed limit for that much, so they will still speed, but not as fast. Also some people will follow the speed limit and will slow everyone down.
@@OnkelJajusBahn if you are slowing everyone down by going the speed limit, that is a good thing. If however there are four lanes, then speeders just use the outside lane as a high speed passing lane, which is extra dangerous for bicyclists.
That's not 100% accurate. Lots of drivers exceed the posted speed limit, but most only by a calculated amount they think they can get away with. If the posted speed limit is 15, very few people will drive more than 30. If the posted speed is 30, lots of people will drive as high as 35 or 40. It does have a very significant effect. Still, this is obviously not enough, and you're absolutely right that more effective traffic calming measures exist and should be used in tandem with lowering posted speed limits.
There's a movement in my city called 15 is plenty where they are trying to lower the speed limit to 15 on most roads. They have started making the streets thinner or adding protected bikelanes but have not yet lowered speed limits
15 really is plenty in most areas but it just doesn't have the same punchiness as "20 is Plenty" sadly
Germany has been blocking some cities from setting the default for 50km/h (20 ish miles) to 30 (slightly less than 15), requiring justifications for every single street 😞
@@fionafiona1146 30 km/h is is around 18.6 mph so it's more accurate to call 30 km/h "slightly less than 20" instead.
@@MarioFanGamer659 thanks for the correction, I must have messed up the conversion.
@@lurch789
Driving that slow is less about actually hitting something being safer and more about not hitting something at all. The ability to react fast enough is significantly better at 15 than 60.
I can cruise on a bicycle at 15. You don’t need a seatbelt at that speed. I don’t need a helmet at that speed, I wear one more because it’s bright yellow and being seen is the most important part of cycling on roads.
A man driving a minivan was killed here last week when he was T-boned by a guy driving an F-250 Super Duty going 50 MPH (under the speed limit). If he had been going 20 MPH instead, even in that completely ridiculous vehicle, the victim would still be alive. Hell, there probably wouldn't have been a crash in the first place, because slower speeds leave more time for braking.
Our current road speeds aren't even safe for the people IN CARS, let alone pedestrians and cyclists.
id rather walk then drive 30km/h everywhere. At that speed theres no point in driving unless you need a vehicle to carry tools or items with you.
Modern cars have speed governors to prevent them overrunning the speed ratings of their tires. But a governor for an H rated tire can be set as high as 130MPH and for V ratings, even higher.
I'd love to see something examining whether one way streets or two way streets are safer for cyclists and pedestrians. My city wants to change most of the one way streets to two way to ease driver frustration, but I feel like this will be much less safe for pedestrians and cyclists dealing with cars coming from all directions.
I feel safer biking on one way streets. The flow of traffic is predictable, cars can pass me easily if they want. If they become two way, that won't work well.
i prefer biking on 1 way streets as well, although I usually go the wrong way. That way cars should always approach me from ahead, where I can see them with plenty of time for evasive maneuvers, should that be necessary
The downside to current one-way streets for safety is that it's simpler for drivers, which leads to higher speed and less attention. One way streets need to work even harder to force drivers to be alert and safe.
I particularly don't like 2 way streets with only one lane in each direction, add in parked cars on the sides and cyclists have absolutely nowhere to go. And cars stuck behind you get extra frustrated because they can't pass you at all.
I loved Manhattan Transfer. Jimmy Herf and Congo Jake were very memorable figures.
In regard to speed governors, I think that the resistance will be close to that of what happens when we discuss guns in this country.
In regard to New York City, I can say that in my neighborhood, one type of infrastructure has made a major difference: speed cameras. In the Rockaways, on Seagirt Boulevard, a main route at one end of the peninsula, people regularly were driving 65 and over in a 30 mph zone. Dropping the speed limit to 25 just meant that those of us trying to keep close to the speed limit were constantly threatened with being rear-ended by lunatics.
Putting in speed cameras along the Rockaway peninsula instantly changed that. The traffic moves along at the requisite 34 in a 25 mph zone (i.e. just under the ticketing threshold). I don't feel the same pressure while driving, and I have not seen the speed freaks out zooming along.
New York City has delusional traffic engineering in many ways. The fact that eye-level traffic lights aren't required (a truth across NYS) is a real problem in a city where you are often making complex traffic decisions very close to an intersection, where it is impossible to see the overhead lights. The fact that the paint used for highway marking is noticeably less reflective than the kind used in other states creates insanity when it rains. There are a profusion of other very stupid decisions in the city. But speed cameras do work as a kind of external governor, and they should be expanded.
Same mess in Portland Oregon.
There are NO eye level traffic signals which leads California drivers (CA requires eye level traffic signals) that are following a big rig to accidently run red lights at major intersections.
You cant see the road markings here when it rains
And the view of pedestrians waiting to cross at a crosswalk is obscured by parked cars at over 99% of our intersections. Not to mention emerging from a side street onto a collector street with cars parked up until the intersection
@@frafraplanner9277 I have sympathy for New York's rules allowing cars to park all the way to the stop sign, because yeah, parking, etc., blah, blah, but it's clearly dangerous. It would be politically impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, but it's so freaking dangerous.
@@frafraplanner9277the studded snow tires create worn rain gutters in Oregon freeways. Terrifying to drive during a downpour.
@@frafraplanner9277 As a fellow Portlander, thinking about it, I haven't felt the lack of eye-level traffic signals for most situations, at worst it's that the light turns green while I'm still looking at oncoming traffic. That said, Portland absolutely needs to adopt the crosswalk daylighting they do in Hoboken, omg. It would make it so much safer for drivers too! It blows my mind how there doesn't appear to be any rules about parking in front of stop signs either
@@Dysiode I'm from California, so when I started accidentally running red lights because of a truck/van in front of me, I eventually figured out why California traffic lights have that unique "look" that other states dont
Also, it can be hard to see stop signs sometimes because of Portland exemption from the state law on parking before a stop sign. It's ridiculous
A quick skeptical anecdote about the "20 is Plenty" movement. A couple of years ago, Minneapolis passed a citywide 20 MPH speed limit ordinance. I've observed that very few people (myself included) actually drive that slowly, but most of us have slowed down a bit. But it seems that the reckless drivers have gotten even more brazenly reckless in their annoyance at being behind slow cars. As I just witnessed today while I was out for a run during the hour between seeing this video had gone live and watching it: on West River Parkway (which already had a lower-than-normal 25 MPH speed limit before), it is now fairly common to see people aggressively passing slower cars, even if those "slower" cars are already going ~10 over. Bear in mind that not only is there an implied "no passing" rule within city limits, this particular road even has a solid double yellow line to make that rule explicit.
I'm not saying we shouldn't lower the speed limit; I'm just skeptical of how much impact doing that, with no additional infrastructure changes, can have. To be fair, Minneapolis has also added a lot of "road furniture" (as the European cycling TV commentators like to call it) in various places to further regulate speed. But on the parkways, we just have this minor speed limit reduction, and my impression (no hard data) is that it has *increased* reckless driving.
Then we gotta start identifying those reckless drivers and removing licenses.
Take them off the roads completely if their response to "slow down" is "speed up".
@@youtubeuniversity3638 That's easy to say, much harder to implement, especially in a city that is already dealing with the effects of overly aggressive policing.
Widespread adoption of roundabouts would also help encourage drivers to slow down, much more than any posted speed limit. Many drivers feel they "have" to speed between stop signs, or even between speed bumps. Just last night I was passed on the right by a driver going at least 60 in a 45 MPH zone, who then ran a red light. This is a street where homeless people are rampant and I'm much more worried about colliding with one of them than a cyclist at night.
roundabouts are great. recently one was built near my work. oh how people complained, and the locals disparaged each other so much: "people will be confused, it's going to be a disaster" and they still do that even though it seems to have worked seamlessly and the intersection is doubtlessly safer.
@@adjsmith - In my opinion, drivers in the States drive single-lane roundabouts easily. The trouble is multi-lane roundabouts. However, by adding separate paths for right-turning vehicles, a single-lane roundabout can work very well for moderately-trafficked streets.
There is one on Carlsbad Blvd. (former U.S. 101) north of Carlsbad, which handles three different streets. It works well, even though many of the drivers (and cyclists and pedestrians) are visitors unfamiliar with the area, and it is regularly used by buses and emergency vehicles. It is fed by three two-lane streets, with the space formerly used by additional lanes given over to sidewalks and bicycle trails.
On a bicycle, I find roundabouts terrifying. I've even one of the old school John Forester Vehicular Cycling guys, since the '70's. Maybe it's just as I'm getting old, I don't have the nerves of steel anymore.
The drivers are looking for cars. Bicycles are invisible to them, so their entrance to the roundabout is a rolling stop on steroids, right at me. In addition, in the Seattle area, I find most drivers don't go around the roundabout for their left turn. They momentarily pretend Seattle is a left hand drive place and cut the short way across. That's the scariest situation of all. With my yellow jacket and flashing front light, they still can't see me, and suddenly I've got a fast moving car in my lane, coming right at me, and they can't swerve to their right, because of the roundabout curb on their right, and I can't swerve to my right, because of the curb at the edge of the road on my right. I hate roundabouts! I stick to the arterials as much as possible, because they don't have roundabouts.
The two problems with roundabouts are 1) they can be problematic in heavy traffic (I know, the irony...) and 2) they're troublesome when your bike network is essentially integrated into your car network. NOW, that said, obviously the solution is to reduce traffic by introducing better land use and transportation policy (more mixed use, bike lanes, better more regular transit, safer environments for pedestrians), in which case roundabouts can be a useful tool in the system, but as it stands, they are sadly not too effective in the U.S. beyond simple, single lane traffic circles.
@@nickmonks9563 I don't know how you ride or on what, but roundabouts slow cars down enough that cyclists can ride with traffic. They work extremely well with e-bikes. As I said, single lane circles but they can be supplemented with right turn lanes, what traffic engineers call a "free right"; that often allows a single lane circle to handle more traffic than it would otherwise.
"You'd assume the government would do something about it."
Uhm, alcohol, guns, unaffordable health care ...
... I for one am making no such assumption.
And yet, the TSA, somehow
The government tried to get rid of alcohol it went terribly caused an over incarceration problem and made a lot of gangs wealthy and then they tried with drugs and it was even worse
The government did try to "do something" about alcohol once and it led to a mess that led to the current failure that is the drug war. Trying to ban alcohol would go over even worse now than in the 1920s.
The one cavet I'd add to speed governors is that, on interstates/proper highways, it can be safer to go above the speed limit briefly when passing to reduce your time side to side with another vehicle or 18-wheeler. For example, if they're going 68 and you're limited to the limit at 70, you're at a greater risk than if you speed up to 75 to pass them.
Holy heck someone with a brain. As a truck driver stuck at 65, it's always so infuriating when some car capable 100+ blocks up the passing lane(s) at 66~67. There are a million little things I wish drivers knew, but the main one is to pass at 5+ mph difference. If another truck is governed, I'll slow down a bit so just they can complete their pass faster.
This is why autobahns have no limit entirely. Yeah it enables high speed all the way but for most drivers no limit really means you can speed up to overtake and everyone spreads out in their own space. A herd of vehicles all driving slowly together on a freeway seems more dangerous
I watch a few of your videos every day and they are all so well done and thought provoking. I never knew about speed governors and now I'm curious if I'll see them implemented in my lifetime.
I run against a lot of resistance from people when I mention that speed limits are too high. They argue that they're going somewhere. And I counter with you'll get there going 25mph or 45mph only at the first speed you and everyone else will get there alive. They think _their_ time is more valuable than others'. Don't get me started on how they react when I say we need bendy roads.
And then point out how much faster it would be if public transportation were prioritized and people weren't stuck motionless in traffic a large fraction of the time. That is quite a conversation ender.
It's easier to con someone than to convince them they've been conned.
@@knutthompson7879 or parking!
@@knutthompson7879 I had a related thought recently. If the traffic systems you design have huge numbers of cars sitting at multiple intersections for minutes at a time you have failed at making a decent transportation system.
In my area, the traffic is so bad that if you can hit the speed limit, you're a very lucky driver.
Cat is thinking: "So he talked to no one for an hour while I napped? Useless."
The only objection I'd have to speed limiters is if they're hard limiters: The one time when it's not just perfectly reasonable but right-out morally and whatnot required to exceed the speed limit is to avoid a crash by accelerating that can't be avoided by breaking... but that's only for very short periods of time and feel free to blare increasingly annoying warning sounds for every second you're over the limit. Hard limiter only after 10-20 seconds or so, should be plenty.
Here in the suburbs of Chicago, they build 4 or 5 lane roads with 10' wide lanes and plant a 45 mph speed limit sign on it like they expect people to not drive 55-60 mph or more on them. Up in Wisconsin you can find narrow 2 lane residential roads with no shoulders and 45 mph speed limit signs, but you'd be wary to go faster than 35 mph. Road builders and the guidelines they go off of don't seem to take the psychology of feeling safe while driving into account and work off of arbitrary numbers.
In the short term, there may be some technology hurdles in implementing speed governors. I've driven in cars that attempt to read the speed limit signs with cameras and show them next to your spedometer, and I've seen how apps like Google Maps attempt to show you the speed limit of the road you're driving on. I would say either of these solutions only have maybe an 80-90% accuracy. Especially since there is a lot of grey area you might need to account for. Like, you just turned off a 30 MPH street onto a highway on-ramp and you need to speed up to 65. In the former example, the car won't think the speed limit is changed until after you merge onto the highway and pass another speed limit sign. Lots of edge cases that might make hard cap governing challenging to implement well.
As much as I don't love them (even though I rarely speed in cities), speed camera might be a better solution. Focus them on stroads and other urban/suburban areas where they're most needed. The better next step is to redesign the streets/stroads to encourage lower speeds though. Including stuff like more/better pedestrian crossings, increased visibility, all that good stuff. Even simply narrowing the lanes can do a lot. It can be expensive and take time though to do it well, which is why cameras could be an interim solution. I personally am not in favor of them in environments like freeways though. Keep people slow in the city, but fast on true highways is okay with me.
Right of Way by Angie Schmitt is an excellent book on traffic violence in America. Highly recommended.
Are people intentionally plotting murders via automobile-to-other rammings? Like 1st degree premeditated stuff? And target specific people by name? And not just Mafia stuff?
That's why they called "accidents". Unless you were doing premeditated plotting of individually targeted murders by ramming, no one intends of plans or desires to get an accident. Otherwise they call it an "on purpose"
No, more like a harm through gross negligence. In some countries could be called manslaughter. There is a competitive social pressure from other drivers to operate their vehicles outside the safe operating envolope determined by response times and physical laws. The high posted speed limit simply grants permission for this.
The term "violence" usually implies someone causing someone else's physical harm. In theaters, if not causes willfully it's usually classified as peril if there is not sentient will if causing physical harm.
In the US, the term is "vehiclular homicide". Whether it's vehicular manslaughter or murder, both use the same term. Yet the difference depends on intent.
Maybe violence can be accidental. I always though peril was natural/intrinsic danger, and violence had willful intent to cause danger/harm.
I'm one of the rare truck drivers that supports the speed limiter mandate and it makes me very unpopular with my colleagues. Every heavy American truck made since 1999 has a speed limiter in it, but only a couple Canadian provinces require a specific limiter setting (105kph/65mph). In the USA & the rest of Canada the setting is up to the owner. I hope the new FMCSA rule actually has teeth and slows down semis to a reasonable highway speed, but I half expect the Administration to fumble it and pick something silly like 75mph. 65 to 70 is the general industry consensus but 55 to 60 would be better for emissions & overall safety.
It's already 55 in the UK. Its been done and it works. Come on, America. Once again you're letting the team down.
I feel like it would benefit you folks too since there would be physical limits on schedules
@@Nat3ski That is the wildest aspect to me, all the people saying it won't help or that it will make things worse and even be more dangerous, they're all talking theoretically like we aren't one of the last countries on Earth without speed limited trucks. Everywhere that has implemented speed limiters in trucks has had immediate and quantifiable safety benefits, even in Ontario where there's only about 80% compliance with the mandate, they've seen huge reductions in at-fault crashes involving trucks.
There's an owner operator group that loves to argue that the speed differential is too dangerous like there aren't autobahns in Germany & Austria where semis are doing 50mph (80kph) next to cars doing 80+mph (130+kph) every single day.
@@EllieODaire "they're all talking theoretically like we aren't one of the last countries on Earth without speed limited trucks"
Ah yes, typical American "there's nothing we can do to prevent this problem that only occurs in our country" mentality. Gotta love it.
And in case anyone missed the sarcasm, by love I mean absolutely despise.
11:00 nailed it. Literally everyone that drives, me included, care more about not getting a ticket then safety. I can assure you of this because I bought a white crown vic 14 years ago and had for a year. I never seen such good driving in my life driving around a decommissioned cop car.
The video we need! Every since I started driving, I wondered why the heck do I have the ability the go over 100 mph in a 2+ ton metal cage? Yet, here we are speeding governing scooters and ebikes?! Driver entitlements run deep in American culture and its this deeply felt emotional infrastructure that must be overcome to stop the needless death and suffering.
Not just speed governors, but restrictions on how powerful of motors can be installed.
@@smileyeagle1021 Yup. No silver bullets, but a host of things that would help: small displacement motors, graduated licenses for larger and larger motors, more frequent re-licensing, taxing vehicles w/o governors, tax breaks for speed limited vehicles, etc.
You will be delighted to learn that mods working around speed governors on scooters and ebikes are common, popular and accessible. A buddy of mine has an ebike where the app has a checkbox that straight up says "I'm driving on a private road; let me speed."
@@mrowlbert "more frequent re-licensing"
And the re-licensing should include re-testing too. I was shocked the last time I had to renew my license and they're just like "okay that'll be $xx, stand there for the new photo" and that was all.
I’m shocked the truck speed isn’t enforced in the US. Here in France, truck speed limit is REALLY respected. You can be sure all semi on the freeway are driving at 90km/h no more, no less.
They have a tachymeter memorizing the truck speeds on a period (hours or days?) and can be controlled at any time by the cops. Very effective
Needed this today after a cyclist got hit on our route headed to school for the kid. I guarantee nothing gets changed about the intersection and everyone goes back to their lives. Probably just user error! Nothing we can do to stop things like this happening again!
Just like the Onion headline about mass shootings: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
"Fatal Incident As Cyclist Strikes Truck on Local Road"
Vision Zero came to my city a few years ago, and ironically, I hated it a lot more when I was just a pedestrian & public transit user. I really resented no longer being allowed to cross at uncontrolled intersections when it was safe, having instead to push a beg button and wait for a light to permit it. However, when I got a car, I Vision Zero didn't bother me any more, because the "pedestrian safety" measures are so car-centric, I think they actually make car traffic flow more smoothly.
Cleveland decided in 2018 to have a "vision zero" policy and we've had a _lot_ of meetings. Yup. Many many meetings. And finally we got consultants to write an Action Plan last August. So good, now there's an Action Plan.
The lack of urgency though.
Thank you for this video. I’ve been quietly mentioning the need for some form of coercion to get drivers to follow speed limits to anyone who’d listen for the last six or so years.
I live in Hoboken and cannot agree more with all of the work that our city has done; but yeah, it's a mile square city, which makes a lot of these kinds of changes feasible to implement because it's just so small. I walk the length of the city on a near daily basis (although it's usually my the waterfront)
here's an idea: physically separate the "go fast from here to there" areas from the areas people actually do things. stroads aren't caused by building a highway through a shopping mall. they are caused by building shopping malls on highways. and stop using induced demand as an excuse not to build roads just to move cars from point A to point B. a town near me built a bypass. and guess what the induced demand from that bypass did. it made the town walkable, because most of the people who just want to get to the other side of the town use the bypass.
I don’t do much city driving. When I do, I acknowledge my lack of visual cue recognition for that environment. I turn off the radio and don’t attempt to carry on conversation with passengers. I also take extra looks at interactions and try to spot visual obstructions that could be hiding pedestrians.
The locals get upset because of my cautious driving, but I try to remain calm and polite. I think my disabled veteran tag reduces people’s road rage.
I had to pick something up from Hoboken a few weeks ago. Trained from Brooklyn over there and walked the rest of the way, about 25 minutes.
It's an amazing city. Never felt unsafe walking around there, and there were lots of families with small kids out walking as well. Seeing how people were acting when crossing and how they were handling their small children speaks volumes to the traffic engineering going on there.
Taking the train to the other side of the metro area and walking in a place that walkable sounds like a dream
I've seen multiple articles saying that lowering posted speed limit does slow down traffic. Obviously people aren't all keeping to the speed limit, and maybe the proportion of speeders increases, but the average speed does go down.
You had me at “Groan”
City I live in, St. Albert a bedroom
City for Edmonton, they’re way of dealing with vision zero is changing residential roads to a slower speed, no left turn reds on the main road, and busy intersections, most roads have curves for traffic calming.
The TxDOT crash reporting system doesn't capture most of the bike/ped location data in my city. So we can't improve if you can't even locate problems. We have 15ft wide lanes on a residential collector, same width as a highway, where people regularly speed (and has a higher than average crashes) and the city staff doesn't think this is related.
The municipality of Amsterdam is going to lower most speed limits on major inner city roads to 20 mph later this year, which seems totally fair as you can’t even do half that in average speed during the day, plus it’s way safer.
Speed limiters are a desperate solution for much deeper problems.
Disappointed that the video didn't cover the topic raised on the thumbnail: "Is 20 plenty."
I drive a street legal electric buggy (NEV/LSV GEM car) - it's mostly a recreational vehicle, but I occasionally use it as practical transportation. It has a top speed of around 25 mph. (Faster downhill.) I'm amazed that when driving within the city limits of Rochester NY, how adequate this speed feels and how I usually have no trouble keeping up with traffic.
It's so weird when you think about it that e-bikes and scooters have governors but cars do not. Can't have other modes of transportation that interfere with my freedom to drive!
I thought of having a speed limit for cars, and a lower limit for SUVs, and trucks. maybe that would make cars more popular.
@12:38 We do put speed governors on e-scooters because that's a safety problem but 4,000 pound vehicles going at 60 MPH in the city, that's just as God intended.
That 85th percentile rule is maddening. “You don’t want to make 80-90% of the drivers criminals!” Well, if you want speed limits to ACTUALLY shape behaviour you would. In the UK when they mandated seatbelts a lot of people got tickets the very day it was instituted. When they reduced rural roads from 40 to 30 for pedestrian safety lots of people got tickets because they hadn’t read the signage in decades. Same for when it got reduced again to 20.
There are some really dystopian effects of governor laws. Personally I'd much rather we implement checkpoint speed cameras, but people hate those and throw them out whenever they're implemented.... I still think that'd be easier to implement.
They'll suffer a similar fate as relight cameras. Mailing a ticket is not being legally served and can be ignored.
Also, revenue hungry cities would be encouraged to set even more speed tape than they currently do.
It's kinda wild, and sad, that in this video I saw the road on which my niece was hit by a car while using a crosswalk.
As a cyclist, I'd love to see the urban focus shift away from car centrism, but I will not demonize the motor vehicle as so many cycling advocates do. Cars do not kill. Bad driving kills. Carelessness, on everyone's part, kills. A key reason so many people are killed in cars and by cars is that it's way too easy for motorists in the US to get and maintain an operator's license--the states' standards are simply too low. Penalties for bad driving and unauthorized driving are way too soft.
There are speed-mitigating measures we can take, and all the truly effective ones are engineering and design changes, not rule changes. Physically limiting motor vehicle speeds has been around a long time; e.g., most countries in Europe mandate limiters on over-the-road trucks. But in the US, at least, the auto industry lobby makes sure that legislators' palms are sufficiently greased to preclude speed-limiting and/or acceleration rate limiting technology from ever becoming a thing on private cars and trucks. The same lobby fights against any legislative initiative that would do anything to make driving in our cities less attractive. Get rid of that lobbying force, and the problems will quickly be solvable.
The "cars don't kill people, people kill people" argument has always been flimsy because if you remove cars from the equation there's not suddenly going to be something else that fills the murder void. I agree with everything else you said but it's undeniable cars, as an independently owned and operated vehicle, are going to kill people much more than anything else on the road simply by design, especially as they get bigger and heavier.
@@user-xsn5ozskwg But cars operate with drivers, not by themselves. And "murder" is very rare with motor vehicles. Most deaths are by accident. Further, if you adhere to the bigger and heavier rule for causing deaths, then commercial trucks would be the major killers, not cars. Who's going to advocate for removing those trucks from the roads? From some areas within cities, maybe. But even then, how will you get Twinkies to the Piggly Wiggly without trucks?
At a recent town hall meeting I attended addressing speeding in my neighborhood, almost everyone seemed to think the solution was more policing...
I actually asked some of my city officials recently what we can do to address speeding, the police chief said "hire more patrol officers" but admitted they would need easy more than they have budget for. I asked about speed cameras and they just said they aren't planning on using them. No luck either change road design, in fact they have a "modernization" effort underway which pretty much just means widening roads and adding lanes 😢
Recently moved to a midwestern city that’s a suburb of the capital, and this is one of those wealthy, rapidly growing cities in terms of development. Almost every intersection that was a light or stop sign is now a roundabout, and they’re building a ton of those street side apartments with shopping underneath (and a parking garage inside lol). They, like, almost get it. Traffic accidents have decreased significantly since they started introducing a bunch of roundabouts at least. I’ve started walking a lot, and it might not be so bad with small lanes and clearly defined pedestrian crossings if people in their huge Cadillac SUVs weren’t hellbent on taking those roundabouts as fast as possible.
You must be n Carmel, IN.
@@jillengel4124 haha, I was just going to say... sounds like Carmel 😂. Hello from Fishers!
@@een_schildpad I was thinking Carmel, too! Greetings from New Orleans where we have exactly one roundabout!
@@een_schildpad Hi from Indy!
Somewhere near Madison, WI?
Enforced governors on cars will no doubt be linked to either a dedicated network or your phone. Each car will be inspected to check the system just like emission controls are regulated. Cars will be regulated in speed by a central system mapping your location and giving it the max. speed for that area.
Ungoverned cars will be captured on speed sensor camera's and when found impounded.
I believe that the automobile manufacturers have a vested interest in making bigger and faster vehicles, and that is the reason that things are getting worse for those of us that would rather walk, or bike to get somewhere.
Video Idea: Usefulness of Greenbelts to restrict urban sprawl or generally combat environmental degradation via housing development.
While Greenbelts are often touted as the environmentally friendly win-win compromise between development and sustainable land use, case studies have thus far resulted in mixed results depending on the jurisdiction. A lot of the time, the success of a Greenbelt relies on its governing body (municipal, regional, state/provincial, or federal) to enact zoning/development regulations that inhibit sprawl, rather than finding the easy way out of a housing crisis. Additionally, the trade offs between long term vs. short term prosperity tend to influence government actions within protected areas.
The governors on scooters make them more dangerous because they can't keep up with even the slowest city driver on the street and that forces people to use them on the sidewalks, where pedestrians are.
Driving faster doesnt get you there quicker. It only mean youll wait longer at the next light (or even if you squeak by that light, then the one after it).
When driving, ive found adaptive cruise control to be a great way to keep myself from drivong too fast. (Not sure how to get enough other to do that though.)
That’s the logic of someone who left their house on time.😀
If you are hitting lights you are on a stroad.
Speed limits in Auckland have been cut in several major tranches over the last few years. These changes have generally not been accompanied by infrastructure changes. DSIs have reduced on those parts of the road network. The first tranche was based on low hanging fruit, i.e. basically finding roads where the general driving speed was well below the speed limit anyway. However, I think it suggests that actually drivers pay attention to speed limits as a whole and therefore simply changing the speed limits works to some extent in suburban and urban roads.
You can't buy lawn darts, but you can buy guns!
You know that you are just going to get the “don’t bring a lawn dart to gun fight” argument.
or cuban cigars
not guns, oh the horror, take them away big daddy gubmint
The problem that I have with technological solutions like speed limiters is that technologies can always be circumvented and technologies always eventually fail, but they are regarded by people who do not have more than a superficial, marketing-level understanding of technology-and this includes most people who claim to be technology professionals-as magical panaceae. I'm not saying we should not employ these technologies to any extent, but that we should not and must not rely upon then as primary deterrents. Furthermore, the more advanced the technology, the more risky the implementation. There are a lot of people advocating for "geofencing" governors, but there's no plausible way to institute a failproof geofencing technology on a moving vehicle.
On city streets your speed is governed by cycle times at stop lights, sure, you can speed and get through one light, but then there's a good chance that you'll just get stuck at the next one. This is why it isn't significantly faster to drive a car vs a bike on most city streets. So if speeds were limited to 20 mph in cities I doubt there would be much impact on car throughput, while there would of course be a huge impact on safety
If they timed the lights well, sure. In actuality they tend to incentivize speeding to make lights that are out of sync with the speed limit.
I’m recovering from a hit and run in the crosswalk. Thanks for talking about the issue. Especially with drunk drivers on the road, making everyone else pay the price, sometimes with their lives, seems a little ass backwards 🤕🤷♂️🤦♂️
in NYC we tried to collect data from driver's via their OBD-2 (data) port to measure hard breaking events to identify high-injury nodes ahead of time. For whatever reason, it was decided that this needed to be paired with rewards via a driver's insurance company and the auto-insurance regulations completely sank the project.
Yeah I remember my insurance company trying to push one of those data collectors on me. Big button promising lower rates and whatnot for using it. I click the button to learn more. And then it's like "lol ack-shully we don't have any discounts but you can still install it if you'd like"
So obviously I didn't install it.
I find driving stressfull, particularly at high speed or in congested traffic situation. Consciously trying to manually adjust my speed as the speed limits change adds to the stress. I am looking forward to the time when speed limiting technology come standard on most cars. This will reduce my driving stress.
20 miles or 30 km per hour in a relative dense city is fast enough when you remember that traffic and traffic lights exist.
A few days ago I saw a headline about "Los Angeles(?) fining drivers lot that drive just a bit over the speed limit".
As long as you have that mindset, you don't need to wonder about traffic casualties.
I’m in Germany right now. Didn’t need to come here to know how valuable public transit is. But there is exactly one reason why speed governors should not be in vehicles. I want you to follow me on this for one second.
You’re at home, and your small child - or fully grown adult relative for that matter - slips and falls, knocks over a glass, and cuts themselves. They are bleeding BAD, and it is not stopping. You have two options: speed to the hospital which takes you five minutes, or wait on an ambulance which takes eight minutes (that is the actual US average). Your relative is bleeding so badly that you genuinely think three minutes could be the difference. You grab your kid, grab your keys, and GO.
Now I want you to picture that as you are rushing to get your dying child to the hospital, some asshole decides to swerve back and forth in front of you, keeping you from passing them, keeping you from breaking any road rules. It takes you seven minutes to get to the hospital instead of five. Your child - your beautiful, sweet child, only ten minutes ago playing, only three minutes ago talking to you - is dead on arrival.
I want you to imagine how you would feel about that asshole while your child lay dead in your passenger seat. That asshole, is the speed governor.
I will never advocate for any rule being blanket broken by society on a regular basis; however, if you actually try to tell me that you would follow every single road rule with your dying child/spouse/even just a random stranger in your vehicle, you are lying or you are legitimately unprepared for the realities of planet Earth; you can decide. When a life is on the line, you BETTER be willing to do ANYTHING to save it. That means going 45 in a 25. That means running red lights when it’s all clear. After all, rules don’t exist for smart people; rules exist for dumb people. You’re smart enough to know what you are capable of.
It is a matter of fact - indisputable, undeniable FACT - that you can strictly limit the speed at which cars travel in cities without needing to install speed governors. Germany is doing it right now. You can go 300kph in Germany, but through the city you’re lucky to hit 30kph. That is because of road design and traffic segregation, NOT mechanical speed governors.
All I’m saying is, if you want speed governors, you need to put an ambulance station literally on every single corner of every single city in the United States FIRST. Now tell me, what do you think is the smarter investment of resources?
Nothing in life is black and white. But within the grey, there is the determination of life and death.
A cold statistical analysis suggests that it is not significant compared to the lives that might be saved by lowering everyday traffic speeds.
@@barryrobbins7694 In politics, pathos frequently beats logic 😕 And your average human voter is bad at comparing risks, due to cognitive biases.
If your child is bleeding because of glass, when are you just take a turn the counter bandage and stop the bleeding instead of spending that time speeding
fun fact, formula 1 car have those.
as the pit lane speed is regulated and cannot be above a given maximum.
yes, still way faster that what you want in a city, yet is there for the shame reason "fast cars + traffic + people on foot = accident prone environment"
@CityNerd please do a video on island cities, or cities confined by geography.
There is definitely a difference between “island” and “frontier” philosophies. Houston, Texas is an example of the latter.
Perhaps the nature of living on island, with clearly defined limits, leads to better urban planning.
There are other factors of island life that does not facilitate this happening. Source - Lived in Bermuda (essentially a small town of ~45,000). Limited Public transit. No speed limit enforcement. Lots of driving under the influence.
Great idea. For example, San Francisco is defined by water on three sides and a mountain on the fourth. Yet every time Ray makes a video using statistics of any sort, he lumps it in with the rest of the region and then compares it with other cities that have few or sometimes no natural barriers. There is a reason S.F. is one of the most dense cities in the U.S. and it isn't that its creators were visionaries.
Vancouver Canada is a prime example Pacific to the west North shore mountains NORTH and USA south and "respect" for FARM LAND
North America's "top 10 urban centres and top ten LEAST AFFORDABLE housing creating exceeding long commutes out of the valley - the ONLY affordable part
@@jasonriddellMontreal in Canada too.
@@ericandbeethoven Bermuda’s problems would probably spread if it were not an island, but good urban planning might be easier with defined limits. A lot of cities delay addressing underlying problems by simply growing.
Imagine all the extra road space, parking space, reduced fuel use, reduced collision mass if adult size mopeds were encouraged. 200cc and less, no paperwork, insurance, license. People would flock to them.
If all else fails. Lay down spike strips and watch the rubber fly ❤