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Comment by DaveFlater | Hacker News Reader

My current burb has been fighting "cut through" traffic since before phone navigation was a thing. They do it with "traffic calming" (filling streets with obstacles to through-traffic) and designs that give people no alternative to getting on the main stroad. The result has been sheer hell. The frustration level is so high that whenever the main stroad is not gridlocked it is like Fury Road: harrowing for drivers and 100% lethal to peds and cyclists. But I guess that one guy on the side street who was shaking his fist at people speeding past his house is happy now.

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> But I guess that one guy on the side street who was shaking his fist at people speeding past his house is happy now.

That’s me. My UK cul-de-sac street is a 20mph limit. It’s a thin street with cars parked on both sides with just enough room to drive down the middle. There are kids and pets.

People fly down the street at terrifying speeds, putting on seatbelts, fiddling with their phones and all sorts between two lines of parked cars.

My neighbour on one side uses my dipped kerb to mount the pavement at 15mph and drive along the pavement to park outside his own house. My other neighbour has a hedge, such that my son could be running up the drive on to the pavement, where we have taught him it is safe, and my other neighbour could be driving along the pavement and hit him without ever seeing him.

People just don’t think.

I don't begrudge people who want their residential neighborhood streets to be residential. The issue is usually the development choices. The main cut through like you're describing near me recently had large bumps added to prevent speeding. No problem in my book except they should probably remove the traffic lights at either end of that street now. The lights either encouraged it to be a cut through or were added because it was, but in this case, there are not enough residents on that strip versus others to justify one, especially now.

The street I live on just did this. I live on a residential street one block off of a main road, they added "Road Closed to Thru Traffic" construction barriers to both entrances of my street. They've been there for 2 weeks with no sign of construction.

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