As reported in the British Telegraph, Motordom’s last gasp is alive and well with a science reporter letting us know that removing speed bumps (called speed humps in Britain) on the road will lessen pollution and save lives. I am not making this stuff up.
“In a report looking at how to make air cleaner, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said that measures which help motorists stay at a constant speed, rather than accelerating and decelerating, were preferable to humps. It follows a study earlier this year by Imperial College which found that forcing drivers to slow down and speed up again produces significant harmful emissions”
But that is not really what the NICE link says when you click on it. It says if you slow down and drive smoothly, you will reduce pollution. The Imperial College report goes on more of a tangent, stating “road humps should be removed from streets close to schools and playgrounds because they increase the amount of pollution from cars, experts have said. Scientists have found that by forcing drivers to slow down before speeding up again, road humps cause vehicles to produce a greater amount of harmful emissions” And yes, they have made the link that speed humps impact air quality where “large numbers of children gather, such as outside schools or play areas”. There is no discussion that the speed humps are placed outside schools and play areas to slow vehicles and protect children.
What of the lives saved and reduced injuries from speed hump slower speeds? We know that a child or adult being hit by a vehicle at 50 km/h has a 10 per cent of survival. That increases to a 90 per cent survival rate if the vehicular speed is reduced to 30 km/h. Speed humps or bumps reduce vehicular speeds and increase the likelihood of pedestrian survival in crashes. At the C40 Cities Summit in Mexico City incoming chair Mayor of Paris Anne Hildalgo has just announced that the use of diesel vehicles will be prohibited in four major C40 cities by 2025. Emissions can be reduced by the use of electric vehicles.
It is hard to believe in the 21st century that this vitriol for motordom supremacy is still being published by newspapers. There is a national movement started in Toronto to start calling crippling and deadly vehicular/pedestrian crashes “road violence”, a term that was first used in the early 20th century. Slower speeds save lives. Speed humps or bumps slow cars. Until we have better driver behaviour and streets designed for slower speeds, we need humps.
Another approach is to just not allow cars near schools.
I hate our dependence on cars. It irks me that so many feel they couldn’t live a good life without their dangerous tonnes of steel. Cars must be forced to slow down in most urban settings.
But speed bumps are just plain dumb! Is it really the best we can do?
We make roads ever wider and straighter and easier for cars to go fast and then wonder why they go fast. Then some dope comes along and figures big bumps in the road are the answer. And yes, intended or not, people do accelerate between them. That is because the are a dumb solution.
Narrow the roads. Create more curves (but keep sight-lines). Separate uses within the roadway. Create stronger and more defined barriers. Create more car-free streets.
I mentioned False Creek South “roadways” in an earlier post. They are meant to be car-free but you can still get in and drop off granma. You never see anyone come anywhere near the speed limit. There are NO speed bumps. The roadway is designed to force people to drive slowly.
Learn.
Repeat.
Yes RV and Vision seems intent on sweeping the those leased False Creek properties away when the leases are up. No doubt for some more exciting point towers.
Yeah, pretty well. Different places call for different things. It would be more of a surprise if there was identical political positions in rural vs urban areas.
So I guess the challenge is how to make cities better without the rural and suburban people knowing about it and then getting in the way.
Surely we can devise a solution that allows cars to operate most efficiently without compromising safety? The two goals aren’t mutually exclusive, and as long as we have cars on the road we want them to pollute as little as possible.
I’d like to see a return to local catchment areas for schools so that most students could walk, and we could eliminate the twice daily parades of SUVs around schools. Local shopping options to encourage movement on foot. Wider sidewalks and narrower traffic lanes to slow cars AND encourage walking.
There are better ways to manage their car/pedestrian relationship. Let’s find them.
“Balance” is a very subjective concept, unfortunately. What’s acceptable for either party to ‘give up’ to achieve that balance? Is it ok for only a few people to be killed every year by motorists (talking about peds, cyclists, and car drivers/passengers)? Half the current number? Also, any reduction in vehicle ‘efficiency’ inevitably leads to the old War on Cars complaints, especially from generations of motorists who’ve never had restraints placed on the immediate convenience of driving? They’ve literally been entitled to drive whenever, wherever, and however they’ve ever wanted.
There’s nothing inherently safe about multi-ton boxes of metal, glass, and plastic speeding along with and among fragile human bodies. And there’s nothing inherently efficient about the way cars move in traffic – think locusts, not birds. In fact you’d be hard-pressed to find a form of mass locomotion more inefficient than car traffic.
Of course ‘safety’ and ‘efficiency’ are relative concepts, not absolute ones. But one of these two things is more important than the other. The balance you call for means accepting both a certain amount of violent death and inconvenience as motorists. How much of each do you propose?
Of course Dan, let’s ban cars. That will work. Your rhetoric is at best naive. It is also perfectly illustrative of the thinking that leads to populist revolts against the theories of the minority dwelling in their urban cocoons.
Ooh. The Trump Card. Coining it. Nothing I said implied that we should give up cars, except maybe through the prism of your own profound insecurities. We do accept a lot of death as a result of how we currently live our lives with cars, even if we don’the talk about it. Being honest with oneself doesn’t mean we can’t go on ignoring road carnage and our own lack of imagination, but it is what adults do. Adults.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Forcing drivers to SLOW down & SPEED again. How do speed humps FORCE drivers to speed again.? ? ??