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Comment by uberduber | Hacker News Reader

Seconds count. We already know that speed bumps kill 9 for every 1 life they save, due to ambulance delays. Ambulances are heavy and can't go over speed bumps very quickly. The 1 life they save is from someone not going so fast.

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I'm not so sure that's a thing we "known". I didn't have any luck tracking down the origin of that stat (it looks like it may be from a study in Boulder CO, but other than the same sentence referencing it that seems to show up in a bunch of articles, I can't find actual study).

I'd be very surprised if that was actually a rigorously proven stat.

There are a bunch of references in this article though I can't find that exact statistic:

http://www.edmecka.com/Forms/tfc_calm.pdf

Oh, on page 158 they claim it is more like 40 lives lost per 1 life saved in Austin, TX.

That's not based on any actual evidence though... Just a bunch of (somewhat dubious) assumptions piled into a theoretical analysis.

You may be right. It's been a while. I remember reading a news article some place where they had the stats before they put them in, and found out after that ambulance times were delayed and the death rate went up, and then they tore them all out at great expense. The other ones I remember seeing are more like the one linked below. I think they proved the speed bumps result in ambulance delays, and assume deaths based on a rate. I also recall not being able to find any solid data that the speed bumps save lives.

Absent some solid evidence, I just don't buy it (based on a fair bit of experience as a paramedic). Speed bumps don't slow you down that much, and "seconds" really aren't that important.

Interesting, I have a few friends who were formerly EMTs and when I spoke to some former paramedic acquaintances, they seemed to believe the speed bumps were detrimental in certain specific medical cases, things like cardiac arrest and aortic aneurysms.

I'm in SoCal and some of these neighborhoods are just full of speed bumps, so maybe it's all of those seconds adding to minutes? Also there are different types of speed bumps, some don't slow you down at all and others you go 5mph and feel like you're ruining your suspension. Or maybe there's some other confounding factor? Do you only have a few where you live?

Would like a source for this.

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