Speed limit is enforced by road design, not by signs
You’re suggesting they add even more potholes to motorways?
Context is 20 mph steets, making them more complicated and narrower forces drivers to slow down to not hit anything. Straight and wide streets allow drivers to speed as they feel comfortable.
Motorways on the other hand encourage to speed with wide lines, long view distance, long turn radiuses, hard shoulder and long paint stips
A center line with floppy cone-pole things, barriers on the side (such as planters)(bonus it keeps pedestrians and cyclists safer and beautifies the area)
Etc
More round a bouts.
it’s enforced by road design, and in some cases our desire to not murder children with our cars. call me autistic (I am) but I follow speed limits in residential areas even if the road is designed like a formula 1 track
I think its by fines actually… Just got a $609 USD speeding fine… I speed less since then
Intuitive system suggesting correct behaviour is more effective than system encouraging to break law and them punishing for it severely
If a pilot repeatedly ignored their equipment and flew too low over populated areas, they’d lose their license in a hurry. When you pilot large, deadly equipment out in public, that comes with the burden of complying with all regulations, whether they feel necessary or not. If the general public thumbs their nose at this idea, that just underscores that it was a mistake to let pretty much anyone drive whatever they can afford however they want unless a cop is looking. We have to reverse that mistake instead of tinkering around the edges to occasionally slow people down by a tiny bit until they get used to handling even your traffic-calmed section of roadway at high speeds.
yeah, but if you start whatever car based countries biggest dig of the century to reconfigurate it all this minute it’d still take you 30 years and it’d be nice for non car users in the meanwhile to not get killed
Well, that is a lot of money (for me and presumably you), but without proportional (to assets) fining it makes laws pay per use. In otherwords, money is not a good judge of character; people can have disposable income and ignore the same fine that changed your mind about speeding. And as another commentor said, preventing is better than punishment.
And doing both would be even more effective.
Did you read my comment? Fines (unless proportional to personal assets) will not be effective against rich folk (who can afford large obnoxious dangerous cars), effectively creating a pay to use law.
There are quite a few 20 mph roads near me where the only incentive to slow down is to avoid being caught be a speed camera.
The roads are wide and straight for long stretches, and going at the 20 mph limit just means you become an obstruction for the rest of traffic, even buses and lorries.
The design of the road and posted speed limits are sending mixed messages.
There’s a concept in road design that says the engineer must first determine the design speed, which is basically how fast they want traffic to be able to flow. This part of the process is generally not part of any public hearing or put to a vote by public officials - it is just decided on and then they move on to the next step.
There’s also a prevailing concept in road design that seems to indicate that high traffic speeds are a design issue, but low speeds are an enforcement issue. The road is designed to accommodate the highest amount of traffic anticipated in the future without really thinking about if that’s even a good fit for the area.
Once the road has been built to exacting standards (which means it is far too wide and flat,) the city steps in and slaps a speed limit on it, often at odds with the design speed.
When residents get worried about all the speeding cars, they petition the city for a traffic study to see if anything can be done. The engineers conducting the traffic study determine that the road is capable of handling higher speeds than the current limit, and so to cut down on speeding the recommendation is to increase the posted limit.
It’s amazing to me how much influence the engineering team has on the design with basically no accountability. You can try to reduce speeding by putting up speed traps and police patrols, but at the end of the day people will drive as fast as they are comfortable with and that is often a result of the design of the road they are driving on.
Yea around here we have 4 or more lane highways with 60mph speed limits. You could almost double that safely if people actually used the lanes properly when not passing. Instead we have to deal with a mix of assholes going all different speeds trying to get around the people going 60 in the left lane and god help you of there’s a cop around.
130 km/h (or 80 mph) seems to be the international consensus on what a maximum safe speed is on a well-maintained modern highway.
I’d settle for that.
You could almost double that safely if people actually used the lanes properly when not passing.
big if
“Well if people were just better” is a theoretical panacea to nigh all imaginable societal ills and it has never actually improved anything
Speaking as a person who does the limit (65 locally) in the right lane, sometimes the second to right lane in case there’s a lot of entering/exiting traffic… 120mph? What? The fuck?
Humans aren’t designed to react to things at that speed. You need insane following distances to drive that speed safely. With all that extra following distance you don’t get much more throughput (vehicles per unit time). But what you do get is a ton more fatalities, because at that speed, when you meet stationary objects, all you can do is hope you had your affairs in order. No amount of crash safety tests help there.
I gotta say, that if you’re the person who’s so frustrated about people driving the speed limit on a highway, you’re the asshole. Like yeah, sure, they should be in the rightmost lane practicable. That’s annoying, but it slows you down by a few mph for a minute or two and that’s it.
If you want to move at 120+mph safely to your destination, take high speed rail. If you don’t have that in your region, start complaining.
120mph? What? The fuck?
Humans aren’t designed to react to things at that speed.
Germany has entered the chat
yeah, where inappropiate speeds on the autobahn, 200kph fits this, is the number one cause for accident and even if somebody doesn’t wreck their shit is among the top causes for traffic backing up because traffic flows far worse if you have the 15% of people doing speeds nobody else does
Honestly I was thinking more like 100mph. I can pretty easily do 90+ on the roads around me when the roads clear without issue. I don’t get pissed at people for doing the speed limit. I get pissed at people that don’t use lanes properly and tailgaters. If you aren’t passing you should be in the farthest right lane possible until you need to pass. It’s my belief that the people that jump on the highway and get 3 lanes over and just squat there not passing anyone that cause most traffic issues.
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Honestly I was thinking more like 100mph
I remember doing that for my first (and only) time on the empty highways outside Salt Lake City in the early morning. It was exciting to try but fully concerning. I couldn’t imagine doing that around other vehicles.
It’s my belief that the people that jump on the highway and get 3 lanes over and just squat there not passing anyone that cause most traffic issues.
I mean, I think it’s clear that those are the people who cause the most issues for people who want to break the speed limit. And I fundamentally don’t believe you have the right to speed on a highway, and shouldn’t complain about missing out on opportunities to speed.
Like, I’m not saying left lane squatters are driving correctly, they should be over in the rightmost lane. But also all the other drivers, including you, should be going the speed limit. Why does one arbitrary rule about lane positioning matter so much to people, while the arbitrary speed limit is fine to ignore? Real talk: they’re both arbitrary rules. If you’re breaking the speed limit: SHUT UP about the lane squatters.
It’s not equal though. Speed limits at least on the highways around here are set way lower than what is actually safe so of course people will ignore them. As long as they’re being safe (not tailgating, passing on the left, using turn signals, etc) they’re not affecting anyone else. If you’re squatting in a passing lane then you are actually impeding other traffic. If the speed limits were actually appropriate I would agree with you
“Impeding traffic” is quite the euphemism for “forcing people to slow down and drive the speed limit.” Call it what it is, a mild inconvenience that you wouldn’t even experience if you were following the rules that you’re upset about people breaking!
And the people who are “speeding but still being safe” do impact others too. It makes it much more dangerous for drivers doing the limit to merge into the left lanes in case of stopped vehicles, slow trucks, and merging traffic.
Again, the speed limits usually aren’t appropriate for the highways they’re applied to so they don’t make sense unlike rules regarding lane usage. If they did I wouldn’t be complaining. It’s also not anyone besides law enforcement’s job to enforce them. By doing so you are creating an unsafe situation by packing all the traffic together.
If you need to merge into the left lane you simply wait for the faster traffic to go by. Are you suggesting that it’s dangerous to cut people off? Because yea, it should be.
start complaining
The public transportation in my city already has a bad reputation for not finishing a previous rail project (which was desired by the residents). But at least people are angry because they didn’t get it. But at the same time, if they can’t get basic slow ass ancient trains to be built, I cannot imagine a 200 mph train and railway being built, especially since everything is privatized as fuck.
Also, this isn’t a problem with the trains, but there’s literally NOTHING at these train stops. Just factories and parking lots. You’d still need a car and possibly drive on the highway even after using the train to get to any destination
On the bright side, high speed rail is generally not done by city transit agencies, it’s done by larger regional groups who hopefully can manage the project better.
I believe in the US, most people support public transportation as long as it was reliable. It’s just that propaganda here is strong and makes people think they’re alone in supporting buses and trains. Even the politicians, but usually they’re bought off already. I should get in contact with some of the transportation reps to see what advice they have
You may enjoy the YouTube channel, Road Guy Rob. He covers a lot of these issues and more. It’s a niche channel for sure, but can be fascinating if you’re into that kind of thing.
I can’t really make sense of what you’re saying. If the road is straight and wide but also has a low speed limit, that’s not sending mixed signals. Rather, it’s suggesting that you should drive slow even though your instinct tells you that you could drive quickly, presumably because there are either obstacles creating blind points that could lead to pedestrian or bicycle involved accidents, small children playing nearby, or cars turning onto or from side roads that you might strike if you’re driving at the speed that your gut tells you is safe.
In other words, you shouldn’t trust your gut when deciding how fast is safe on a road because your gut is often mistaken about the finer points of road design.
Also, you wrote that a slow driver would be an obstruction to other vehicles including trucks. I think you were wording that as a bad thing, but in reality it’s a good thing. One reasonable driver can force a dozen bad drivers to slow down.
it’s a good thing. One reasonable driver can force a dozen bad drivers to slow down.
95% of drivers will just pass you even if it’s illegal, and often times they’ll do that recklessly and nearly hit the incoming car on the other lane, or they’ll be scared shitless of passing and quickly go back to your lane in front of you and narrowly missing the front of your car (which you’d be held responsible for damages because it was a rear end accident). Not saying increasing the limit is a good thing, but in the US at least, people will fantasize torturing you in front of your children if you slightly inconvenience them on the road.
The solution to this problem is not to say fuck it and legalize faster speeds is the point
I think a large part of it is inappropriately making 30 mph areas 20mph and also poor enforcement.
I live on a long wide 20mph road and I can’t stand the people going at 40, 50 or even 60 or 70 mph at times. But I don’t think my road should have been 20mph, it should have been 30mph. It seems it was easier to stick some 20mph signs up to say “we’ve done something” as a way of discouraging some people going at more rediculous speeds and hope most go at 30mph.
Instead what was needed was actual investment in the road - speed bumps, narrowing the road with choke points and passing points, physical rather than painted cycle lanes - that kind of thing.
Fortunately after years of pressure our road is now going to be in a LTZ (Low Traffic Zone). Both ends of my own long road are blocked off to allow pedestrians and cyclists only through, and my main road is being split into 3rds with X-junctions being turned into filters(Instead of X it’s now > and < with no connection). If you’re driving you can only turn into one side street while cyclists and pedestrians can pass through as normal. We’ve had a trial for a while and it’s been very effective - my whole block has been split up with filters so you can’t use it to pass through to reach the main roads around it - this has stopped the arseholes using my road as a shortcut and speeding at 60 mph.
People are still going at 30mph but the twisting and turning through the block means you can’t really get up to anything more than that and also unless you’re going to a house in the block it’s pointless to even enter.
So while I abhor speeding, I would argue these stats reflect bad road management - over relying on 20mph speed limtis as a cheap alternative to actual road management and redeisgns which are expensive (and difficult in many parts of the UK with lots of very old and narrow streets inherited from previous eras).
Speed bumps are the worst possible solution, they often mean if you’re in a conventional car you have to come to a near complete stop and if you’re in a large SUV you can cross at 20mph. This reinforces the trend away from conventional cars to higher ride height vehicles which is a disaster for road safety (especially pedestrian and cyclist safety).
They do successfully slow down the flow of traffic (and also cause traffic to follow alternative paths, at least until speed bumps are saturated in the area) but it fucks up emergency vehicle access and damages cars (increases wear and tear). The other road design solutions (more narrow roads, inclusion of roundabouts, addition of choke points etc) all are equally as effective as humps at reducing speeders and diverting traffic away from roads (in some cases they are better) and have none of the negative consequences, speed humps should never be used imo.
The speed bumps are supposed to be tailored to the target speed. There’s some 40 km/h streets in my city with regular speed bumps and they’re perfectly fine because the speed bumps are designed for that speed. They’re quite shallow compared to the kind of speed bump you’d see in a 20 km/h parking lot.
I’ve never seen or heard of this but I’m skeptical that there is any speed hump design that wouldn’t be a negative for emergency services, increase wear and tear to vehicles that cross them and that wouldn’t be less of an impact to lifted chassis vehicles. These problems are avoided by the other, better solutions so why are humps even a part of the conversation at all?
Sky bridges or tunnels for pedestrians. Reduce the need for people to actually cross the street, where possible.
That just makes walking more difficult for the benefit of drivers.
@PseudoSpock @BananaTrifleViolin, or we can design the road so driving at safe speeds is the intuitive choice.
Streets are for people and their daily activities. Roads are for getting to places quickly.
It’s the same or higher here in the US based on my personal experience.
Way too many people are speeding where I live too and I partly blame the road design as well. I’ve seen many places in Denmark where I live that they at some point reduced the limit from 60 to 50 or from 50 to 40 kmh with no modifications to the road design or obvious reasons like schools or crossroads. Or similarly you are driving along at 80 and then the limit changes to 60 but the road looks the same. I know it’s usually because of safety or more commonly noise pollution or hidden sideroads. This doesn’t make sense intuitively while driving because the road design signals higher speed than allowed. It’s still no real excuse for driving too fast but I think it could solve a lot of the issue with better road design like “not just bikes” are also preaching in his videos
In the US speed limits are set by 85% of traffic speed on a road. So if the road was set for 30mph, and then you changed it to 20MPH with no other changes, you will immediately get 85% of drivers breaking the “limit.”
Another way to say it is that UK’s department for transport has incompetently designed 85% of their 20mph roads.
UK highways departments have had essentially zero budget for 2+ decades now. There’s no funding to completely retrofit every single residential street to match the new signage. Most of them are already incredibly narrow and tight compared to your average North American street.
Hmm, sounds like the infrastructure for personal vehicles is pretty unsustainable, perhaps we should start closing off streets so that traffic will naturally be limited to locals only thus solving the problem from the demand side.
It ends up being kind of naive that drivers will simply respect a new, lower speed limit with no other changes. If the road could previousy accomodate a certain speed then some “arbitrary” sign won’t change this.
But it can’t accommodate that speed, people get injured and killed. Hence why they roll out the 20 zones. The average UK main road is like 1/3 the width of a North American residential cul-de-sac remember.
It doesn’t matter if the road is already relatively tight, it’s apparently to easy too speed.
Bumps, barriers, etc.
But you said no budget, so that is tough.
I think it’s important to note that the US approach to speed limits is absolute fucking garbage and maybe one should be able to expect people piloting a vehicle to actually read and follow speed limits
@PowerCrazy @mondoman712
The 85% rule is insane. Basically, it means that speed limits are set by the most dangerous drivers.
The streets in my town were set out over 120 years ago. But as usual, cars have usurped the rights of prior users to the point where KSIs or peds and cyclists run at 4x the UK rate, and I don’t even live in Florida. I mean, jaywalking laws were brought in to ease drivers’ consciences about the number of pedestrians they were killing.@PowerCrazy @mondoman712
Don’t start me on public transit… 120 years ago my town had a fully-fledged tramway system which connected to other local systems spread over hundreds of miles centred on our local railway station.
The tracks were ripped up to provide space for parking…
Uh-oh! I got started!!!Oh for sure. Road design is a disaster for anything other then highspeed thorough-fares, which would be better off as trains. It sucks.
I don’t think you realise how old some roads are in the UK. They predate the concept of a department of transport by a long time, in cases like they can only work with what they have.
Another way to say it, is that they haven’t installed enough average speed cameras.
If you install a few of those, suddenly drivers do manage to keep to the speed limit.
The US system is stupid. Most drivers drive too fast and overestimate their driving capabilities.
Designing a street so that people naturally drive a given speed is a pretty well-solved problem and you don’t have to expand the surveillance state to do it. Also it usually makes the road more pleasant for everyone!
Cool create perverse incentives that do nothing to physically stop a car from barreling down a residential street, but also generate tax revenue so now the government is further discouraged from fixing the problem of a car barreling down a residential street, lest they lose revenue. Good job!
Oh cool a surveillance simp
Speed cameras aren’t surveillance.
At least 10% lied. Nearly everyone speeds.
If you’re out there, need to be in a car and for whatever reason find it hard to keep the car at 20mph - do what I do and use the speed limiter function (if you have one). Works a charm.
With or without the tech aid though, there’s no excuse.
I feel like some reddit brain would say “oh we’ll just enforce this digitally once everyone drives a self driving car”
given how many times computers fuck up and just randomly turn off or some shit, I still think humans (some of them at least) are more dependable
15% is not a hard success rate to beat but. This isn’t dickriding self driving cars, that shit is never going to work without fucking everyone outside of a car over more, but that’s kind of the point, the answer to this problem is not cars (any version)
@sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Modern petrol cars contain lots of computers too.
Automatic enforcement, with the right to override it recorded in the black box to be used as evidence in crash cases, is a perfectly reasonable idea. But inevitably there will be bugs, just as there are in self-driving cars (especially the often dangerous “semi-autonomous” vehicles).
However there is a cheaper solution: Fixed, widespread speed cameras. Which right now are effectively banned in the UK, because the treasury confiscates the fines (local government pays the running costs, and therefore can’t afford to run any).
While I understand there are usability issues, and design can help with that, if you’re not able to drive your ton of metal safely and legally you shouldn’t be driving it. If people expected to get caught, they’d drive slower.
The bottom line is speed limits are the law. And lower speed limits reduce the number of serious injuries dramatically and help to push people onto public transport. Although with old cars they increase emissions slightly; with modern hybrids they reduce them.
A cheaper alternative would be no cars at all you know?
@PowerCrazy We need to substantially reduce the number of cars.
Increasing the number of speed cameras, while reducing speed limits, is a step in that direction.
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@gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 You can’t do statistics on speed cameras if there are almost no speed cameras.
Which is the reality today. Sometimes the police go out with mobile units. But there are very few fixed ones.
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@gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Because somehow drivers have decided that driving is a right in the same sense that freedom of association is a right.
That any restriction on their ability to drive, that any monitoring of their driving in a public place, is somehow against civil liberties.
That the law should be reinterpreted to suit them. That “causing death by dangerous driving” is somehow less serious than manslaughter (aka murder 3).
Freedom to drive has never been a constitutional or human right. Certainly not in my country nor in the USA.
Cars need to be regulated for the same reason that guns need to be regulated.
@gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Some of this results from the practical reality that many of our cities are specifically designed to force people to drive. Unfortunately it will take time to fix that.
However, as I just boosted, there are plenty of people who can’t drive.
@matthewtoad43 @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 wait are you seriously saying that speed cameras are banned because the money from the speeding fines goes to the government?
You want private companies to make profits from pointing cameras out their windows and submitting speeding tickets? Good lord!
@immibis @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 In the UK, local councils pay for fixed speed cameras.
Central government confiscates the fines.
When this was introduced the vast majority of fixed speed cameras disappeared more or less overnight: Councils could not afford to run them without a revenue stream. Their budgets had been cut ~50% by that same government.
The government justifies this by saying “the war on the motorist is over”.
But it’s a funny kind of war. The fatalities are overwhelmingly caused by motorists.
@matthewtoad43 @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 I think the same thing still applies. Do you really want speed cameras to make profits? You don’t want to go down that road.
@immibis @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Why not? Elected local governments should be able to fund the maintenance of fixed speed cameras out of the fines received.
They can’t, which means, given enormous cuts in their budget largely the result of central government decisions, they could no longer afford to maintain speed cameras.
As a result, more motorists drive at unsafe speeds, and people die.
More speed cameras is a *GOOD* thing.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with enforcement paying for itself in this case.
@matthewtoad43 @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 You know, they tried paying people to arrest people in the past, and it ended up with lots of false arrests and no accountability for them.
My biggest issue with speed camera’s is the middleman corruption that follows them, and perverse incentives they create. Do cities make money on traffic lights? Are they removing them because they can’t make money on them? Why is it different for Speed Cameras?
@PowerCrazy They are removing them because they *LOSE* money on them.
They are, in the UK at least, not allowed to keep any of the money generated.
But they have to pay for the costs of running them.
And they can’t afford to because their budgets have been cut so far over the last 13 years of tory misrule that in many cases they can no longer provide basic services that they are legally obliged to provide.
Back when they could cover their costs, there were lots of speed cameras. Now there are very few. Because evil politicians, usually tories, have always sacrificed lives for political convenience.
Mfw a disgruntled employee overrides the controls and makes someone drive 90mph in a school zone and kills a child
Cars aren’t good at going slow. They need a “chill mode” setting where light pressure on the accelerator for 2 seconds doesn’t move you from 20-30mph before you realize it. I like going the speed limit and have a hard time only going 20 on some roads because it’s just so dang easy to accidentally bump up to 30mph. Automatic transmission problems
Love my manual transmission. Toss er in 4th, hold slight pressure on the gas, cruise at the speed limit without any interference. If you let off you even slow down instead of coast.
sounds like a skill issue to me
Yeah, 5 over is my norm.
Same. Speeding tickets are so fucking expensive where I live. Guaranteed to be at least $300 at a minimum. I can’t afford that, so I barely go over to mitigate the effect of being the slowest driver on the road. In general though, idgaf.
I also drive a Prius, so it’s at least somewhat expected ha
What if I don’t drive at all? Why should we accept people like you being infinitely more likely then me to kill someone with a car? Where is the limit? Why can’t we just make all speed limits zero?
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I agree driving is dangerous to society. But I do have issues with the reliance on “enforcement” instead of prevention. You can set the speed limit to whatever you want and you can set the penalties for speeding to be almost as draconian as you want, but drivers are going to drive at whatever speed they are physically allowed to unless there is something that physically prevents them. So therefore trying to moralize about how they are more likely to kill someone, isn’t really helping anything. The only thing that can help is not allowing people to drive to begin with.
This, but unironically
It’s 100% unironic.
Nobody cares about your condescending non-solution that ignores human nature and is therefore worthless.
Traffic engineers have to design for the reality of how people actually act, not some theoretical Platonic ideal of how they “should” act.
Edit: that first sentence is harsher in tone than @derpoltergeist@col.social deserved, in retrospect. I’m not going to rewrite it because I still mean what I wrote, but please treat it as being addressed towards people who make that sort of argument in bad faith instead of at Pablo. (Sorry, I guess I’ve still got some leftover cynicism from Reddit.)
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Look, you’re not wrong from a moral perspective; it’s just that your sentiment isn’t useful either.
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When roads are designed appropriately, the vast majority of people don’t speed and the ones that do are incorrigible. In this, case, trying to shame the latter group to stop speeding is ineffective.
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Conversely, when roads are designed inappropriately, the vast majority of people do speed. In this case, successfully shaming a few of them into driving the speed limit only makes the situation worse because having a wide disparity of speeds is even more dangerous than everybody uniformly exceeding the speed limit.
The bottom line is that, from a traffic engineering perspective, trying to shame people into not speeding simply doesn’t ever improve the situation. Moreover, bringing it up in a discussion of how to fix speeding is actively unhelpful because it’s a distraction that serves to dissuade policymakers from forking out the money for the solutions that do work!
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speeding is bad…
True.
…and that lowering car speeds is good…
Also true.
…so all these changes can be implemented.
No, see, that doesn’t follow because not “all” changes are good. Only modifying the geometry of the street is good. Changing the number on the speed limit sign should only ever be done in conjunction with that geometry change, and even then it’s just an afterthought.
It’s really, really, really important not to give the people in control of the budget any excuse to think that they can cost-cut “fix the geometry” down to “install lower speed limit signs” and still have it count as accomplishing something!
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Increase the fines (and scale by income) until they provide sufficient incentive to pay attention and have the tiniest bit of self control. Then the people holding a ticket can beg the engineers to fix the road to remove the need for not being lazy and impatient instead of the people whose kids were just killed.
I got the need…
What do you do with all those seconds you save each day?
Procrastinate.
I believe it 100%.
I started riding with a Garmin bike radar and installed an app that tells me exactly how fast a car is going when it passes, and the majority are over the speed limit.
Just the other day, in a 60 km/h zone, I clocked two cars going 125 km/h.
If I thought for a second that police would charge these drivers using photo/video evidence, I’d fork over the $500 to get the radar with a camera built-in and report each and every speeding driver that passes me.
In Denmark we have the lovely new law that if you drive more than 100% over the speed limit and over 100 kmh or drive over 200 kmh at all or drunk driving with over 2‰ they confiscate the car and you are not getting it back at all. They confiscate the car regadles of who owns the car (with very few exceptions) and that is also if it is leased. So far since when the law started they have confiscated over 2000 cars in two years. It’s my favourite law of all laws right now. The fine for driving crazy is also nicely proportional to your income and it removes the car so the person cannot just drive without license afterwards.
I can’t get behind property seizure without compensation, but I can understand everything else.
Even if they said “you can’t have this car any more, but can sell it from our facility” that’d be better I think
In effect, is it really that different to a fine? It seems to have a couple of advantages, though: it’s easier to collect, and it’s proportional, so a person who can afford a fancy luxury car pays more than someone in an old banger, without the complexity of having to evaluate their income and savings.
This is exactly the reason they are doing it. Proportional to income and the car is completely and physically removed from the road. There was a big issue here where the offender would just drive without license or the car was leased or borrowed so there was no real penalty. Now the leasing company would have to take responsibility for leasing fancy supercars to anyone and everyone and people lending their car to a known drunk or fast driver would definitely think twice.
That part is all good. The problem is they don’t care whose car it is. If I was to borrow your car, and then break this law, then YOU are out a car. Yes, you can try and get the money back from me, but that might take a decade if I don’t have money to replace your car.
If you ask me, that’s crazy.Well I agree it might be a bit crazy, but I also must admit that I like the law because it works and it makes it such that I don’t want to lend my car out to anyone unless I know for sure how they drive by driving with them a few times. It puts the responsibility into the hands of the car owner. Just replace the word car with gun and it all sounds reasonable. If I just lend my gun to a friend who I only know very little or I have never seen hold a gun in his hand that would be very bad. Even if he has a license for guns. And if he shot someone or broke the law in other ways with the gun I’d only expect the gun to be confiscated regardless of who owns it.
Normally me neither, bit in this context where you are driving so recklessly you are endangering everyone else and we are talking over double the speed limit I’ll allow it. Noone has any rights left when you are doing that kind of stuff deliberately.
As I wrote to someone else my reasoning is this. It puts the responsibility into the hands of the car owner. Just replace the word car with gun and it all sounds reasonable. If I just lend my gun to a friend who I only know very little or I have never seen hold a gun in his hand that would be very bad. Or if a company leases big guns that are super dangerous. Even if he has a license for guns. And if he shot someone or broke the law in other ways with the gun I’d only expect the gun to be confiscated regardless of who owns it.
As long as it then goes swiftly through the court system to confirm this. Otherwise it is theft, like US asset forfeiture.
@GBU_28 play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Driving a car is not a right. Especially in Denmark where public transport is an perfectly viable alternative for most of the population.
Totally agree, which I said in my comment.
But owning property is owning it outright. You don’t own it at the whim of someone else.
I in general do not agree with government seizure of property without compensation.
I agree with losing your license, losing the privilege to drive and use public roads, etc.
@GBU_28
I’ve found that people are big fans of government action against people with little or no due process, until it happens to them.
@JegVilleSeShitpostsI don’t know if you’re aligned with me or not
@GBU_28
That really, *really* shouldn’t matter. One of the biggest problems around the world today are people checking for labels and group membership before considering otherwise valid points.For what it’s worth, I’ve found this behavior exhibited by all groups.
@GBU_28 @JegVilleSeShitposts do you also oppose confiscation of guns from murderers?
I do, with compensation. Obviously I am not suggesting there isn’t incarceration happening
@GBU_28 @JegVilleSeShitposts 🤡 Welcome to society.
Childish reply
@GBU_28 @JegVilleSeShitposts How do you feel about steep fines for drunk driving? How is this different?
Fines are fine. I understand at the end of the day they behave similarly. But the value of the car may not be the right amount for the fine, and the citizen may be able to get the best sale price for the car.
@GBU_28 @JegVilleSeShitposts , all property is owned at the whim of someone else !
The person that chooses to work for you, the customer that chooses to buy your goods, the person that chooses to sell their house, etc …
You’re just a care taker for a short while and if you’re mistreating that privilege it should be able to be revoked!Wrong! You challenge bodily autonomy if you disrespect physical property.
Do you disrespect a person’s bodily autonomy?
@GBU_28 Forfeiture of property involved in committing a crime is standard practice.
So is police brutality.
I’m allowed to have opinions not codified in existing standards
Why are you @'ing everyone? You replied, we will see it.
Leases are not ownership
@GBU_28 @TDCN this is basically an income adjusted fine for breaking the law in egregious ways. Are you also opposed to fines for other bad behavior?
I also appreciate that it gets more people thinking about ways to move without a car. that is more doable in Denmark then in the US, but cars are dangerous, and if you put other at risk so casually I have little sympathy.
For the sake of conversation, let’s consider some other owned object. I’m grasping here but say you had your computer seized for anti government speech. (I know, not the same as endangering people with a car).
It wouldn’t be right to lose a multi thousand dollar device simply because the government willed it. Certainly not without compensation.
@GBU_28 skip any example that doesn’t routinely involve the single biggest cause of child death in the US. There is no reason for a person to be exceeding the speed limit by double. That’s just gambling with others life and limb.
I think a multi-thousand dollar, income adjusted fine should be the minimum in that case.
The point is I selected an example that had no relation to cars or driving, and no safety context.
The point of the example was ownership, and dealings with the government.
Critical thinking 101
I made clear in earlier comments that I’m aware driving is a privilege and reckless driving is a serious crime
It also makes people think twice before lending their car to any random friend
Sorry I won’t budge on property rights.
Driving is a privilege, and the government can absolutely bar you from using public services (roads) but ownership is a serious thing to me
Where did I say consequences shouldn’t exist? Massive ones?
You have the reading comprehension of a child
My dude, I said take the car away! Fine them! Take the driving privileges! Just pay them for their property or allow them to sell it!
Man you can’t hold more.thwn one thought at a time huh
@GBU_28 @TDCN Think of the car as a “dual use” item - i.e. you can use it as transport or to (potentially) get other people injured or killed.
The law aims at the second (mis)use. Even though I’m a car-loving German I really second that part of the Danish law and I honestly wish we would have something similar.
@TDCN I do admire the Danish pragmatism endlessly. One of my favorite countries. Thanks for sharing.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 During my holiday in DK I already noticed speeding is not really a thing.
It is already super expensive for a normal speeding ticket so yes people are really careful. Still people speed everywhere it’s just only a little over
@TDCN In the Netherlands things can get expensive to, however the chance of getting caught is pretty low. However, up to 30 km/h it’s an administrative matter, above that a prosecutor gets involved. https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/nieuws/nederland/2023/februari/boetebedragen-2023 The last three cars I owned have a speed limiter that I use much though, I’m not the brave type. 😉
@TDCN @Showroom7561 Impossible in Germany 😄 But it sounds very good - and easy to understand
@TDCN sounds great and would definitely be useful in #australia where there is continual news of unlicensed or habitually reckless drivers causing havoc. Maybe making owners responsible would start a shift in society where parents and friends need to their own role in this continuing drama.
Exactly
@TDCN @Showroom7561 the best law ever, and soooo sweet that this sucker got his new car confiscated: https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/shakhwan-ameen-ble-tatt-i-fartskontroll-i-danmark-_-far-ikke-tilbake-sin-splitter-nye-lamborghini-1.16446941
Åh jeg elsker denne historie. Det er det toppen af det bedste
@TDCN Did you know a screenshot of your post is on Reddit (saw a bot post it here on Mastodon) https://redd.it/163foqd
Lol thank for letting me know. That’s definitely interesting. I ditched Reddit so don’t really care for karma farmers. They could at least have linked to my original post but it’s Reddit after all so what can you expect. Funny it gets reposted back to lemmy
@TDCN @Showroom7561 I’ll be honest I think it’s an an odd stance to take to say confiscation is wrong. The 100 kmh limit is about 60 mph, to be over 100% that means the limit is 30 mph. This limit is normally through a town, village or urban area. So if someone drives at 60 mph down the high street, that’s not just a “little bit of speeding”, that’s completely reckless
@TDCN @Showroom7561 In my hometown its kind of a hobby to rent fancy sports cars for the weekend and this is as stupid as it sounds. I would love this law for Germany as well.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 I really like this law in principle, but without *free* rehab, or really any other drug recovery assistance, and without a good social safety net, it does inordinately punish poor people. Yes, if the person is a rich asshole, 300% take *all* their cars. But sometimes the person is poor and using alcohol to just feel less shitty about their life and need the car to be able to have a job. Not that that’s good, but it *is* a reason to not take their car…
@neonregent @TDCN @Showroom7561 It’s Denmark. Country with functional public transport system. Country, where you really don’t need to own a car to have a job…
@TDCN @Showroom7561 like most fines, this just makes it legal for rich folk and potentially life-destroying for poor folk.
If this happens to a taxi driver, they might end up homeless. If it happens to a rich playboy they’ll just go buy a new car and carry on speeding.
The taxi driver could also… Just hear me out… Drive the speed limit and not drive like a maniac. Then he’s fine and noone takes his car.
@TDCN sure, unless it was the car owner’s friend, or kid, or crack addict neighbour who took their car and then committed the crime.
Regardless, the issue is not whether crimes should be punished, but whether it makes sense to have punishments that only affect the poor.
Just don’t lend the car out to anyone you don’t fully trust. Take responsibility of your vehicle and make it clear to the borrower that he/she should drive properly regardles of that being your mom or your best friend. If the car is taken without your consent it’s theft and grounds for the exceptions in the law so you get it back.
@TDCN again, why is personal responsibility only for poor people? That’s the key point but you keep glossing over it.
Okay hers the thing. It’s naive to think that it’s just “nothing” for rich people. You have to take the rest of the law into consideration. They obviously don’t just take the car from the owner as the only thing with this kind of extream offence (obviously, otherwise it’ll be a dumb law). On top there’s a huge (and I mean huge) fine for the driver and they take your lisence and you are completely banned from driving for X amount of years. After the ban you have to pay for a completely new drivers license which is really expensive but more importantly really time-consuming in Denmark. We are talking weeks of training and mandatory tests, first aid exam and hours of theory and practical lessons. There are payments to a fond that raises money for traffic victims and for multiple offenses or if you drove exceptionally wreklessly there’s possibly jail time. Even if you are rich this is not just “pocket money” there’s more context than you think.
@nicklockwood @TDCN @Showroom7561 you’re right. Mandatory speed limiters are a much better option. They’re cheap, easy and avoid having to fine people.
@jessta @TDCN @Showroom7561 it’s almost as if speeding fines are more about creating a revenue stream for the government than they are about preventing speeding 🤔
@nicklockwood @TDCN @Showroom7561 no, it’s just politically impossible to mandate speed limiters. Governments tried 50yrs ago and haven’t tried again since. Car manufacturers want people to know they can speed. It’s all over their marketing.
@jessta @TDCN @Showroom7561 if they really wanted to they could use the traffic camera network that already tracks numbers plates to do average speed checks on every car and issue fines automatically. I suspect they don’t because then traffic would grind to a halt.
Why would it grind to a haltm I see no reason for this. People just need to drive the speed limit. In Norway for example they have cameras at the begining of long stretches of highway and a camera at the end and if your average speed is higher than allowed it automatically sends you a fine. Those stretches of road are soooo nice to drive because everyone are driving the same speed and it’s so smooth
@TDCN what is 2‰? I am not familiar with the notation. Is that 0.2%?
You got it.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 Rich person drives 240kmh drunk out of their mind, loses expensive car, gets another the next day because it’s still just pocket change to them.
Boyfriend “borrows” the old-but-working car of his abused girlfriend who’s barely making it paycheck to paycheck, drives 110kph, her car gets seized and she now has no hope of escape.
An extreme comparison? Yes. But it illustrates that nice simple one-size-fits-all laws often have abhorrent results.
I forgot to also add that they obviously don’t just take the car from the owner as the only thing with this kind of offence (obviously, otherwise it’ll be a dumb law). On top there’s a huge fine for the driver and they take your lisence and you are banned from driving for X amount of years. You have to pay for a completely new drivers license which is really expensive but mire importantly really time-consuming in Denmark we are talking weeks of training and mandatory tests, first aid exam and hours of theory and practical lessons. There are payments to a fond that raises money for traffic victims and possibly jail time if you drove exceptionally wreklessly or drunk. Even if you are rich this is not just “pocket money” there’s more context than you think.
There are exemptions in the law for this exact matter. It states of the punishment is unreasonably hard on the owner they can get it back
@Showroom7561 @TDCN all the “but they need a car” people in the comments should also take a look at the amazing public transit options in Denmark and think about how that could make their life great (especially us USians)
Also… Just drive the speed limit and noone takes your car away from you
@TDCN @Showroom7561 This sounds terrific. Do you have a link to that law please. (In Danish is fine). I want to use it as an example for discussion leading up to my city’s elections next year. It will upset the many car brains who run my city. 😀
It’s not a single law to say but changes to the existing law so the actual writing is spread out over a few paragraphs. Here’s a link for the entire traffic law LINK Start at §119 about confiscation and §133 about offences that causes you to loose your licens. The details can be a bit difficult to sift out. It’s law stuff I guess.
Thats nuts…
In a good way yes.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 do you have breathalyzer tests that actually work in normal use here? because if not this is just stealing cars, lol
I don’t understand what you mean, of course they work and then if its high they verify with a blod sample to verify and to give you the benefit of the doubt
@TDCN oh i’m just from a country that uses breathalizers as evidence on their own and they don’t actually work
Damn that’s shity… I feel sorry for you.
Yes! More of this. ESPECIALLY taking BMWs and Mercedes away from rich douchenozzles.
We need this in the US so badly.
A Norwegian rich man went to Germany and bought a brand new supercar for millions and got stoped for driving 228 kmh on the highway in Denmark on the way home so the confiscated his car and he didn’t get it back. Fucking love that story. Article below but in Norwegian. Thanks to @atlefren@snabelen.no for the link https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/shakhwan-ameen-ble-tatt-i-fartskontroll-i-danmark-_-far-ikke-tilbake-sin-splitter-nye-lamborghini-1.16446941
The law works because if he was just slapped with a fine that’s just like saying "yes you can drive like a maniac as long as you just pay and he can clearly afford it. This way he’s stopped properly and will probably never be speeding again in dk
There is no more possibilities in Danish courts but – very last line of the article – Ameen (reckless driver) is hoping to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
What the hell are people like this thinking? 😅
@TDCN @Showroom7561 it’s very nice as an idea, but I doubt it’s constitutional, I fear that a good lawyer would be able to get back your car. You would need the money to hire a good lawyer though.
Nope, doesn’t work like that here. We don’t have constitutions the way you do on the US. Many cases have been tried in court and the offender lost in many cases
@TDCN @Showroom7561 Sounds like a good idea indeed. Only one remark: what if the car is shared by 2 persons?
It’s still confiscate. The law is pretty clear that it pretty much doesn’t matter who owns the car.
@alternative_be @TDCN @Showroom7561 then it’s gone for both, I guess, as it’s even confiscated from car sharing companies.
@TDCN But naively, isn’t this also some sort of “never let a friend borrow your car”? Wouldn’t that encourage middle-class people who don’t own a car because they can sometimes borrow one to just buy one now? I suppose this is a miniscule percentage, but still. (Disclaimer: Am German, currently I have no car of my own, and averaged like 1 speeding ticket per 7 years of driving)
Maybe it will, but good second hand cars are not that difficult to get hold of. But people still lend eachother their cars, but I guess in suirtain groups of people where driving super fast is “cool” they’ll be more hesitant which is good because then the law is working
@TDCN Yeah don’t get me wrong, I think it will probably a net positive and I definitely would wish for harsher penalties here… but I can simply imagine a lot of “false positives” that could end catastrophically.
E.g. basically everyone here has a story where at a construction site on a highway/country road the signage was horrible and they breezed through the temporary 30/50 zone with the normal 100/120, just because there are no real rules. You can have a limit to any arbitrary number on the unlimited stretches of the highway, so there’s no “oh, construction zone, this must be 50 now”, no it could be any of: 100,80,70,60,50,40,30.
Signage is suuuuper well here so no excuses at all for this sorry. And if you can prove the signs are wrong I guess you can take it up in court.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 I think you mean blood/alcohol level of .2% - at 2% you would be long dead. And .2% is not driving drunk, that’s driving practically passed out. To be that drunk a 50kg dude would need to have 7 drinks in an hour. That person needs detox, not a car.
https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-level-chart
@Z_Zed_Zed @TDCN @Showroom7561 2‰ = 0.2%. The per-thousand sign isn’t used often in informal English, but if someone took the effort to select the character, they probably meant it. 🙂
Exactly. In Danish we exclusively use promill (per thousands) for blood alcohol level so it’s a habit for me to use ‰ or more commonly the written form promille
@TDCN @Showroom7561
Two examples from Australian states:
https://www.police.vic.gov.au/hoon-laws
https://www.police.wa.gov.au/Traffic/Cameras/Speed/Hoon-driving
Just a few days ago the news carries pictures of a vintage Holden muscle car being crushed because the owner had been driving at 250 Kph in a 110 Kph zone.I do t agree on the crushing aspect of this law. It’s environmental iresponsibil and stupid. Just sell/auktion the car and spend the money on making better traffic safety
@TDCN @Showroom7561 So if it is leased, do they sell the car and pay off the lease? Or do you have to pay for insurance that covers the lease holder if this happens? I guarantee you the banks that finance leases are not just eating that.
Here in the USA it is almost routine for the drunk who finally causes a fatal accident to have six DUIs, a .15 BAC, and a revoked license at the time of the mishap.
Tbh I have no idea how it works in practice but I’d assume the leasing companies will just pass on the cost to the offender
@TDCN @Showroom7561 What would happen to Carsharing Organisations? Forcing them to drop these customers would be fine but confiscating their cars would be a very bad idea IMO.
They probably have to go after the person who lost the car for compensation.
I’m in a car sharing co-op in Germany and if I loose the vehicle because of recklessness I’d need to pay up for that.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 it’s a pity they don’t have the same law for cyclists 😂 they’re everywhere in Denmark. I was dodging them more than cars to be fair 🙈
Oh you be dead if you walk on a bike lane 😅☠️
@TDCN @Showroom7561 do you know why they put the 100kmh limit on? Driving double the limit in an urban area is more likely to kill someone than a deserted rural road.
If you have a 20kmh zone it sounds unreasonable to get your car taken if you drive only 40 kmh. 40 is still quite slow
@TDCN @acs 5 out of 5 pedestrians will survive a collision with a car traveling at 20km/hr, only 4 out of 5 will survive a collision with a car traveling at 40km/h.
This doesn’t include the large difference in level of injury.So by speeding your taking a situation where nobody should die and making it a situation where someone might.
A 20km/h area is an area where there will be lots of people to hit so it’s even more important to stick to the speed limit in that situation
You still get a massive fine of 1200 kr (175usd) in this case at 20kmh and at only 30% above you get a “cut in your license” (like a yellow card in football). 3 of those “cuts” and you have to get a new licens. 60% above the limit they outright take your licens and the fine goes up. If the speed limit is reduced due to road work the fine is doubled. And many more rules. If you are a student or pensioner you fine gets halfed for instance. Besides the fine if you go at 60% or above you also need to pay 500kr or more to a “victims” fond that raises money for the victims of traffic accidents.
@TDCN Sounds interesting. Does the law work - in the sense that it deters people from driving recklessly, or is it too early to tell?
I just tried looking uh up and it’s still too early to say. Of course the car lobby ar criticising the law and asking why they are not year concluding anything yet but to be fair it has just been covid and 2 years is just so short to see any impact to the statistics. In my own opinion I think it must work. It’s a specific type of people who drive wreklessly and often in groups of “cool guys”. If you start to remove cars from those groups they will be more hesitant to lend each other cars. If they get impacted the story will carry more impact than a massive fine. A car is very a physical object and is more visible than a debt. If a dad find his son drove wreklessly and got the car confiscated it wil be a stronger lesson for both the father and the son. I can be unfair but we have tried fines for so long and it has not worked. We already have the some of the biggest fines for traffic violations in the world.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 oooh! what happens in case of theft? Is it still confiscated from the owner?
That’s probably the exceptions I mentioned. I’m no expert, bit of be unreasonable to the owner if the car was stolen.
@TDCN @Showroom7561 Personally, I think banning.someone from driving hurts them harder than loosing a vehicle, as one can’t just get a new driving license - the loophole that allowed one to just make a new license in another EU member state has been closed for those barred from (re)issue of a license.
Trust me they are still banned from driving for a year or more if this law triggeres
@TDCN that’s quite low.
People speeding 100% over limit usually get barred for life from attaining any permit unless they get medically certified to be able to drive.
And even then they’d likely not face charges for speeding alone but literally charges for attempted homicide by gross neglect and recklessness.
I mean if one’s driving like 100km/h on regular city roads they don’t just loose their license but face serious jailtime.
And I think that’s more than justified.
I said “or more” because I don’t know the details. Depending on what you did you can get banned for much longer or even face jail time if it’s very severe. It’s individual and depends on the offence
@TDCN @Showroom7561 onfeel they should drop the driving to 50% over the speed limit … Very generous with 100%
Hugz & xXx
@melissabeartrix @TDCN @Showroom7561
Counterpoint: some roads switch between 70km/h or 80km/h and 40km/h based on time of day; so you’re on a road engineered for 70-80km/h, there are no children anywhere because school won’t be out for another half an hour, but it’s already 75% or 100% over the speed limit if you mistake the timeThe law states that it has to be 100% over AND over 100 kmh fo for a 40 zone you’d have to driver over 100kmh for the car to be confiscated
@TDCN @Showroom7561 :ablobaww:
@TDCN @Showroom7561 it obviously shouldn’t be proportional to your income, it should be set to the actual negative externality cost. this is a failure to understand basic economics. If we can save more statistical lives with the money from the tax then the statistical expected loss, then we want these people speeding and paying for it.
You got a radar to check the speed of cars passing you?
The radar tells me when cars are approaching from behind and how far. It’s been a massive gamechanger for safety by enhancing my spacial awareness.
There’s an app for my bike computer that also captures speed and car counts using the radar.
I would imagine that aggregating this data from thousands of users could help cities to plan better cycling infrastructure and build traffic speed/flow mechanisms to enhance cyclist safety.
@Showroom7561 @mondoman712 what’s the name of the app and for which platform is it? Having the info about how fast someone overtakes one sounds very interesting.
It’s called “My Bike Radar Traffic” in the Garmin Connect IQ app. 👌
@Showroom7561 thanks! Sorry for the late reply, somehow I had notifications disabled.
@Showroom7561 @mondoman712 the UK also has new amendments to the highway code about safe passing distances for bikes, horses, etc; my brother has front and rear cameras for his bike and the police are actually following up on his reports of drivers passing dangerously close, even at lower speeds. Sometimes things do change for the better
Yes, I recall someone in the UK posting videos of dangerous drivers and the follow up by police. Many of the consequences are light for the behaviors witnessed, but it’s better than nothing.
Tbf 20 through a village where no one’s about is insane
Depending on the surroundings it sounds quite sane. In the village I grew up in we had 20km/h (12-13mph) which i think was quite reasonable. When there are hedges and stuff to the side you need to be able to stop if someone walks out.
Exactly why we need LTNs etc. Existing restrictions don’t work!
I always thought that 20 mile an hour signs were just a good excuse for police to be able to pull over just about anyone they want
