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Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Cities can replace smooth asphalt with rough brick and cobblestone, and replace traffic lights with traffic circles / roundabouts. If they really want to force cars to slow down, they could, in a way that doesn't take anyone's rights away and doesn't require any vehicle manufacturer to play ball.

Freedom isn't free. It's always cheaper to take away people's freedom instead of doing the hard work of building infrastructure to naturally promote traffic calming. Too bad America (left and right) doesn't believe in freedom anymore.

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Yes, lets just reorganize and rebuilt the entire city infrastructure to fix bad behavior by a few people. I don't want to actually oppose your suggestions because I think they are all good, but I also think that if a person repeatedly breaks a law then that is precisely the circumstances under which their freedom can be decreased as long as due process is respected.

American's still believe in freedom, in my opinion, its just that the entrenched powers make it increasingly impossible to imagine a world that actually nourishes human freedom and, lacking that, we just sort of flail around in frustration. The single insight which Americans must digest in order to move forward is that both governments and corporations and, indeed, any powerful entity whatsoever, can and often do interfere with human freedom and flourishing and all of them need to be continuously attended to and restrained by law and by the vigilance of the people. The second most important thing is the understanding that negative freedoms mean nothing without the resources to transform them into positive freedoms and if we fail to provide those resources then enormous amounts of human potential will be wasted. The second is a harder pill to swallow given the U.S. mythology, but I would be satisfied with the former for now.

You should look into why cities use smooth asphalt over concert which would be significantly less maintenance.

Cars driving around create a lot of noise. Driving on a rough surface like concert, let alone a bumpy surface like brick or cobblestone, creates a ton of additional noise. Another hint is that gravel driveways are cheap, but they also make it very very easy to hear when someone is pulling up to your house.

Anyone living next to these roads _might_ have some cars go a bit slower, but at the cost of not being able to sleep at night.

Then there is the fact that America loves big cars with big off roading wheels. I think the assumption here is that most speeders would be discouraged by the uncomfortable ride, however I think reality is that the people in that hummer going 90mph on a city street just won't care about a rougher ride.

They added concrete and metal bollards that narrows the road around crosswalks here. It's made a nice difference.

"Cities can replace smooth asphalt with rough brick and cobblestone"

There are some cobblestone streets in Prague and cars driving through them, even slowly, generate a lot of unnecessary noise.

Count me out, I don't want to suffer from extra noise just because it would slow some people down. I lived in one such street for years and even with sporadic traffic, I had to open my windows at night. I hated that.

You mean the historic city center? Pretty sure that's not exactly state of the art

This place: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hfDcJek99whs9Ghu8

Cobblestone is an old technology, though. How does "state of the art" differ from what we can see on this street view?

I think someone can drive 80km/h on this one. Plus they should be super-slippery in rain, right?

I remember crossing Poland towards Lithuania some years back, and in some village 1h from the border had a 500m part with stones, and those stones used would force me to do 25-30km/h and not more, I feared that my tires would burst, also the noise was unbearable.

If you also want to encourage biking, don't replace your asphalt with cobblestone. Maybe more speed bumbs and traffic slowing curves.

just pave the bike lane

That's a possible solution to the problem of cars in general going too fast for a given area.

That is not the problem Virginia is trying to deal with with this legislation. They are trying to deal with the problem of a very small number of drivers who are driving much faster than the speed limit and much faster than even most speeders go.

These are drivers that have been convicted of speeding at more than 100 mph. That is a criminal offense of the same level as drunk driving rather than a mere traffic infraction.

It is just those drivers that they are trying to slow down.

Bricks and cobblestones don’t handle high traffic well, require too much maintenance i.e. too expensive. Cobblestones are only good for areas with heavily restricted or banned vehicle traffic. For roads and higher traffic streets, asphalt is more practical.

Agree with the rest of your comment. I also think the main reason for high traffic deaths in America is road design.

This the wrong way. It will destroy suspensions at 5-10x the regular rate and not everyone can afford a new suspension every 5 years.

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