A professor at my university wrote a book called Navigating Environmental Attitudes, and he titled a chapter, “Educating the Public… and Other Disasters”. TL; DR: It doesn’t work.
That’s why I advocate for a big, metal spike on the steering wheel, pointed at the driver’s chest. (Okay, or designing the roads so that they feel unsafe, so drivers naturally slow down and pay attention.)
That’s why I advocate for a big, metal spike on the steering wheel, pointed at the driver’s chest.
Go back to old enough cars and that spike use to be the steering column. We now have a few different ways so it doesn’t crush/impale you into the seat anymore in a front end collision.
My parents live in a neighborhood with these methodologies at play. Winter makes it fun. They live on a horseshoe shaped street and the corners have cul-de-sac bulges in the them. When cars inevitably are going too fast and slide off there are trees strategically placed so they hit those instead of going into peoples living rooms when they can’t make the turn. Bunch of teenage drivers in that neighborhood so this typically happens multiple times each winter. The vertical part of the horseshoe isn’t perfectly straight either and has a very modest curve in it. My parent’s house is basically at the outside apex of that curve. When the roads are icy the amount of times their car has been hit parked on the street in front of their house is embarrassing. Since it was a company car at the time they didn’t really care. Once they hit the front wheel basically square on which shoved the front axle straight into the transmission shattering it…that was a 5 figure repair bill. They’re retired now, all the kids are out, so no need for street parking.
I will say they live where the weather can be truly atrocious in winter. It’s sometimes painful just to breathe without a face covering. I have some screenshots of weather apps where the high for the day is -18F with windchills of approx -50F(-28C and -45C for the rest of the world). That’s an exceptional example but temps in the sub 20’s(-7C) isn’t exactly rare weather.
I know people are probably thinking this is a failure of the city not salting the roads but in all honesty residential is the last place they get to and at those temps even with salting…it’s still ice. Salt lowers the freezing point but doesn’t remove it.
I’ve done the experiments myself. The street that I live on is a rat-run, on which drivers speed through a residential neighborhood with lots of bicyclists, kids, people walking dogs, students walking to school, and the like. The street is ridiculously wide, enough for four vehicles to squeeze by.
So I sometimes park my vehicle on the street. (I bike to work, and most other places.) That visual narrowing of the street is enough to slow them down a bit. The best day was when the people across the street had contractors in, and they parked their trucks on the street while I parked my vehicle on my side. There was still room for two vehicles to squeeze by (and the bus drivers would YOLO it through), but it felt so narrow that most people would stop for oncoming traffic, and take turns through the cataract.
A professor at my university wrote a book called Navigating Environmental Attitudes, and he titled a chapter, “Educating the Public… and Other Disasters”. TL; DR: It doesn’t work.
That’s why I advocate for a big, metal spike on the steering wheel, pointed at the driver’s chest. (Okay, or designing the roads so that they feel unsafe, so drivers naturally slow down and pay attention.)
Go back to old enough cars and that spike use to be the steering column. We now have a few different ways so it doesn’t crush/impale you into the seat anymore in a front end collision.
I remember reading a study about speeding in neighborhoods. It’s not unusual to have people driving 50+ in a 25 MPH neighborhood.
Speed bumps actually caused people to drive faster between the bumps.
What worked was more curves and narrow roads. Essentially making it more dangerous.
So you’re not wrong.
My parents live in a neighborhood with these methodologies at play. Winter makes it fun. They live on a horseshoe shaped street and the corners have cul-de-sac bulges in the them. When cars inevitably are going too fast and slide off there are trees strategically placed so they hit those instead of going into peoples living rooms when they can’t make the turn. Bunch of teenage drivers in that neighborhood so this typically happens multiple times each winter. The vertical part of the horseshoe isn’t perfectly straight either and has a very modest curve in it. My parent’s house is basically at the outside apex of that curve. When the roads are icy the amount of times their car has been hit parked on the street in front of their house is embarrassing. Since it was a company car at the time they didn’t really care. Once they hit the front wheel basically square on which shoved the front axle straight into the transmission shattering it…that was a 5 figure repair bill. They’re retired now, all the kids are out, so no need for street parking.
I will say they live where the weather can be truly atrocious in winter. It’s sometimes painful just to breathe without a face covering. I have some screenshots of weather apps where the high for the day is -18F with windchills of approx -50F(-28C and -45C for the rest of the world). That’s an exceptional example but temps in the sub 20’s(-7C) isn’t exactly rare weather.
I know people are probably thinking this is a failure of the city not salting the roads but in all honesty residential is the last place they get to and at those temps even with salting…it’s still ice. Salt lowers the freezing point but doesn’t remove it.
I’ve done the experiments myself. The street that I live on is a rat-run, on which drivers speed through a residential neighborhood with lots of bicyclists, kids, people walking dogs, students walking to school, and the like. The street is ridiculously wide, enough for four vehicles to squeeze by.
So I sometimes park my vehicle on the street. (I bike to work, and most other places.) That visual narrowing of the street is enough to slow them down a bit. The best day was when the people across the street had contractors in, and they parked their trucks on the street while I parked my vehicle on my side. There was still room for two vehicles to squeeze by (and the bus drivers would YOLO it through), but it felt so narrow that most people would stop for oncoming traffic, and take turns through the cataract.
This can be as simple as drawing disorienting lines on the road.