The Road Design Tricks That Make You Drive Slower - Cheddar Explains

so right off the bat let's be clear speed limits are a good thing sure just about everyone might drive 75 and a 65. [Music] but having a speed limit catered to each road is of course a necessity in 1974 president richard nixon mandated a national speed limit of 55 miles an hour it worked america saw its traffic fatality rate cut almost in half over the next 10 years and since then speeding related deaths have continued to decline but for all this good speeding related crashes still account for almost one third of traffic fatalities in 2018 speeding killed over 9 000 people in the u.s including drivers passengers cyclists and pedestrians plus speeding enforcement takes a lot of police resources in fact speeding is the top reason law enforcement pulls over drivers it accounts for 41 percent of all traffic stops in the united states as a result confrontations between police and drivers occur most often following a pull over for speeding so the majority of the population disobeys speed limits speeding is the number one cause of death for drivers and speeding enforcement takes a huge chunk of police resources which in turn results in more dangerous scenarios for both police and citizens that's why urban planners are looking to design out speeding it's a technique called traffic calming traffic calming measures are designed to improve safety for pedestrians cyclists and motorists by preventing speeding and the premise is simple occupy a driver's mind with enough stimuli to force focus in other words make driving a bit more uncomfortable now you're probably familiar with the obvious ones speed bumps one-way streets rumble strips and radar speed signs and if you're like me when you see one of those signs you slam on the brakes especially when it's one of the ones that yells at you but there are others that you may not have noticed traffic calming techniques can be classified into three categories narrowing horizontal deflection and vertical deflection did you know that narrow streets are actually safer than wide streets our video from 2019 explains why research shows that cities with lane widths from 9.2 to 10.6 feet such as amsterdam copenhagen and tokyo have the lowest crash fatality rates in the united states the lanes are 12 feet wide narrow lanes require you to focus more on the task at hand plus they allow for the expansion of sidewalks or bike lanes check out our video on this urban planners can retrofit wide roads by using curb extensions chokers and pedestrian islands all designed to make a driver feel more claustrophobic and drive slower this is the autodromo enzoidino ferrari race track in italy and this is its notorious flat out tamborello corner in the early years the sharp corner was at the end of a long straight away where cars would reach the highest speeds of the race as you see them going through that tambora turn very very fast you get an idea there just how fast this corner is and it was at this corner where racing legend zenna crashed and died during qualifiers in 1994. after senna's crash the coroner was modified and this divot was added it's called a chicane and it's designed to slow down drivers the same concept can be applied to our streets if speeding is a problem urban planners can choose to add extra turns or build out on an otherwise straight street like race tracks this series of turns forces drivers to focus on maneuvering their car through series of light turns which reduces speeding traffic circles fall under this category and urban planners love them as they maintain traffic flow while discouraging high speeds this is where the sleeping policeman comes into play speed bumps speed humps and speed tables are all examples of vertical deflection but even little changes to a road surface have been found to slow down drivers replacing pavement with brick or cobblestone is a little psychological trick that tells us this is a traffic restricted zone while they do decrease speeds vertical deflection techniques can increase traffic noise damage vehicles and slow down emergency vehicles and that brings us to the difficulty with traffic calming traffic calming techniques won't work on every street obviously we can't have speed bumps on the 405. urban planners have to think carefully about the purpose of the road if the road is primarily residential and ground level retail with substantial pedestrian traffic then traffic calming designs should work as intended but if the street is the most direct route to services like schools hospitals and train stations then these devices can restrict essential through traffic like ambulances and buses as you can see urban planners have an arsenal of tools at their disposal when it comes to reducing speeding cities don't have to rely solely on speed limits and police patrols but that doesn't entirely solve the problem this is tiffany chu i think it's really interesting that when you put someone behind a car because they're personally enveloped in a metal box that kind of protects them there's like the sense of empowerment that comes with it and you know car companies are very very good at capitalizing on that sense of empowerment that sense of freedom we really have to rethink that entire mindset and have one that really empowers one to think about how do we move as many people as possible in the least amount of space in 2014 the city of san francisco adopted a policy called vision zero which aims to have zero traffic fatalities by 2024. this program is focused on reducing speed limits throughout the city and installed a number of traffic calming techniques and it seems to be working in 2014 the city had only 34 traffic fatalities that number has been reduced by around 30 in six years if applied correctly and used in combination with traditional speeding enforcement techniques traffic calming devices can effectively design out speeding and that's a good thing for cities even if it makes our drives home a little bit more uncomfortable how often do you speed and do you think it's a big issue let us know in the comments make sure you like this video click 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Channel: Cheddar

Views: 278,214

Rating: 4.6723061 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, speeding, traffic calming, speed bumps, speed humps, narrow roads, urban planning, transportation, city planning, cities, streets, roads, chicane, pedestrians, street design, cars, automotive, traffic, highways, design tricks, design, design fails, crashes, car accidents, police, traffic enforcement, speeding ticket, cop car, police car, crosswalk

Id: aVHXTie9xDE

Length: 7min 19sec (439 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

At what point is the emergency vehicle argument going to stop dictating every traffic calming argument.