Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

Mailboxes on the opposite side of a street with a 45-50mph speed limit? STUPID. I feel terrible for both the victim and the author, in part because tragedies like this are avoidable. This particular scenario seems pretty egregious, but even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security - is provably bad for safety. If you want safety you need to maximize all-direction visibility. You can also add traffic-calming elements like bumps or chokepoints, but those are strictly secondary.

FWIW, I live on a pretty busy street - feeder for the neighborhood, popular short cut between two state roads, 35mph speed limit. Technically parking is allowed, but nobody does so visibility is pretty good. In nearly 20 years living here, I've only seen or heard of one accident, and it was a neighbor's dog (who came out of it fine). On runs I've seen evidence of maybe two or three other collisions. We're lucky. I can't imagine the carnage if we did something as stupid as putting mailboxes on only one side of the street.

> even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security

There are so many intersections in San Francisco where cars are allowed to park right on the corner, completely obscuring your vision as you go to make a turn, and making it a leap of faith whether or not you'll get hit. The best you can do is slowly edge out and hope that other cars see you.

Poorly designed systems like this infuriate me almost as much as people who will happily give the system a pass and then demonize individuals who mess up because of it.

Indeed the civil engineer who allowed such an egregious speed limit is at fault here.

Speed limits are not speed targets.

In the UK most b-roads are 'national' speed limit (i.e. 60mph or 70mph). It is expected that the driver selects the appropriate speed for the conditions, visibility, road etc etc.

Of course, we're humans, which means errors are made, people are impatient, we don't balance risk very well etc etc.

They tend to be speed targets in many places, because if you drive under (or at) the speed limit in many places, you'll get hassled by aggressive drivers behind you, creating a more dangerous situation than if you sped up instead.

(Based on my experience driving in the US, at least.)

In the US they're more often treated like minimums

Speed limits are a function of road conditions, both static (e.g design) and dynamic (e.g. weather).

Posted speed limits are a function of the 90th percentile speed (usually based on typical conditions).

If you set low speed limits because "think of the children" you get other (safety) problems.

Just add speed cameras and eventually people will stop speeding.

They'll also spend more time looking at their speedometer and less time actually paying attention to the driving conditions.

[uncited opinion]

When you get into rural areas, you often times see houses that are built on roads that are 45-55 mph speed limits. They're main through ways but people build on them, often times either farms or former farms that were lotted off.

I have driven through such areas (mostly in Texas) and I found it very unsettling that the speed limit was so high. In other areas, it's not uncommon for the speed limit to be reduced to 25 (or maybe 35) in a residential area.

Here's a good article on the subject of negligence in the design of public ways: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/1/gross-negligen...

There are lots of places where I live that are like this. It's fairly common in rural areas. I'm assuming it's designed to make mail delivery easier on the drivers.

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