163
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
163 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26890 readers
1659 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Speed humps. On my daily 5km drive, there are about a dozen of them each way.
I have a 900kg car with sports suspension, and I need to slow almost to a stop for many of them.
Meanwhile people in 2500kg road-blimps are blasting through without slowing.
Most are bumps in the road that taper on the sides. Vehicles with a wide enough wheelbase miss them amlost entirely, whereas my 1.6m wide car gets launched into the air.
The greater the kill capacity of your vehicle, the less you are affected by these "safety" devices.
I'm 50/50 on them. I wish they were more like traditional bumps, covering the whole road so there wasn't really an "avoiding" them. How they're implemented now encourages drivers to aim for the space between, leading to swerving.
The roads I've seen them on, they've done their job - traffic is significantly reduced down then. They're supposed to be unpleasant, but they should be equally unpleasant for all vehicles hahah.
Another small gripe I have with them is unclear signage. Particularly if they're not safe to take at/near the speed limit, each one NEEDS to be marked. They can be hard to see from a distance and slowing down takes time. A lot on certain roads here are missing signage, making the whole thing even more unsafe than if they just didn't install the bumps.
Speed bumps suck. Especially for cyclists. While lifted bro-dozer trucks can just cruise over them.
To slow down drivers, create horizontal barriers (choke points), not vertical ones.
Fair and valid point I had not considered. I guess I'd prefer to have a separated bike lane with proper dividers anyway, but either way, you raise a point I had not considered.
not even bro-dozer trucks, I have a un-modified (unless you count dents and rust) ~10y old pickup and a fairly new 'sporty' sedan (i.e. low-profile tires, stiff suspension, somewhat lower to the ground). Sedan has to come almost to a stop or I will scrape something. In the pickup slowing down is optional (though I do because regardless of speed bumps I don't want to hit someone)
They also slow down emergency vehicles as much as everyone else. There's some arguments that they cause more deaths than they save. Not sure on the actual numbers for that, though.
The ones near me are heavily signed. There's usually 4 sign posts on each one. They're big, bright, and an utter blight on the landscape.
I actually drive between them because my car is narrow. I drive down my entire street in the middle of the road and weave oncoming traffic. Again, I'm not sure what sped humps do for safety.
One thing that makes them "equally unpleasant" for everyone is a straight-through muffler. At 2AM, my neighbors are just an inconvenienced as I am when I drop back to first gear 6 times. My council refers to speed humps as "traffic calming devices". In reality, it just aggravates it.
Straight thru mufflers are generally a good way to inconvenience others.
I understand your plight. I drive a Miata and it can be scary sometimes.
I do appreciate "road blimps" as a saying. I have historically said "road whales" but road blimps is more fun to say.
You realize that having sports suspension leads one to wonder if you aren't one of those drivers that make people want to put in speed bumps. Don't get me wrong, I realize that may not be the case, and you might be a very reasonable, safe, and careful driver, but just pointing it out.
The speed humps are actually worse on a softer setting. The car takes far longer to settle after a bump.
On standard suspension, the car would bounce off the bump stops at half the speed of everyone else.
Speed bumps are often not so much for speed control. People slow down for them and then speed right back up. They don't work for that.
It's often to encourage people not to cut through neighborhoods that happen to connect to other neighborhoods. They want you to take the main road, not the shortcut.