Hacker News Reader

Comment by quamserena | Hacker News Reader

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

View on HN

The driver blithely keeping with the flow of traffic is not the one I am worried about. It is the one who is aggressively trying to cut through the flow of traffic while putting everyone and themselves in danger that I worry about.

I love when cities time their lights so that aggressive drivers just get hit with waiting at a red light while driving the speed limit means hitting greens for long stretches.

Yes, and about twice I've seen this done really right, wherein they post signs of the synchronization speed (e.g., "Lights Timed for 35mph"). I just get in sync with one light and adjust speed and it feels almost magic to go a few miles hitting every green light (it kind of is the macic of math).

It'd be cool if more roads were implemented that way.

There's a part of downtown here that is known for being set up like this. However, it's been a bust while there's been a lot of construction blocking lanes so nothing moves at speed.

I have the same in my area, but instead the lights are synchronized to slow traffic as much as possible. They literally coordinate to make you stop at as many lights as possible and grid lock at rush hour so the highway doesn't get flooded.

I walk my kids to school, but when I do drive the 1.1 miles there are no less than 12 stoplights/stop signs.

Sure, some people will get hit with the reds. Some people will learn the timing and learn that you can run just one red and then hit all greens, or that it will save you 5+min if you hammer down and pull a "clearly not ok" pass to get around some idiot who's going too slow to make the green timing.

So yeah, you're reducing speeding, number go up, pat yourself on the back. But you're also increasing the incidence of something rarer than speeding, but way worse.

This is the same problem that 4-way stops at roads that don't deserve them create, you're basically teaching people that the signage is bullshit.

Upping the speed limit reduces the incidence of the latter because just about everyone has a "fuck this I'm weaving" threshold and the number of people who hit it goes down when you reduce the incidence of rolling clusters of traffic caused by the handful of people who religiously follow the speed limit even when not appropriate.

If the speeds aren’t appropriate for the built environment, then the limits should be changed or the environment should be changed. Enforcement of the law should be consistent regardless of the quality of the law.

The speeds are appropriate for the roads generally. I mean, at the lowest level speed limits are a matter of social consensus so the broad public is tautologically correct.

The problem is that knocking the magic number on the sign down by 5-15 and then simply not enforcing it too seriously results in less screeching Karens harassing the politicians who then harass the bureaucracy than taking a hard line about "well akshually this is the engineered speed for the road".

The speed cameras in San Francisco have to result in lowered speeding over the 18 month period they're active. If they don't, they will be pulled. Seems pretty well-designed. Perhaps the fines are weak but it's good that they're there.

Just because a road "feels" like it can handle more speed does not mean that it is. The wider streets are built to handle the volume of cars, not necessarily meant to become a speed way. There are several 6 lane roads in my area while being wide and well built still have many intersections only controlled by stop signs for the smaller streets with multiple intersections controlled by stop lights at the larger cross streets.

People unable to recognize this and only driving by the feels are the problem. Hand wavy comments like yours suggesting using the feels as being okay do not help the situation

Now you're relying on Jimmy "Buck" Rawgers born and raised in Billton county working at the DOT setting the speed limits and the traffic light cadence.

How many roads are 35 when they should be 50 simply because some local yokel asshole made a stink at city counsel 10 years ago and now it's impossible to change?

Basing your speed on what the road looks like may not be “okay” or “legal”, but it’s what people do. It’s just not useful to claim that individual people are the problem when this is something that is overwhelmingly true across the entire population—-a broader solution than individual responsibility is the only thing that will actually work.

Speeds are fundamentally a tradeoff between risk and reward. In nominally democratic societies we place these thresholds based on some approximation of social consensus. The general public literally cannot be wrong because their rough consensus, the fat part of the bell curve if you will, is what determines what the right speed is.

Your comment is literally the principal Skinner "no it's everyone else who's wrong" meme.

Um, no it’s not. If you think that roads are built with no consideration for anything other than if the infrastructure will support traffic at a certain speed then you’re just not thinking about things. Speed limits are set with many factors in that decision. Things like noise and safety are major parts of that. Someone else has already suggested a lame reason as a noise complaint made by a single person, but cars moving faster make more noise. Cars moving faster limits the time a car at a stop sign can safely navigate causing traffic at cross streets.

Regardless of what you think, speed limits are not set in place just to ruin your day because you can’t leave on time and constantly need to “make up time”. They are not arbitrary decisions just because you haven’t considered all of the factors involved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com