After finally (and rather reluctantly) putting his Christmas tree up at the weekend, road.cc’s resident Grinch Ryan is back enjoying his own version of some proper festive fun: droning on about cycling on the Monday live blog
I can only speak for the US and only the states I have lived in or visited, but getting a ticket is like winning a shitty lottery. Driving like everyone else (ubiquitous speeding, yielding at stop signs) is enough to make you eligible for a ticket. Whether or not you get one is based largely on luck and slightly on whether or not you know where cops like to sit. There’s not a ton of motivation to drive legally when our traffic laws are broken, vague, and don’t reflect reality of driving in America and even the people enforcing them regularly violate them. Around here the highway is posted 65-75mph in most places but in my subjective experience, 60-95mph tends to be 80% of drivers. Nobody stops at stop signs unless yielding to other drivers or a police officer is present.
Instead of spot enforcement (like the US) or camera surveillance and ticketing, I think road design (or in a lot of cases redesign) is the superior way to get higher levels of compliance with the law and to increase safety. Older people might not like it, but roundabouts have HUGE safety benefits. Road hierarchy could be better communicated visually or through tactile means with pavers or cobbles to slow traffic on secondary streets. Lights could be moved to the close side to keep people from rolling out into the crosswalk and to put them closer to where pedestrians stand so they’ll be seen.
The real villains, are people who speed in school zones and work zones. “Your speed and inattentiveness could KILL people,” is the message they should be getting, but drivers are so entitled they speed past their own kid’s schools :‘’'-(
I can only speak for the US and only the states I have lived in or visited, but getting a ticket is like winning a shitty lottery. Driving like everyone else (ubiquitous speeding, yielding at stop signs) is enough to make you eligible for a ticket. Whether or not you get one is based largely on luck and slightly on whether or not you know where cops like to sit. There’s not a ton of motivation to drive legally when our traffic laws are broken, vague, and don’t reflect reality of driving in America and even the people enforcing them regularly violate them. Around here the highway is posted 65-75mph in most places but in my subjective experience, 60-95mph tends to be 80% of drivers. Nobody stops at stop signs unless yielding to other drivers or a police officer is present.
Instead of spot enforcement (like the US) or camera surveillance and ticketing, I think road design (or in a lot of cases redesign) is the superior way to get higher levels of compliance with the law and to increase safety. Older people might not like it, but roundabouts have HUGE safety benefits. Road hierarchy could be better communicated visually or through tactile means with pavers or cobbles to slow traffic on secondary streets. Lights could be moved to the close side to keep people from rolling out into the crosswalk and to put them closer to where pedestrians stand so they’ll be seen.
The real villains, are people who speed in school zones and work zones. “Your speed and inattentiveness could KILL people,” is the message they should be getting, but drivers are so entitled they speed past their own kid’s schools :‘’'-(