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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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
That depends on the speed bump and the vehicle, and you won't know what's what until you drive over a particular speed bump in a particular vehicle.
We have speed trapezoids on a certain road near me. If you go over them at anything more than 3 MPH you're going to fuck your shit up. They're hardly any better than jumping a curb.
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!
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.
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.
If they'll stop making tunnels and just paint one on the wall, ala' road runner cartoons.