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Comment by mint2 | Hacker News Reader

No, it’s true. People started driving like they were fleeing zombies during the pandemic, and the behaviors stuck.

With the roads deserted people went faster and more carelessly. When things recovered and roads got crowded they didn’t tone their driving back down.

I do insurance things. It’s well known in the field.

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I suspect vision zero policy and phones are also major contributors. Traffic Engineers across the country are setting traffic lights to reduce the flow of traffic to 20mph without changing the actual speed limit. It’s making people crazy.

They aren't fixing the real problem.

Want ZERO fatalities? ISOLATE the Pedestrians from the cars entirely. Build it like Disney World does.

In urban areas, that is coming, but by banning/severely limiting car use in cities.

It can’t come soon enough.

Strange! Where I live traffic lights are used for the opposite purpose: they are set up to improve flow by creating green waves that mean ypu don't have to care about orthogonal traffic.

If the point was the reduce the flow, why wouldn't you make a roundabout?

> If the point was the reduce the flow, why wouldn't you make a roundabout?

Roundabouts have far higher throughput than junctions with traffic lights.

But only because they allow for higher density, not higher speeds, which it seems GP was discussing.

Not quite, traffic lights have the highest throughput if done properly (by quite a margin), but compared to the US style of lights they do.

> Strange! Where I live traffic lights are used for the opposite purpose: they are set up to improve flow by creating green waves that mean ypu don't have to care about orthogonal traffic.

story: An out of state tech visiting our job site greeted us with "What the hell is wrong with the traffic lights in Florida!?" This was SW FL and I was a little confused because he had driven thru one of the most benign counties. I might be conditioned though.

Just north of Tampa is a county where most traffic lights are timed to insure you reach the next one on the yellow. I've traveled thru it regularly for 30 years. Between 20 and 15 years ago it reached ~as bad as possible status and there it remains.

Adding awful to bad are the drivers who've realized they can defeat much of this timing with sufficient speed.

That is what should be done, but it’s becoming rare. Bangerter Highway in Utah comes to mind as a good one. I know Colorado is a state big on vision zero policy, where if you go the posted speed you will hit every single light.

The lockdowns brought about a pandemic of selfishness. If x% of the people didn't like lockdown rules and they broke them and they were fine, y% of those probably absorbed the lesson that some other rules are useless.

It didn't help that most, maybe all, governmental authorities were improvising their COVID response, some other percentage of people lost their fear/trust in authorities that way.

Ha, societal breakdown indeed...

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