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London is Using Optical Illusions To Make Cars Slow Down (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: London has an interesting idea to curb speeding -- magic. The British capital has painted optical illusions on its streets as part of a pilot program to get drivers to slow down, podcast 99% Invisible notes. The idea is both pretty simple and pretty clever: use a little sleight of hand to paint the streets to look like they have speed bumps on them, but don't use finite city resources to actually build speed bumps into the road. The 18-month pilot program was launched in September of last year, according to the BBC, and the city is still determining whether the black-and-white stencils are as effective as actual bumps to deter drivers from exceeding 20mph (as if traffic in London ever goes faster than 20 mph).
I don't slow down in my pickup truck for speed bumps. I think the effectiveness of fake speed bumps depends greatly on what kind of suspension your car has and how little you give a fuck.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They have been doing this in Japan and some northern European countries for at least a decade. They paint little pyramid looking things on the road that cause drivers to slow down. It's an odd feeling, you know they are just painted on but feel like you want to slow down anyway for some reason.
I wonder if fake speed bumps are as effective.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The summary is almost as long as the article, seriously the only addition is a comment that they aren't the first.
I was hoping for something clever, like the stripes before roundabouts that get closer together to give an impression of speeding up. There's a reason this fake speed bump thing won't catch on. It will only affect those that haven't driven on the roads before or regularly. Anyone that has will know they are fake and drive at the same speed as before.
What happens when someone damages their car because they went over a speed bump at normal speed because they though it was an optical illusion? I know, they should have slowed down, but there still will be a lawsuit because there always is.
Paint fake stuff, like pedestrians or speed-bumps on the road, until people get trained to recognized this fake shit and start running actual people over and damaging their cars by going full speed over actual speed bumps. Great idea! What could possibly go wrong?!
Just long enough for a bureaucrat to declare victory and start looking for the next "success" to add to his resume.
Drivers will quickly adjust, and traffic will return to normal (bad).
Then, in a few years, someone will notice that "traffic has gotten bad again" and this same bureaucrat will be given the task of solving it, thanks to his supposed expertise.
#DeleteChrome
Works now. Until people learn that the speed bumps are illusions and they start to ignore them, then the traffic jams are back. And then we get some new ones when people run into a REAL speed bump they thought was an illusion and the car dies in the middle of a road right during the rush hour.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So this is a solution which get's the desired response but doesn't solve the problem, speeding. Eventually drivers will become accustom to such painting/illusions and temper there accident response. Instead of your brain saying look a child, or obstruction and immediately apply teh break your brain will introduce the question is it an illusion before applying the break.
For some reason this reminds me of "The Marching Morons" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... where Kornbluth features cars with speedometers calibrated to look like they are going 200mph when in reality the car is going about 50.
What happens when people on certain routes know about the false markings and get use to them. And then unconscious cross a real bump at too high a speed.... possibly causing an accident.... people react to these things without knowing. All speedbump markings will get edited from the minds eye as they will be meaningless.
Hmm that may or may not be a speed bump. Russian roulette anyone?
They work in the short term. But drivers will learn very quickly that they aren't real and will know which they can ignore. It'll take a few days at most.
New drivers (to that road) will slow for them going forward, but anyone who uses the road in any way frequently won't.
in crowded traffic or in bad weather, the effect is diminished.
That's what I was thinking. But if the decoy decision is local, then problems at real speed bumps at other places outside your jurisdiction is arguably not your problem. Let them ruin their suspension.
My wife often puts clocks ahead to trick the family into getting ready on time. When we get accustomed to the inflated time, she shifts it even more. Eventually somebody puts them back to normal in protest and everybody is late for a day or two. Rinse, repeat.
Whether it's overall better than always-honest clocks in terms of being on time is hard to say. At least she has some control over which days we are likely to be on-time, being her work schedule varies a bit. (We had to drive kids to school sometimes, so if they were late, we were also.)
Table-ized A.I.
My city installed a bunch of them to damage cars after a guy that owned a local muffler shop was elected mayor. He also has fought against road repairs near his shop. Speed bumps are very profitable for those scumbags.
when people get used to the fake speed bumps, cant tell them apart from the real ones, and start ignoring them.
What will happen is that withing a very short time drivers will ignore them. And then when they run into real ones, they will be surprised and cause accidents. This is really beyond stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It fails to account for basic human psychology. People will react and respond to what they perceive as potentially hostile and/or dangerous stimuli the first handful of times, but once they recognize that there is no actual threat, they will start ignoring it, whatever it is. In other words, once people realize that these painted speed bumps aren't actually speed bumps, they will go back to business as usual. It actually might make things more dangerous if there are actual speed bumps in nearby locations, and people can't figure out which ones are real or fake... mainly because the people that are aware of the fake speed bumps won't slow down, possibly causing car accidents.
People will see these illusory speed bumps, drive over them and think, "Say, that wasn't so bad." After a while, they will start taking the at full speed. Until they hit a real one. After a number of people incur large bills for suspension damage, a new city administration will be elected to office.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or optical obstacle illusions? Or maybe obstacle optical illusions?
I hear you like links. So we link to an article that links to articles. I take a different approach. Let's save a level of linking and get you directly to the information sources with videos and everything: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-... http://99percentinvisible.org/...
Last time I HAD to drive into the heart of London I did what any sensible person would do and set off at 4am, Sunday morning. I got to the city proper around 6am and the roads we're still pretty much deserted (by London standards at least) however this by no means made driving easy.
Ignoring the average speed traps taper you down from 70 - 30 with the constant threat of fines, there are mile long stretches of road with lights ever 100 yards, and box junctions with cameras every 50. The lights are phased in such a fashion that you will be required to stop at every single light regardless of the complete absence of other traffic. Run a light - automated fine, stop in a box - automated fine.
Add to this feature like those mentioned in TFA, the ones I saw were multicolored anamorphic cubed designed to look like debris, and the fact that even Londoners don't know their way round London and you've seeming engineered to drive people to suicide. Never mind what Soho is like in peak traffic.
It's honestly a place where you can take a leisurely drive across the city at 5am on a weekend and by the time you've reached the other side have not only accumulated enough points for several driving bans, but enough fines to bankrupt yourself too!
The problem is that it's the nasty kind.
When you turn off of the main road, it looks like a simple uphill stretch. There is a slight slope to the street, but it also narrows several feet at the same time, and the hill masks the narrowing part. People tend to maintain their lane spot by watching clues on the driver's side (like where the left-hand curb is compared to the window pillars), so they miss the right-hand curb getting closer.
About once a month, someone hits the curb across the street hard enough to shake my house and either give the car a flat - or break the right front wheel.
The simple solution would be to paint a white line to show people the narrowing, but it's a brick street, and the city won't paint anything on it.
"(as if traffic in London ever goes faster than 20 mph)"
We could try to discover which is the most badly-managed city. One entry: Seattle Misery.
London has an interesting idea to curb speeding -- magic.
Science takes brains, magic - black eyeliner.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
so now they are going to teach drivers to hit speed bumps at full speed since the speed bump they see is probably fake.
People will realize those are fake and disregard them in the future... until they hit a real one at full speed and sue the city for it.
They would have to constantly MOVE them around because people who drive the same area day after day would get use to them. Not to mention the 3d one of the kid running after a ball.
As a result, people slow down before and accelerate after, resulting in massive pollution problems - probably killing a lot of people, where probably none were previously killed by speed, since the congestion ensures you probably can't even reach 7MPH anyway, and causing injuries because some people (mostly motorcyclits) lose control and hit pedestrians if they don't hit a parked car first.
In short, speed bumps in London are probably a danger to society. I am not aware of any credible research that says otherwise.
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One of the videos shows that they painted a road to look like a little girl is crouching down in the middle of the street. Maybe I'm just being silly, but my mind jumped back to the release of Windows Vista, and the initial versions of UAC.
In case you don't remember, Microsoft released Windows Vista with the great new security feature that every time your computer was about to do something that was a security risk, a window would pop up asking, "are you sure you want to do this?" Not only was this annoying, but people quickly adapted to these interruptions by thoughtlessly clicking "Ok" or "Yes" to any window that popped up on their screen. Microsoft set up a bunch of warnings, and the result was training users to ignore warnings.
So what I'd worry about here is that people are going to get used to the idea that these paintings aren't really speed bumps, and the little girl in the middle of the street isn't a real little girl. They'll get so used to it that they'll blow straight past it. And then, on some very unfortunate day, it'll turn out the it really was a little girl playing in the street.
It costs a tenth the price, if it is a tenth as effective, still worth it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Care to educate me then sonny.
What exactly is the correct way to drive down a road covered in painted on debris?
What happens when people start hitting real speed bumps at 80 kph?
fakebrit.
I live in London, this isn't new. In fact there's one down the road to me that's been there for 10+ years.
In the middle of a series of REAL bumps, there's a "fake" bump with the same painted lines, even ones that "narrow" for the bump, painted "up arrow" on the road itself, etc. But it's as flat as a pancake.
I tell you now - it must be extraordinarily cheaper. I've seen prices of speed bumps, they are NOT cheap. However, it's singularly ineffective. Basically if you've NEVER driven that road before, you slow for it. But every one else remembers it's there (it's actually odd enough to stick in your mind whether you want it to or not) and just goes over it.
If anything, it probably causes more problems.
Bear in mind, I'm all for traffic-calming measures, speed limit enforcement, etc. Yes, you can all hate me. But even I just look at it and go "Well, that's useless". It's not even worth the time to paint the lines, to be honest.
But then bumps are a pain in the arse and slow nobody, they just find alternative routes (i.e. the quiet backstreets you DON'T want them going down, near schools etc.) or bounce over them. Especially the stupid "narrow enough for you to drive straight over" ones that are supposed to slow normal traffic but allow emergency vehicles through. Those are a complete waste of time too.
Stop fucking about, and just put an average speed camera on every corner, that alerts nearby police cars if people go through it without a license plate. It solves SO MANY problems in one fell swoop - uninsured, untested cars are immediately flagged, you can't cheat it, you can't even zip down side-streets because the next average camera will know you went over 30mph by the shortest route to do so, etc. Evidence of you breaking the law (bumps do nothing for this). Not damaging to vehicles. Doesn't need tearing up the road for.
The only thing that actually SLOWS drivers is average cameras, proven by the M25's new cameras. And if you zoom through them, without a plate, there'll often be a cop at the next junction waiting for you and a photo of your car/face waiting for the court.
Stop faffing about with bumps, chicanes, signs, fake speed camera boxes, etc. and just nick people if they go over 30 in a way they can't just cheat by knowing where the camera is.
In America, the only time 99% of the SUVs on the road, go off-road, is when the owner backs over the flowerbed.
Why not put up speed signs saying 20mph
If they'll stop making tunnels and just paint one on the wall, ala' road runner cartoons.
TIL UK is using mph for speed limits too.
People actually live in Chelsea these days? I thought it was all absentee - oligarchs, dictators, cartel leaders, random Middle Easterners etc.
You do it within the speed limit and with due care. London is a crowded place with endless intersections which means the highest level of care must be maintained as you traverse London.
I watched the video 10 times. I don't get it there is no illusion, how is it supposed to work??
That'll help: second time caught speeding, confiscate the car. Sell it at an auction on some other country chosen at random, notify owner of place and time with 36 hours advance. (S)he can buy a ticket and join in the bidding, if (s)he wishes to.
Repeat offenders don't get one free trial, it's confiscate at first try.
This would fill the city's coffers and keep people from speeding. I mean, you are responsible for a ton (sometimes significantly more) of steel under your ass, so... hello?
These have been all over the country for years. Now London gets them and they're news. Remember the average speed cameras coming into action? I don't because outside their little world they've been around for ages.
This, coupled with speed cameras in harsh places.
I saw one yesterday that was where 2 roads merge before splitting again and everyone does the lane dance in the shared section of road. The speed limit was 20, which is frankly too slow for the size of the road & they put a speed camera right at the point the lanes merge. So while you're paying attention to all the crazy lane swapping happening around you, you also need to fix your eyes on your speedo to make sure you don't accidentally creep over an unnaturally slow speed limit at the same time.
These speed calming measures work once.
When a driver realises they are fake, they continue to drive at whatever speed they would have done previously.
The problem that actual speed bumps cause is that people slow down for them. They then accelerate afterwards. With fossil-burning vehicles, this leads to pollution.
What actually works to prevent speeding (and stop-stop bunching, and some pollution) is average speed cameras, and stretches of roads that are clearly signed as such.
Either that, or actual police visibly doing traffic enforcement, but it seems they don't have the resources for that these days, so they let the computers do it with cameras.
Another interesting method I've seen at controlling speed in an urban 20 mph zone is where the speed trap will immediately turn the next traffic lights to red if you speed. Stay under the speed limit, and you get smoother traffic flow. Drivers are more likely to stop for a red traffic lights to avoid a t-bone collision than drive below the speed limit.
The only thing that really works against speeding is the obligatory installation of an iron pin on the steering wheel aimed at a point between the drivers eyes.
Why would it be unnaturally slow for a merge? Merging should happen carefully and that happens well when people do it with care and without rushing.
I run 4 miles a day across London as part of my commute and well over half of this is in the gutters because there are too many people walking (shambling whilst yakking on their iPhones?) on the footpaths. There is a painted speed bump just 1/4 of a mile from my final destination (just by Borough Market). It never slows me down. Quite the opposite - I always speeds me up as I race to clear it before some muppet slams on their breaks to avoid it and skids their car into me.
Never mind - even if I were Mo Farrar I'd be struggling to get to 20 miles an hour...
Local commuters will soon get wise to which ones are painted on and pretty soon will be back up to speed.
The only way to make them work over time would be to randomly replace the painted version with the real thing.
PlaynBass
level six autonomy lol xD
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?