Speed camera update (Sept.11)

[Brian P]

I can't remember exactly which but a country in Scandinavia cut traffic deaths huge just by reducing the in town speeds to 40kph and then enforced it.
Should we be more worried about saving time than lives??

It isn't quite that simple. Here's a completely random google streetview from the residential area of a town in Sweden. Street View · Google Maps

If you go to the map view, you'll note that this is a dead-end neighborhood unless you're walking or on a bicycle, and that's an offshoot from another street that doesn't really go anywhere, either, and if you try hard enough heading northbound, you eventually get to the junction of a main road, which looks like this:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Note the dual carriageway layout with completely separate bicycle / pedestrian paths ... and the bicycle paths that go off yonder directly into a park area alongside a river that you can't easily get to with a car.

The roads layout - for the most part - doesn't facilitate people driving through residential neighborhoods unless home or destination is actually in that neighborhood, and it isn't a straight path to get there, and the layout doesn't facilitate driving fast. And the main roads, for the most part, have bicyclists and pedestrians physically separated from motor vehicles.

It isn't all like this, but a lot of it is. Many of these towns (not the area shown above) pre-date motor vehicles, and those also tend to be tight, narrow, and without many straight paths from one place to another.

Random German village (beautiful) - Tight, narrow. Street View · Google Maps

 

[GreyGhost]

Instead of speed cameras (or in addition) how about bridge mounted CCTV. A few officers could fast forward thru lots of tape to find these clowns or better yet an actual use for AI.

On that note, average speed cameras are a far more effective system. Most of the parkside traffic is travelling end to end. Two cameras, existing ALPR software and a little math and the whole road slows down (or generates even more money). Average speed cameras would miss the small percentage of vehicles that turn off or stop along the way but those won't be the high speed outliers.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Parkside camera is reportedly back up today. Police have reminded people that damaging them is a criminal charge, not just a slap on the wrist.

Can't believe people are willing to risk a criminal record to mess with these cameras. It's quite possible that the parkside one is under some sort of additional monitoring now as well. We shall see.