So make the lanes narrower and add speed bumps to slow people down, and also make a passing lane for every speed bump and expect assholes not to use it? Almost as clueless a suggestion as the generic “just redesign every street and intersection in every city to make driving faster impossible!”
Barriers have their place and I don’t mind having a narrowing area and speed bumps in front of a school or in a parking lot or whatever. But in a lot of places a camera is a simpler, cheaper, easier, better solution.
And a fire truck or Ambulance is quite capable of going 20-30 above a speed limit in an emergency most times of day and days of the week. I think as a society we take that small increased risk, balancing it with sirens and special driver training, so that people can have help arrive as fast as possible.
My “clueless” suggestion was to try to mitigate your “what if”. I have no qualms about putting in speed bumps, narrowing the lanes and NOT provide a passing lane for emergency vehicles. You can use physical, controllable barriers to work within the same radio controlled infrastructure that already exists in many places that emergency vehicles use to communicate with traffic signals. There are retractable bollards, or even gates that can prevent normal access to the passing lane if you INSIST on a passing lane and preventing assholes.
Slowing down for a couple speed bumps will not significantly impact emergencies in most cases. If you have /data/ that demonstrates otherwise, please provide it.
So make the lanes narrower and add speed bumps to slow people down, and also make a passing lane for every speed bump and expect assholes not to use it? Almost as clueless a suggestion as the generic “just redesign every street and intersection in every city to make driving faster impossible!”
Barriers have their place and I don’t mind having a narrowing area and speed bumps in front of a school or in a parking lot or whatever. But in a lot of places a camera is a simpler, cheaper, easier, better solution.
And a fire truck or Ambulance is quite capable of going 20-30 above a speed limit in an emergency most times of day and days of the week. I think as a society we take that small increased risk, balancing it with sirens and special driver training, so that people can have help arrive as fast as possible.
My “clueless” suggestion was to try to mitigate your “what if”. I have no qualms about putting in speed bumps, narrowing the lanes and NOT provide a passing lane for emergency vehicles. You can use physical, controllable barriers to work within the same radio controlled infrastructure that already exists in many places that emergency vehicles use to communicate with traffic signals. There are retractable bollards, or even gates that can prevent normal access to the passing lane if you INSIST on a passing lane and preventing assholes.
Slowing down for a couple speed bumps will not significantly impact emergencies in most cases. If you have /data/ that demonstrates otherwise, please provide it.
I don’t even know what you are arguing then.