You can’t have bigger markets in smaller areas with cars because the cars take up so much space. Public transport gives access while still allowing for density, which provides a much larger market. The only ones losing out are the auto makers and oil companies.
According to wikipedia, 8.4/10k for italy vs 17.5/10k for the US. So while the US is the richest country in the world they have twice as many homeless people per capita :/
“Speed trap” cameras are an entirely apt name. The solution to speeding isn’t cameras, or patrols, or administrative controls, it’s traffic calming, and that reduces capacity, so it’s not considered. The trap is driving on the road at speeds they seem to be designed for, with speed limits significantly lower.
Fuck cars, but fuck cops more. We don’t need to live in a panopticon. These cameras are a step in the wrong direction, and while I don’t think the person who cut them down is doing the right thing for the right reasons, they are doing the right thing.
However it throws hundreds of people through the equally discriminatory criminal justice system, and allows car insurance companies to jack up rates. Functioning even more effectively as a tax on being different than regular cops do. It also creates a financial incentive for the government not to fix the underlying cause of the problem of speeding.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
We should be doing that, but local councils don’t have the money after more than a decade of tory austerity. I also believe that driver’s should be able to drive below the speed limit even if the road isn’t correct for it, because there will always be places like that (around construction, for example), and like you say we can’t just wish and hope for them to follow that rule so some enforcement is needed.
Traffic calming is a “substitution” of the hazard. It, like unexpected construction, forces drivers to slow down due to the road not being psychologically safe to drive fast on.
Speed limits are an “administrative control” on the other hand.
People will drive as fast as they (possibly incorrectly) feel is safe, and a lot goes into that, of which speeding fines are only one very small part. If you really want safe streets for pedestrians and motorists, it is just not as effective an option.
Additionally, I’m level certain that Tory austerity is not really a viable excuse here, because I’m sure that there are ongoing efforts to “alleviate the traffic problem” by adding capacity. It’s not that the money doesn’t exist, it’s that the money doesn’t exist for this. Because elected officials aren’t interested in this, because they’re more interested in fine revenue and keeping car people happy.
Now, can you explain to us, how is removing the „administrative control“ – the one that the people living there literally campaigned for – without implementing any of the other steps „doing the right thing“?
You’re the kind of person who takes away the workers‘ masks saying „What they really really need is better air conditioning! I’m very intelligent!“
There’s really nothing you morons won’t come up with to justify going as fast as you want to.
Yeah yeah, I get it, you only want to „break car dependency“, sure. So what exactly does cutting down speed cameras do to „break car dependency“? Oh right, nothing.
I agree the fines should be proportionate, but a police officer doing the enforcement can stop whoever they don’t like the look of whether or not they are actually speeding whereas a camera will only target those who are actually, you know, speeding.
My point is if someone has the wealth to not feel the fine, the camera does nothing to influence their behaviour and such target those who can’t afford it.
I’ve had a speeding ticket where I was offered a “no points” option to pay a higher fine. That was only offered after I showed up in court. This would discriminate against poorer drivers.
You will unconsciously drive as fast as the road allows you unless you keep checking your speedometer. Some cars too can insulate you from the noise and sense of speed that you will drive faster than you’d typically do in another car.
/s is not actually entirely accurate in this case. Here’s an article on how US residents are trying to live in their cars by finding “safe parking lots” to reside in: theguardian.com/…/safe-overnight-parking-lot-slee…
So in the richest nation on Earth, cars do double as housing.
The /s was for the “Checkmate” bit 😂 Technically, of course you can use your car as a dwelling. But it’s certainly not an answer (or at least, not a serious one) to a lack of housing supply, I think we’ll all agree.
Parks with all the other people? Locked in a room in a 300 sq ft apartment with your family/roommates outside?
The interchange allows you to live far enough away from the overcrowded city that you can own a bigger piece of land where you’re not packed in with your neighbors like sardines so you can actually go outside and sit and be alone without hearing 15 other families doing shit. It also allows you to have enough space to have a workshop space for hobbies or a garden or whatever else you want to do.
You understand that Italy has areas that are not as densely populated as the city center. In fact some places are down right rural. And the US has some very densely populated square milage.
This is such a wild, wild take on the US’s cat centric build.
I agree with the premise of this sub. The way car first places such as the US does things is a problem. The cars themselves and the underlying infrastructure, such as that exchange.
But I also don’t want to live in cramped multidweller unit housing. I’ve done so most of my life and I hated it.
I don’t know what or even if there’s a good solution that accomodates both, but I hope so.
And if you’re someone that wants to live somewhere actually remote, having dense urban areas instead of suburban sprawl will leave more space for rural areas and nature.
I am no expert, but if we are allowed to design everything from ground up, I believe personal electric vehicle (e-bike etc, abbreviated as PEV) for suburb, transit/bike/walk in city, and high speed rail between cities are probably the way to go.
City should be mostly car free, people can transit to suburb via transit, and to other city via rail. People move within city using walk/bike/tram. Vehicle besides delivery and commercial vehicle should be discouraged from entering the city, by removing in-city parking and setup no-go zones for private vehicles.
Even in the U.S. most people in suburb live rather close to a town center (less than 15 mins with PEV or bike). Thus efficient transit from town center to city can be a good idea. People will be discouraged from driving to city due to the lack of road and parking within cities.
For long form travel, people should move via high speed rail. Then take local travel options once arrived. High speed rail provide a faster and more comfortable travel alternative to driving.
Finally, I believe for people living in rural areas (an hour to any town center on PEV), cars and electric cars are their only option. If they want to enter city or suburb, they can drive to the nearest town center and take transit.
Most country, urbanist or not, do have wilderness, where you can live and die without people know.
You don’t need to live in the city if you dont want to. You can live off grid, and burn your own feces for heat if that is the life of your choosing. What people here are fighting for is to keep this living style is outside of cities.
Basically, city is not the place for giant emotional support vehicles. And outside traffic should not disrupt the normal form of transportation in cities, which should be dominated by public transport, walking, and efficient personal vehicles (like bike, scooters, wheelchairs, etc).
Interestingly, with this type of town, it’s easier and quicker to go out of the town than in American car centric towns.
Public transports are more efficient. You don’t need cars. You have parcs and actual green space. The energy consumption is also reduced.
It’s no magic that they built these type of towns in the past. They couldn’t afford our type of energy consumption and land use. And, it was more practical for the daily life.
They wouldn’t make money if people managed to, you know, just follow the speed limit. If you can’t follow a basic rule of the road you shouldn’t be driving.
We live in material reality, not a fantasy in your head. Justifying bullshit that specifically fucks over the poor while not really affecting the rich (because fines are just fees you pay to break the law when you’re rich enough for them to be minor inconveniences) with what amounts to Cartman screaming RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH is bullshit. You want people to actually slow down? Redesign the road.
This praxis does two things, it prevents the poor being fucked over if these are just there to make council money, or it causes them to give up on the camera and properly redesign the road when it’s actually about real safety concerns.
Given this has happened before and they only replaced the camera I’m siding with “it’s for council income not actual safety”. If they do it again I feel doubley vindicated in that opinion. If it’s actually about real safety concerns they’ll give up on the camera and add in pedestrian refuge islands to slow traffic instead. Love these badboys
You want people to actually slow down? Redesign the road.
I’ve posed this question elsewhere in this thread and: what until then? Like what do you do until a good, what, 50 - 90% of road depending on criteria, is redesigned?
The process and length of time it takes for either option are practically the same. It’s irrelevant. Not to mention a traffic island costs like £3k while a camera costs £85k (guess why they pick the camera despite the price).
Having been to court twice for online related stuff I will absolutely couch this shit.
I do not see how that question is doing anything but attempting some sort of gotcha or accusation that these people deserve to be fucked over instead of have real designs that don’t result in their lives being made harder.
Having been to court twice for online related stuff I will absolutely couch this shit.
Fair, I meant it more on “don’t do it on my accord”
I do not see how that question is doing anything but attempting some sort of gotcha or accusation that these people
Your these people just seems to have some very oddly drawn lines is the heart of it. It does include poor drivers, to whom speed cameras are a problem and not that much of a solution, it does not seem to include poor people not in a car, who profit from this. My FALGSOC doesn’t have speed cameras in it - who’s would - but it’s a long way from here to there.
deserve to be fucked over instead of have real designs that don’t result in their lives being made harder. It seems like spite to me.
This is running on the assumption that I think people deserve to be fucked over for speeding, and that’s the main motivation. Sure, some of them, but that’s not the kind of distinction a speed cam could make on account of how it works. I’d very much be open to them not issuing fines but other punishments - as appropiate - to not make them so classist. Loss of driving license, if you really, really fuck up in a sports car that gets impounded or such, but I’ll concede, even that is far out from today, but just to point it out,
My point here is that for every one it fucks over, it helps other people not being fucked over, because it does do something against speeding. My line of reasoning for speed cams is not that it fucks people over, it’s that it helps people. You wanna focus on the first part, I’m trying to get you to see the issue is more complex than that, at least if you include people outside of cars in your consideration. They’re not a good solution, by any means, again, I assume our optimal way of solving it is quite similar. For the meantime though, the fuck else do you do? Just abandon all traffic enforcement until all the roads get fixed? So what, 20 years of being vulnerable road users being even more endangered than now?
My point here is that for every one it fucks over, it helps other people not being fucked over, because it does do something against speeding. My line of reasoning for speed cams is not that it fucks people over, it’s that it helps people. You wanna focus on the first part, I’m trying to get you to see the issue is more complex than that, at least if you include people outside of cars in your consideration.
Well my line of reasoning is that there is an alternative that fucks no poor people over, and that taking action to achieve that end us a good thing. A negative in the short term leads to a longterm positive.
Also I see no other method of doing this. If you go to the council and say “I want to replace this highly profitable traffic camera making hundreds of thousands per year with a traffic island that will make no money at all” the decision that any team will make internally is obvious. That issue inevitably leads to destruction of these cameras as the only method of causing the alternative to occur.
A negative in the short term leads to a longterm positive.
I do not want to die a martyr to the fight against traffic cams.
Also I see no other method of doing this. If you go to the council and say “I want to replace this highly profitable traffic camera making hundreds of thousands per year with a traffic island that will make no money at all” the decision that any team will make internally is obvious.
That kind of poses the second question as to what, in the interim, will be cut as per budget, but that’s a sidenote. I guarantee you without change far reaching enough to societally gain a new understanding of public space and roads, when the last speed cam is dismantled you’ll find all the roads still suck ass and will not be redesigned. Once you have the change so far reaching that you can reunderstand basically every road, yeah, then you don’t need the traffic cams anymore and they can be dismantled.
I was ruder than I should’ve been, I thought you were the other person who has irritated me a bit.
I guarantee you without change far reaching enough to societally gain a new understanding of public space and roads
This is the weird fantasy part I was referring to. It’s like, just nonsense. It comes off like an american attitude being ported to the UK with absolutely no adaptation whatsoever to British conditions. Our conditions are nothing like america. Getting rid of cameras and getting traffic calming measures installed instead is not particularly difficult, it’s about the same. This idea of complete and widespread reinterpretation of public space? It doesn’t make sense here.
The particular road from the OP is a main road through rural space between major locations. By American standards it would be considered idyllic.
There’s no “reimagining” needed here. People don’t need to develop a new consciousness of public space. We do not live in a country that is utterly obsessed with cars like america. And we aren’t opposed to limiting them. There are zero political barriers to this, the only barrier is the profit/revenue barrier of the traffic camera obsessed crowd. I must stress, I am not just cherrypicking out rare projects that look good. This shit is bog standard, everywhere in the country already. In every town, in every village, in every city. Outisde every school. In every residential area. All over the country.
It is categorically not the same environment here and we do not share the same political barriers or problems.
This is the weird fantasy part I was referring to. It’s like, just nonsense. It comes off like an american attitude being ported to the UK with absolutely no adaptation whatsoever to British conditions. Our conditions are nothing like america. Getting rid of cameras and getting traffic calming measures installed instead is not particularly difficult, it’s about the same. This idea of complete and widespread reinterpretation of public space? It doesn’t make sense here.
I’m german tho.
By American standards it would be considered idyllic.
As such, I do not believe american standards as per roads are anything to go by
Parts of the road already have traffic calming measures.
That’s not really gonna stop anybody from speeding down the remaining lane(s) because they’re still very wide. It’s good for pedestrians, probably, don’t get me wrong, doesn’t really fight the speeding problem at all.
This is very easily expanded upon with the addition of chicanes, which are in wide use (hundreds of thousands) across the country.
These do
There’s no “reimagining” needed here. People don’t need to develop a new consciousness of public space.
Those are very much spotwork as per slowing down cars. They work for that spot, yes. It is however absolutely not hard to accelerate a car again. This is a good idea to slow people down before a busy or a school crossing or something, the third picture especially is just going to lead to slow down / wait -> mash gas pedal
We do not live in a country that is utterly obsessed with cars like america.
True, but also nigh about the lowest bar to clear right after like Saudi Arabia.
There are zero political barriers to this, the only barrier is the profit/revenue barrier of the traffic camera obsessed crowd.
And you accuse me of living in some fantasy reality?
In every town, in every village, in every city. Outisde every school. In every residential area. All over the country.
Same, could find similar features here by looking out my old apartments window. Hell, do you one better than that, we have shit like this
Sorry for the grainy pictures, didn’t wanna spend that much time on google. Now that’s a road you can’t speed on, on account of many chicanes and other built up enviroments, not just the single one and then it’s open road before and after.
Doesn’t mean the rest of it isn’t incredibly car brained and hostile, and as such, transportation by foot or cycling sucks major ass.
If your vision of not being carbrained is “do better than the USA”, yeah, you’re there, but that shouldn’t be the end goal
The local community campaigned to get these speed cameras because people were speeding. Redesigning the road would be great, if the council had money to, but I doubt they do.
Poor people aren’t getting screwed over by this because poor people can’t afford to drive, they’re the ones that have to deal with the unsafe driving of the middle class dada on their German coupes that can’t bare to drive at less that 50mph.
The cost of physical redesign traffic calming measures is significantly cheaper to install than the cameras, whose cost is justified by councils because of the income they bring in thereafter.
The insistence on replacing it instead of doing something else is being justified internally because even with these attacks they consider it to be making more than it’s costing them.
Poor people aren’t getting screwed over by this because poor people can’t afford to drive,
Mate fuck right off. This statement just screams that you’ve never actually done any organising or volunteering with the poor in the UK. Please volunteer at a food bank for once in your fucking life and learn what kinds of people the 3million people in this country attending them are like. It will surprise you, expand your view of society a bit, and you’ll be doing an actually-good useful thing.
The poorest people own the fewest cars, and are the most affected by things like air pollution, and if they do have to own cars they’re the ones most at hurt by car dependency (which is perpetuated by road violence caused by things like speeding).
If you say utterly stupid ass things like poor people don’t own cars I will absolutely assume you don’t interact with the people struggling to survive in this country in any capacity. It’s a bloody stupid thing to say mate.
I mean what I said, go and volunteer and see for yourself.
I’m sorry I didn’t think I needed to spell it out that much to you. Obviously I don’t think all poor people don’t drive. But the poorest don’t, and statistically poorer people drive a lot less and are more impacted by things like this.
I don’t agree that speeding is ok if poor people do it, and I don’t think the removal of the speed cameras is a step to the better alternative, unless it’s part of removing cars from the road in question entirely.
Ok so what do you expect to happen when you rock up to the council and say “Hi, I want to replace this speed camera making tens of thousands in profit per year with this other solution that makes no money at all” ?
Please tell me what you think the pathway to the alternative better solution is.
I wouldn’t replace it. Some people will still speed even with traffic calming so the camera is still useful.
If you want to reduce the council’s income from speed cameras, the first thing would be to elect a central government that will properly fund local councils so they have the budget to make decisions like that.
You physically can’t speed with traffic calming, they will just crash and fuck up their vehicles.
This conversation is silly. Right from the start if you were committed to this fuck the poor nonsense you should have just been honest and admitted it so neither of our times would have been wasted on this ridiculous farce.
Not really that surprised, typical liberal bullshit. Gonna vote Starmer too yeah?
I’m not a lib, I’m not a fan of Keith, and I’m not saying “fuck the poor”. Poor people are the most impacted by car dependency which is perpetuated by dangerous driving. If you don’t want to have this conversation anymore you can stop replying.
Croydon council responded to FOI request stating it costs £2.5-£3.5k to install traffic islands. The cost of a speed camera installation on the other hand is £85,000 according to Bedford Council, with a £5000 annual upkeep cost.
Croydon cites average cost for roughly such an action at 2,5k - 3,5k in a denial of the FOI request which means there’s pretty much no way to know how much it actually costs depending on what they calculate the average on and if you have any idea about the cost of public works that number should strike you as very, very oddly low.
Wiltshire government here cites about 45.000k for a traffic island narrowing a road to one lane, all in all.
The source you cite for the cameras, however, puts those costs for 2 cameras, so 42,500 a pop / 2500 upkeep annual, albeit with returns via fines obviously.
anyone who’s terrified of driving should not drive. keep those people off the road. They are the ones who drive badly because they’re scared, And they make the roads dangerous for everybody else.
I’ve driven across the United States five times with no problem. You just have to follow all the traffic laws and keep a safe following distance and use your turn signals, stay 100% focused on the road at all times, easy peasy. people who can’t do those things should stay off the roads. It’s better for them and better for everyone else.
They are arrogant narcissists and they should not have driver’s licenses either. It was terrifying for me to be in the passenger seat of my ex-boyfriend. He was the definition of this kind of driver and he was always intoxicated too. I learned a lot about the mindset of shitty drivers on the road when I was in his passenger seat. Surprised I survived and surprised he is still alive.
From 1992 to 2016, speed cameras reduced accidents by between 17 to 39 per cent and fatalities by between 58 to 68 per cent within 500 metres of the cameras.
That’s a report on a single study in the UK. We cannot necessarily assume that the outcome will be the same or even similar in all jurisdictions and social driving norms. The US, for instance, doesn’t have speed cameras, but the use of red light cameras has no effect in the rate of accidents at best and an increase in the rate of accidents at worse and it’s not clear what impact the introduction of such cameras to the US would have. Meanwhile the UAE does have speed cameras, but they do nothing to limit the speed of the Emirate citizens and only the threat of harsh fines, punishment, or deportation keeps the immigrant and working population in line.
While this camera was in a location which already has cameras, the claim quoted was not that “UK cameras protect UK drivers,” but one of “Cameras [in general] protect everyone” which is simply not true. Cameras have only the mechanisms necessary to record and report, they have no mechanism by which they can divert, slow, or stop a car or pedestrian and no mechanism they can use to stop an accident.
Cameras have only the mechanisms necessary to record and report, they have no mechanism by which they can divert, slow, or stop a car or pedestrian and no mechanism they can use to stop an accident.
There is no need to stop a crash in-progress when the dangerous behavior that would have resulted in that crash never happened in the first place because of the discouraging effect of traffic cameras.
TL;DR: If you do incriminating stuff, you should be incriminated.
There are rules that every driver has to adhere to. The rules are there for protection of the drivers and the people that rely on the drivers driving safely. But the thing is: without consequences, some people show bad behaviour, one being ignoring the rules which are made to keep people safe. In order to suppress such behaviour, fines and punishment are used.
I have been driving cars for around 10 years and have gotten a fine three times. The amount I paid for it in total was roughly 10 Euros per year, which is less than 1 Euro per month. And I could have avoided having to pay this by just being mindful and acting according to the rules, which I did not.
If people feel like they should drive 120 kmh in a 50 kmh zone or even worse, without any proper justification, they do not belong behind the wheel of a car.
People would be less upset about the cameras if a) we weren’t already the most surveilled western country already. B) the fine for minor speeding was minor. as you mentioned you paid 100 euros for 3 fines. In the uk you can be fined for doing 33 in a 30, and the fine will be 100 euros per time, plus points that makes your insurance go up as well. And c) there weren’t so god slam many of them. I live in Europe now, but went back to the uk to visit friends and family and honestly there have to be about 40-50 times many cameras in the uk than in Germany!
Plus they often feel like they’re placed to catch people who drift upto 35 on the downhill section of a road that looks like it should be national speed limit anyway.
If they didn’t feel like a way for them to make money people would accept them easier.
Personally I’m a rare sunday driver so they don’t really affect me but I absolutely see how people can be annoyed by them
Agreed. If they were actually there to stop speeding and not just cash in, then they would just put average cameras on every slip road and then nobody could speed on the motorway at all. Obviously this would be hell for someone like me but I couldn’t argue with it for safety really.
Speaking from germany, 33 in a 30 wouldn’t even trip the speed cams here. Earliest infraction is basically doing 6mph over on a 30mph road, which would come at 50€ fine. We apparently also have 50 times less speed cameras and it absolutely does not stop people from fucking malding over them. They have to be designed bulletproof here now and even those still get regularly blown up. None of the points you raise change anything about it, because the core issue is people are terminally car brained
Just drive the speed limit and there's no problem. Driving massive multiple ton killing machines is already a massive privilege, if you can't adhere to simple rules of the road, you shouldnt be driving at all.
Self righteous much? You talk like it’s not possible to stray a bit over the speed limit and still be safe. Honestly imo, anyone timid enough to feel like 35mph in a 30 is genuine,seriously dangerous should not be allowed to drive. You should be confident and commanding of said multiple ton machine.
I couldn’t care less. These cameras exist entirely to make councils money. When they actually want traffic slowed they redesign the road properly with traffic islands.
Destroying these cameras is a good thing. It either fucks over council revenue sources that mainly fuck the poor while affecting the rich not one bit, or it results in getting actual redesigns of the roads properly because they do actually want that road to be safer.
This method is a little extreme though tbh we usually just chuck paint on them. This one is tall in order to make that less viable it seems.
Oh, yeah… so if you do incriminating stuff, say… acting in a way that directly leads to people being hurt, maimed and / or traumatized, you should just get a pat on the back. I will just have to presume that this is what you are saying.
You’ll never get a real answer because the types of people that post these idiotic disingenuous complaints about speed cameras have nothing to say to the simple question:
Or maybe I was just out during the day and didn’t have a chance to respond until now?
I didn’t post a complaint about speed cameras and certainly not a disingenuous one at that. I was just pointing out an incorrect assumption made by an official quoted in the article.
I do think it’s kinda silly that your response to the fact that cameras don’t have a means to control traffic or stop accidents is to ask why I don’t drive the speed limit.
I do.
And cameras still can’t stop me from getting into an accident.
And cameras still can’t stop me from getting into an accident.
Are you stupid? The whole premise is that the risk of actual consequences will slow people down, which in turn reduced the risk of getting into an accident.
If traffic cameras worked to prevent traffic violations they wouldn’t be revenue streams. People would just rationally follow the traffic laws to avoid consequences. Yet, in the real world, we know it will only slow down the people who think about consequences.
Not really. Awareness of punishment does little to abate crime in general and while increasing the chances of getting caught (say by automatic cameras) does discourage crime in a meaningful way it does not prevent it.
Even so, the camera itself is not offering protection. It has no mechanism to control traffic or stop an accident.
I see this language far too often around cameras, but the fact remains they serve only to incriminate after the fact, not to prevent before the fact.
If you want protection, reduce lane sizes, make drives less straight, install speed tables, incentive alternate arterial routes, make sure alternate forms of transportation are effective and available. Hell, install the cameras even, but don’t be dissolutioned that they are what is actually doing anything.
These are all better options, but that'll require closing the road for a while and more money to spend, which have been gambled on leaving the EU from my American understanding of modern British history. Speed cameras are much cheaper, will not require road closure, and there have been studies indicating a 22% effectiveness after installation.
Speed cameras do work though. Here they are often used in specific places where people are driving too fast, especially if near schools and other places where it’s extra dangerous.
For example close to where I live there is a steep hill with a road that goes straight down and after there is a completely straight road and then a really small bridge with a bump.
Some people like to speed down the hill and basically “jump” the bridge bump. Fortunately a speed camera was installed at the bridge and they warn about it well in advance.
While you could technically redesign the road, it would be very costly compared to a camera and that road is a very small road with low traffic and private farmland (or grazing land, I don’t remember) on both sides.
Here the cameras aren’t even activated all the time just enough to achieve their goal of reducing traffic.
I’m a car driver and enthusiast and I’ll be the first one to ask… Why the fuck can my car reach 250kph if the highest speed limit in my country is 110kph???
Edit: If you think I’m complaining that I can’t go faster then you understood the message wrong
Driving fast in the right circumstances is a blast, no one is denying that. E.g., doing a track day, or even road racing on a closed course. But it’s not the same as driving in public day-to-day. Here in the US southwest, in order to drive a road race in the 150 mph/250 kph class, you need a 5 point harness, fire suppression system, helmet and HANS device.
You simply don’t need to go that fast on a daily basis. It’s not safe for you, without all the above precautions, and it’s not safe for others around you.
Auto manufacturers use the top speeds/acceleration/torque stats for marketing. Drivers imagine they will have fun going that fast (see above, they can!), they perceive value in having “better stats”, so the market rewards manufacturers to keep selling daily-driver cars that have unrealistic top speeds. Combine that with the fact that most people can’t afford to have a separate “fun” car, or access to safe locations for motor sports, and we end up seeing people trying to have the fun they imagined on our shared public roadways, which is downright dangerous for everyone.
Get your kicks on the track. Your car’s top speed does not belong on public roads.
Exactly! I think discussions have started to have speed limiters on new cars sold in Canada and it’s perfectly logical. Why let manufacturers sell cars that can reach speeds that will make people face criminal charges if they get caught? It’s ridiculous enough that we’re switching to electric cars with 0-100kph under 7 seconds and no one bats an eye… The next few decades will be interesting, imagine all the new drivers accidently launching from stop signs in a fairly basic car that does 0-100 in 6 seconds…
I think the best thing I ever did was learn on a 250cc. It’s way harder to wreck your day or get yourself killed when you inevitably grab a bit too much throttle as a complete newbie. I would even encourage people to learn on a 125cc or even 50cc. The basics are the basics and you can pick those up on a bike with less than 10hp just as easily if not more easily than a bike with 100+hp.
It would be amazing to see government mandated limiters in cars, in general, and not just for learners.
I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that but the public has proved they are incapable of driving within reasonable limits. No one needs a car that can go the speeds that cars are capable of going. It’s totally possible to setup a system that enforces the limit only on public roads so that people could still take their cars to the track. We very much have the technology.
It blows my mind that the general public is completely accepting of things like smartphone OSes that can spy on their every move and log their every detail yet if you mention limiters on cars all of the sudden they become staunch advocates for personal freedoms. The hypocrisy blows my mind.
Maybe… because it is dangerous to drive that fast when other people are around? Why don’t you just buy a car that can only go as fast as the highest speed limit?
Huh? What part of my message made you think I drive over the speed limit? I’m clearly saying that it’s ridiculous that cars are sold without speed limiters!
The second sentence can be read like you’re complaining you can only go 110 while your car could go 250, and I guess a lot of people understood it this way.
The problem here is not a lack of reading comprehension but rather a lack of you explaining yourself. You see, I could not really see the motivation behind your post because it was so ambiguous. So I think it is not really fair to blame anyone reading your text for not correctly interpreting it they way you wanted it.
The tofu eating wokerati want to trap us on our homes! They want us to wear ankle trackers that ensure we don’t travel more then 15 minutes from the house!
They’re trying to ensure all the most important amenities are within walking distance so they can lock us down forever and control how we breed and what we think!
Then they’ll slowly replace us with the foreigners they’re shipping in on their small boats, and before you know it we’ll all be French! It’s an invasion from within!
It’s incredible. I went to a consultation forum regarding intruding 20mph speed limits and all these conspiracy nuts just came out of the crowd like some zombie apocalypse.
I don’t understand how someone can graduate elementary (or primary in England, I think?) school and still believe the 15 minute city conspiracies. They have to be some of the stupidest that I’ve ever heard. Like if you know how to put your shoes on and you don’t keep forgetting to breathe, you should be smart enough to know better.
Yeah… there’s certainly some progress in the works and the mayor in particular seems to get it. But I wouldn’t bet on Cleveland becoming Amsterdam either.
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