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How To Build Roads To Control How Fast You Drive
An anonymous reader writes "They're the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment. And now new research shows that, if built right, they just might work. A new study out of the University of Connecticut suggests that minor reductions in vehicle speed are possible through changes in the street environment. Through the use of roadside parking, tighter building setbacks, and more commercial land uses, road designers can make drivers subconsciously drive more slowly." All of that is gonna work a lot better than my strategy of placing car-sized holes covered with twigs and branches randomly every half mile or so down the interstates.
It was just yesterday that I posted this comment. In short, why don't we install small transmitters on speed limit signs, and receivers in cars? Then our cars will automatically know what the posted speed limit is, and limit how fast we can drive to that speed. I'm not advocating it, but I wonder why we don't do this. The technologies (and patents) are already there.
The smart one is to build cars to control how fast you drive.
I’ll remember that the next time you yell at me for throwing snowballs at your car. Hey, you drove into it.
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"Cars today have more horsepower, more traction, better safety, and more braking power than cars 20-30 years ago.. Yet, our speed limits have decreased.. Why?"
The guidance system in automobiles has not been upgraded in thousands of years. It has a very slow response time, its memory is faulty, and its visual sensors are inaccurate. It also has a tendancy to multitask at unexpected moments, resulting in inadequate computing resources for the task at hand.
I really wonder how you expect motor vehicles to go faster when their control systems are already loaded to capacity.
You know what happens with those signs? I do. Took our neighborhood several months to get the city to remove the one from in front of my house and prevent them from putting it up somewhere else so the kids in my neighborhood didn't get killed.
What happens is this:
Safe drivers are already safe and the sign is retarded and nothing more than a pointless blinking visual distraction.
Unsafe drivers see the sign as a challenge and speed up so they can see how fast they can drive by the sign, meanwhile ignoring the children playing in the neighborhood so they can watch the sign to see their speed blink.
The theoretical psychology behind these systems maybe interesting, however theory isn't reality and these signs are most definitely far more dangerous than not having them as anyone who's actually been around them is aware.
Absolutely fucking retarded. Creating congestion never raises safety levels. Ever. What happens is people just go faster to run the light or run it anyway. You may think its cute, sounds pretty fucking dangerous to me. Its always a good idea to make speeders suddenly stop unexpectedly and have to hit the brakes hard ... especially with other people speeding behind them ... brilliant idea ... really ... who comes up with this stuff? How many accidents suddenly start happening right around that red light? Hmm? There are less speeding accidents, and twice as many accidents involving the red light being ran or people getting rear ended at it.
I love how someone invents a theory sitting behind a desk somewhere and without actually looking at what happens in the real world, they ignore all the other contributions to the equation and lose sight of reality resulting in a more dangerous situation that you started with.
You want safer driving? Require drivers have more of a clue. Don't let any random moron drive (Here in America if you can breath you can drive, and there are exceptions for non-breathers) and you won't have as many issues. Punish those who drive unsafe stiffer, take away their drivers license. Its not a right, its a privilege.
What you don't do is introduce more distractions and changes to throw unexpected things at the driver. They do this in video games to raise the difficultly level ... perhaps these scientists and others who think this is a good idea should play a few video games and get a clue.
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Wrong. 350 million is a more accurate number; your number is leaving out tens of millions of illegal immigrants, almost none of whom are licensed drivers, but still drive anyway.
The census doesn't count illegals.
Require all new cars to have computer controled throttle limiters, with built in GPS. THe computer knows when you are driving in a 30mph zone, and limits the speed to 30mph.
Later on you can require older vehicles to be retrofitted with the device.