Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

People will just drive over textured bumps, I've seen it. You need to design the road such that people will damage their vehicle if they drive dangerously (things like on street parking, concrete bollards, tall curbs etc).

View on HN

Bollards 3, bozos 0. [1]

The Sidney Harbor Tunnel had a serious problem with oversized trucks getting wedged in the tunnel. Watch a truck drive past two sets of giant flashing overhead warning signs. They stop only when they reach the final sign at the tunnel mouth, a water curtain with a giant STOP sign projected on it.[2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRKA7m-tbqM

That water screen is really brilliant.

An earlier bridge for them to crash into will also do the job quite nicely.

To be nice make it out of crumpling noisy material, not concrete.

> An earlier bridge for them to crash into will also do the job quite nicely.

Except for the part where it requires significantly more maintenance to fix up the bridge and it's incredibly dangerous for drivers following, whether the truck hard-stops or gets its top sheared off.

Hanging bars seem to solve this problem. Makes a loud terrifying noise when you hit them, but doesn't leave any permanent damage.

Truckers may not notice if the problem is at the rear trailer, as it was in the video. The water curtain, although unusual, is not expensive. It's just a sprinkler pipe and a very bright slide projector.

Also, it's at the start of a blind curve -- the road design naturally leads you to slow down as you approach, so stopping short be won't be as much of a problem.

Those are good points. Bollards, tall curbs, etc are appropriate for urban streets, because they protect pedestrians on sidewalks. But curbs are hazardous to bicyclists. More generally, you want streets that seem more dangerous than they actually are.

> But curbs are hazardous to bicyclists.

You can easily cut a bypass through the curb or chicane.

True. I've gone down hard, though. At night, they can be hard to see.

In neighborhoods near me we have gently sloping curbs. They are about a foot wider than the normal 90 degree curbs I see in more dense urban areas. It is easy to notice from the car if you pull partially up onto them. I suspect it also makes it slightly easier for cars to go of the road, but that hasn't been a real problem. Cars, bike and people seem to be at less risk from the curb directly.

"seems more dangerous" probably only works for so long... Surely people would get used to the "dangerous" streets and realize they aren't as dangerous as they seem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com