Shit Club No History: Page 31 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Shit Club No History

RowJimmy

40K fatalities per year in the US.

Mirth

JazzG he UK roads speeds are becoming a fucking joke though, I know a few roads in London which were 40mph only a few years back and some parts of that road have become 20mph, these aren't tight little roads either. Complete fucking joke and they stick cameras up to catch people out.

https://etsc.eu/20mph-limits-in-london-linked-to-sharp-fall-in-road-injuries-and-deaths-new-report-finds/

Any rant is meaningless without including the fact that lower speed limits has resulted in lower fatalities. The UK has some of the lowest road fatalities in the world, even compared to the rest of Europe (never mind the US which is a PVP server at the best of times). Lets not break something that actually works for a change just so that people reach their destination 10 mins faster. You can still tear up and down the motorway and A roads if you really want to. Driving is one of the most dangerous activities that most people engage in, being extra cautious with it is entirely reasonable and worrying about speed camera surveillance is putting the cart before the horse.

Tam

Pepe LeFrits the 20mph speed limit in Wales has shown big improvements in injuries and fatalities compared to the previous period. Over shorter distances of a few miles or so the time taken between 20 and 30mph isn’t going to be too much. Good trade off for the fewer injuries and fatalities.

JazzG

I mean we could make the speed limit 10mph on every road and that would further reduce fatalities. Hell ban cars altogether, job done.

Mirth

JazzG they’ve literally done both in the dense parts of Barcelona and it’s fantastic and well supported by locals. Several other cities are looking to copy it and it would be great if parts of Soho followed suit

JazzG

Mirth There is a fair argument to be made some parts of central London should be pedestrianised.

Dom

USA is a fetid hellhole (I lived there for almost a decade). It's the last place we should be looking for road safety advice.

Meatwad

we have wide open roads and it just tempts you to put the pedal to the metal. when i was in college i made the cross country trip from los angeles to connecticut quite a few times and i made good time because i had my radar detector and there were stretches of big open road when driving through places like new mexico, the texas panhandle and oklahoma with no one in sight where i would be hitting 120 mph without even feeling it.

banduan

Meatwad yes a lot of issues with traffic are also planning issues. Wide open lanes in the US suburbs are especially nuts.
You're still tempting fate to kills someone when you speed in such a lane though.

Meatwad

banduan
when i was making those trips it was the interstate. i could go many miles without seeing another car, especially at night. just trying to get get up out of those places and make it to civilization as fast as i could.

Coombs

I doubt people would drive much faster if you eliminated the speed limit altogether. Reckless driving is reckless at most any speed.

Comparing the US to the UK is ridiculous, though. Accidents obviously wouldn't increase linearly per capita. All intuition says it would be exponential. Needing to drive more, and more people needing to drive, is going to have a multiplicative effect. Punitive surveillance based on arbitrary numerical values in the name of safety and security is just a control-society nightmare. Properly separating bikes, cars, and pedestrians through infrastructure improvements and community-based design is what is truly needed. Just slapping a speed camera on it is just flat-out unethical.

Mirth

Coombs Comparing the US to the UK is ridiculous,

Compare it to any country you like. Also 60% of US road traffic accidents happen in urban areas.

Dom

Coombs Properly separating bikes, cars, and pedestrians through infrastructure improvements and community-based design is what is truly needed. Just slapping a speed camera on it is just flat-out unethical.

Well, that's never going to happen in the US, which is basically a giant Kowloon Walled City that became legitimate.

In Miami, our neurosurgery clinic's biggest money spinners were: 1) car accidents 2) motorbike accidents 3) tumours 4) roofing accidents 5) American football injuries at nearby colleges 6) Florida man doing something stupid like sitting on a roof to watch a thunderstorm or using his head as a jack to lift a car.

Most surgeries have substantial financial investment from the same parts of the private sector that are also heavily invested in the pharma companies that have all democrats in their pockets. Then you have to think of the personal injury lawyers which make up so much of America's economy!

Coombs

Mirth Also 60% of US road traffic accidents happen in urban areas.

Which are badly developed by landlords and grifters. Now we want to punish people twice.

Burnwinter

Be interesting to see vehicle deaths adjusted for distance and time of driving. Easier to be enthusiastic about 30 km/h speed limits when you're not commuting 60 km from an outer suburb in the morning.

United States urbanism, like Australian urbanism, is mostly a twentieth century affair. Australian cities have historically been dominated by the unscalable "dormitory suburb" planning model.

Claudius

Burnwinter which also has an impact on the types of cars people drive. Bigger cars driving longer distances at faster speeds should massively increase fatality rates

Dom

Burnwinter

A significant portion of the UK's population also live in commuter towns and drive 10-30 miles each morning to London/Birmingham/Manchester/Glasgow/Cardiff.

Pepe LeFrits

Burnwinter Be interesting to see vehicle deaths adjusted for distance and time of driving. Easier to be enthusiastic about 30 km/h speed limits when you're not commuting 60 km from an outer suburb in the morning.

United States urbanism, like Australian urbanism, is mostly a twentieth century affair. Australian cities have historically been dominated by the unscalable "dormitory suburb" planning model.

Do Australians not believe in highways?

Burnwinter

Dom Indeed, but it doesn't really negate my point. I've just spent a month driving between the mediaeval towns of industrialised Lazio daily. Driving conditions are very, very different from where I usually live in Darwin, Australia.

I doubt variations in road toll figures between nations should be attributed to a combination of road policies such as speed limits as well as a nebulous concept of driving culture ... and the latter factor stands at risk of being interpolated with prejudiced nonsense.

There's a lot of weird results in road safety. I remember one quantitative study in the 00s that found small compacts were safer than SUVs and the like. The researchers' argument was that the smaller cars might be having fewer deadly accidents because their drivers were more terrified behind the wheel ... as well as the fact they had better crumpling than the big rigid chassis of the road tanks.

Asterix

Eh? We have lots of them. Not sure what your question is asking?

Burnsy's comment is that Australian town planning was heavily influenced by having lots of cheap land after WWII to expand our major cities, and with the advent of cheaper cars our cities sprawled and became dominated by suburbia - cars instead of public transport - the American model rather than a more compact European one.

Sydney and Melbourne have reasonable public transport - Sydney's new metro system is great, as are Melbourne's trams - but we are a nation of car drivers. More and more tradie utes thanks to govt incentives - Ford Rangers and Toyota Hilux's and all the awful driving you'd imagine associated with vehicles of that size.

Pepe LeFrits

Asterix Eh? We have lots of them. Not sure what your question is asking?

My point is that nobody serious is advocating across the board 30km/h speed limits on all streets. Burnsy mentioned commuting 60km from an outer suburb, you're going to be on roads with higher speed limits for the majority of most of such trips.

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