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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

The real issue with driving slower is enforcement. Enough people don't take into account the speed limit that changing the speed limit without changing the roads leads to unsafe mixed speeds.

Universally adhered to lower speed limits in urban environments would be great.

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Certainty of enforcement. People are careful to obey a rule punished 100% of the time with a $1 fine. They brush off a 10^-5 probability of a $100,000 loss by thinking "It won't happen to me."

Correct. I often walk down a road with a 20mph 'limit' where most cars are doing around 40 - and some appear to be doing more like 50. There's simply no economically viable way to enforce it, so it will continue like this until there have been a couple of fatalities.

There's simply no economically viable way to enforce it

Conduent offers a turnkey solution for this. They provide and manage speed cameras: https://www.conduent.com/solution/transportation-solutions/r...

Not a chance. And that is a good thing. This knee jerk towards "lets just monitor everyone, everywhere and automate the law" is antithetical to a free society. Most people know that, which is why speed camera votes always send that company (RedFlex or whoever) packing.

I don't know about the US, but where I live speed camera are relatively large bright colored boxes with reflective stripes on the side of the road, with mandatory "speed camera ahead" warnings.

Most of them are empty but people unfamliar with the place will usually slow down.

The laws are state and local. In AZ it's a city or township, then the people put it on the ballot and it gets shut down. Tucson voted 65% no cameras, and later we got a state wide ban on highways, so it's a still a work in progress. The tickets are civil law, so you can throw it out, frame it, or make a coffee table book if you get enough:)

You can lower speeds quite drastically with better street design, no enforcement needed. Make the road narrower and curvier instead of wide open and straight. You can even add bumps.

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