Comment by belorn

Same in India! We go one better, we let people drive in the opposite lane as well!

That’s genius but one has to ask: how much does it cost to maintain these speed restricting features?

In the UK, the cost of owning a car is high yet our potholes, while frequent, are small enough to survive. Thus being more of an annoyance rather than a speed restriction.

>they're safer because they're less safe

Roundabouts are safer. They're safer because they prevent everybody from speeding through the intersection. And, even in case of an accident, no head-on collisions happen in a roundabout.

One-lane-roundabouts are very safe. I lived in Hannover (Germany) in the 80s and 90s, they had 2 or 3 lanes in the roundabouts. There were large signs that counted the accidents (200+/year) to raise awareness and during the trade fairs (anybody remembers Cebit?) the number of accidents peaked. Today they are all a lot safer because of a lot of traffic lights.

I thought that the idea of roundabouts was that they lead to slightly more accidents than before, but they are of much lower severity than before (the 90 degree intersections they replace).

Same with driving in the winter. Anecdotally I always observe more accidents when the roads are clear.

> There must be a happy medium somewhere in between.

"""

- Gavin, you know our shameful history of worker suicides. Since the renovation? Not a single one.

- Not even one? Ok. But there's gotta be like, a middle ground here...

"""

(https://youtu.be/EyyIrpf68SM?t=57)

It's true, Sweden isn't quite bike and pedestrian friendly enough yet, but they'll get that balance someday!

I would say it depend on where you are. City driving is generally not a great experience and its not that uncommon to see a speed bump before almost every crossing, to the point where you get surprised if there isn't one. That said, as long you don't leave the designated main roads that goes through the city areas it is not that bad. They do demand a lot of attention.

Street parking has mostly been turned into exclusive residential parking, so parking houses are often the only choice. As a result they are quite expensive, and you got to walk to the destination.

Parking and access is much better in the country side, and the highways are fairly good and similar to those found in the west Europe. It not as straight or wide as authobahn, but not as much traffic either.

Speed bumps suck for both the driver and passangers of the car and generate road noise.

I was wondering how much convenience is worth one kid's life. This thread reminded me of some interesting terms like "value of statistical life." It appears that all those annoying low speed limits and purposeful obstructions in residential areas really do save lives.

> An evaluation of 20 mph zones in the UK demonstrated that the zones were effective both in reducing traffic speed and in reducing RTIs. In particular child pedestrian injuries were reduced by 70 per cent from 1.24 per year in each area before to 0.37 per year after the zones were introduced

https://www.rospa.com/siteassets/images/road-safety/road-saf...

The "Vision Zero" program was started in Sweden, and is becoming more widely adopted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

What an American framing. My convenience at the cost of your eventual safety. I guess this is why we also have toddler death machines with 5-foot grills that we call “full size” vehicles.

Gosh, no, the self-driving cars will be forced to drive at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors as opposed to voluntarily driving at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors. How awful.

> prioritizing safety over convenience

this sounds like exactly the right tradeoff, especially since these decisions actually increase convenience for those not in cars

“Just before” … this would mean all cars would be required to be self driving and that they’re forced to adhere to the set speed limits. You think this is just around the corner? In a country like Sweden with a lot of snow? Let’s talk about that this when we’re actually close to hitting 100% of self driving cars on the road.

And it’s not “runaway”, it’s exactly the right prioritisation. I’d encourage you to spend some time on Not Just Bikes and the say whether you’d like to live in a Nordic or an American neighbourhood. The Nordic style is also about convenience because car centric infrastructure makes a lot of things less accessible and convenient.

Those things all sound easy to remove in some hypothetical future where there are enough and safe enough self driving cars to have both. Makes sense to design for human driven cars for now though.

If they're actually self-driving they should be able to drive around the obstacles just as well or better than human.

> Does it actually work though?

Yes. They have made steady progress over the previous decades to the point where they can now have years with zero road fatalities.

> And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here.

Counterintuitive perhaps, but it's what works. Humans adjust their behaviour to the level of perceived risk, the single most important thing is to make driving feel as dangerous as it is.

Does physics work? If it does, then these physical obstacles work too. Go ahead, try to drive faster than 10mph through a roadway narrowed so much it's barely wider than your car, with curbs. And yeah, I'm describing a place in London.