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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> just after the speed bump only to then jump on the squeaky brakes for the stop sign a few meters further.

Speed bumps and stops signs annoy me too. Get rid of those, reduce the unnecessary acceleration/braking, and such cars should sail by quietly.

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I wouldn't say stop signs are bad, they're put there for a reason. Speed bumps however force you to slow down way below the allowed speed, then while you're on the pedal you might just accelerat back to whatever speed.

The actibump in Linköping, Sweden solves this by only being in the way if you drive too fast. Used to live next to one of these, worked like a charm.

For some reason the US is completely in love with the stop signs in places. They are very frequently used in places where European countries would just put the "yield" sign.

My company modeled traffic before I sold it.

Roundabouts (or 'rotaries', depending on where you live) and yield signs could do a whole lot to reduce travel times and increase efficiency by a surprisingly large amount.

The problems are numerous, but mostly the urban areas weren't designed for such, the costs to switch would be large, and the American driver can take up to six years to adjust to a new traffic pattern.

My rural county has gone wild for roundabouts. It appears we got a new traffic engineer about five years ago and they've set about to make as many roundabouts as possible. We even have a double roundabout now. I'm surprised by how little controversy it created and how quickly everyone adapted. I can only think of one that hasn't worked out well and that's because traffic from a very close Chick-fil-a ends up back up into the roundabout and clogging it up.

Due to the rural/exurban character of the area, space for roundabouts isn't much of an issue. I suspect lots of other similar counties could do the same with similar results but it takes someone in the planning office to take the chance on doing it. Also it takes money so from a fiscal point of view, it's best to redo intersections when they're already scheduled for being repaved or they're having capacity issues that need to be addressed.

My rural area has rules against roundabouts. Depending on dimensions, they can be difficult for large farm machinery to negotiate. And in in the winter they are more difficult to plow.

That's strange. We have lots of roundabouts here in Norway and the farmers don't have any problems, nor the snow ploughs.

Perhaps ours are a different design?

For reasons that are unclear, a lot of roundabouts in the U.S. are so small that its nearly impossible for two vehicles to be in the roundabout at the same time.

Which makes them basically useless, and difficult navigate for e.g. vehicles with trailers--you end up running dragging the trailer over the center or something.

Small roundabouts in Europe are typically just a disk of white paint in the middle. Anything too big to go around just drives over it.

There are a lot of these in Berkeley. On top of being small, they have stop signs at the entrances, too! I tend to believe they're mostly an excuse to put a tree in the middle of the road, because a lot of them do have trees in the center.

That's actually measurable. You take the data from before the change and the estimations (based on similar changes elsewhere) and plot how long it takes for the traffic to reach expectations (in terms of things like throughput and decreased collisions). With that, you can find out how long the average drivers took to adjust.

It can be depressingly long.

Roundabouts everywhere is what I built on a city in Cities: Skylines. I wish there are more roundabouts in real world.

OTOH, roundabouts with stop signs are just the worst of both worlds. I've seen this distressingly often. Looking at you, Berkeley....

I feel bad that my first thought is because it's easier for the cops to fill their ticket quota with stop signs in stupid places people would probably ignore.

People ignore stop signs everywhere, IME. Best case, they slow way down and yield; worst case, they just blow through it entirely. I've even seen cops roll through stop signs. Nobody actually stops unless they would physically hit something if they didn't, and few use turn signals if they're going to turn. It's maddening as a pedestrian.

I didn't know about actibump thank you. I have long wanted to see solutions like this (although I would have loved it to be low tech : some clever engineering device that would mechanically make a bump if speed is too high) I wish they were more common.

https://dai.ly/x4nt0sd

Are you seriously suggesting make streets more dangerous for pedestrians so that self absorbed <explicative removed> with noisy cars can enjoy them more quietly?

How about we instead regulate the noise cars make and not purposefully disable road safety features. That way we can enjoy quiet roads without asking other people to risk their lives for it.

Some people don't even realise the tremendous cost cars have on a huge array of things in our lives. This is mostly due to just how ingrained it is in our culture.

I always joke that cars turn people into sociopaths, but sometimes I no longer think it’s a joke.

You don't need to brake to go over a speed bump if you're already going slowly enough, and there's no reason either way to immediately accelerate up to the end of the street where you're just going to have to slow again, regardless of the signing.

Speed bumps in the US are frequently built at such an obnoxious level that you have to slow down below the speed limit in order to get past them decently.

In my car - I have to frequently take them at an angle unless I want to scrape (comes from the factory that way) - even then, it's not bullet proof. Especially in parking lots where there are no rules - I've scrapped the middle section of my car because they built them for lifted vehicles.

If the goal is to reduce speed - it kind of works - but it adds the extra layer of obnoxious noise which basically kills any of the benefits IMO. On top of this - you now have people introducing far more brake dust and tire material into your local environment because everyone has to slow down to cross a speed bump and then accelerate again too. If we had speed bumps on my street - I'd be advocating for them to be removed. They're burdensome on the locals due to the noise pollution they create. You want a loud vehicle to get by as fast as possible and with as little throttle as possible. Nothing worse than hearing it crawl over multiple speed bumps.

> Speed bumps in the US are frequently built at such an obnoxious level that you have to slow down below the speed limit in order to get past them decently.

Blame truck and SUV drivers. Speed bumps must be designed to slow the largest vehicle down to a safe speed, thus harming lighter and less off-road capable vehicles more.

We have some ridiculously high ones in my neighborhood. In my car, I have to come to a complete stop and then roll over it very slowly to keep from dragging.

In my pickup, I have found that it is much smoother to speed up and hit them faster so that the shocks engage and it causes much less of a bump in the cabin than if I slow down.

The neighborhood I grew up in was obnoxiously “think fo the children” and the speed bumps were labeled to be 5mph. They looked more like a spike than a bump. There is no reasonable way to travel at that speed, so it will make noise.

It was a residential street nowhere close to high traffic, so it basically only punished the residents

I have a car that sits very low from the ground. Speed bumps are uncomfortable at any non-zero speed whatsoever, on top of that, there is always a risk that they will simply bottom out the car. I always take speed bumps at the absolute minimum speed the car will do without stalling.

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