Going forward they should do it think it through,
mutes audio for the rest of the sentence
“it was intended to make roads safer, but one guy told us it’s done just the opposite”
Okay, so I guess that one guy being angry is the opposite of safety.“I’m going to drive recklessly out of spite!”
He’s complaining about having to turn it into opposing traffic because the road is now too narrow. Then the footage shows him very clearly barely turning the wheel. I’ve taken sharper turns than that without going on to the opposing lane. This guy just doesn’t know how to drive.
- yes, those gigantic trucks need to fuck right off (the expert also essentially said that)
- it is meant to make people drive slower and more carefully. If they don’t do that then yes, that means more accidents
- good project but in my country those 2 poles every 100 yards or so wouldn’t be enough. Yes, it costs a little more to implement this properly
I’ve never heard of a city making a road less safe with the intention of slowing down traffic.
Depending on how you frame it, that happens all the time. For example, a speedbump causes speed reduction, but at high speeds it causes (momentary) loss of control. Or narrowing the road, which means less margin for error.
People will drive their cars as fast as feels safe. By introducing hazards, you make people slow down which increases safety, but each feature in isolation could be said to be dangerous in some way, y’know?
There’s no entitlement like the entitlement of shit drivers.
“But my car wouldn’t have any damage if it was just the usual soft pedestrian!”
This just in: shitty drivers don’t know the size of their vehicle. More on this at 6 (apparently).
To be honest those gray small concrete blocks with funny useless poles in them are really a bad road UI design.
Not visible enough and too small to be effective anyway…
So while the complaints are stupid, they have a point: make those road blockers bigger and more visible. Maybe more signage as well…
it’s more UX than UI here, no?
I guess you could say that the user interfaces with the concrete block via their shiny chrome rims on bald rubber band tires
Yeah … No native speaker here … :)
They’re less ugly than a jersey barrier and do less damage to cars that can’t stay in their lane while still protecting cyclists.
But yeah, visibility is key. I wonder if they are still visible in ten years. That’s my only objection to things like raised crossings: once the paint wears off or in snow they become a lot less visible and no longer as effective. I hate that both as a driver and a cyclist
This is mostly a US problem though. Road designers in the US just don’t seem to actually understand how to implement these things in a sensible manner.
The way to do things like raised crossings is to make them out of a different type of road surface, moving over to brick pavers is common, so there’s always a visual indication.
I mean, the blue shirt guy admitted that some vehicles might have to turn over the median into oncoming traffic to avoid the thing on the road. That isn’t great, in defense of people not liking this change. That’s dangerous, and bad design.
The large vehicles he’s referring to are industrial large vehicles. Which require special licensing. Even the big ass pickup truck they showed could make the turn with no issues at all going at a reasonable speed.
Not every truck a municipality’s public works department uses is this size. You don’t need special licensing to drive a dual wheel F350 long bed, and I’d wager that might be a problem to turn that corner depending on what it has in it. If they need to replace signs, or even just do road work, they need to be able to turn that corner. I have a lot of questions about this.
What happens when it’s an ambulance (a lot of those are built on f450 chassis and don’t require an CDL).
Even the truck they showed in the video that went into the other lane didn’t need to. It’s just shit drivers in vehicles that are too large. So many large ass truck grocery getters.
Fair point. Just might not be great adding those things near turns. Or what are they even for?
Also from context I think that’s a residential neighbourhood so how many large trucks are going to be driving through?
Any municipal vehicle. They don’t get sewage backups or anything? They never need an ambulance?
Probably a lot of garbage trucks?
Just go slowly and stop if there is a car coming.
Yes , pretty common for large vehicles to have to to this sooner or later. Driver shouldn’t be operating such large vehicles if their training and licensing, and knowledge of turning circle isn’t enough for them to know how to do this safely.
We should be discouraging unnecessarily large vehicles anyway, ideally through urban design like this. Another element I like is sequential speed bumps with uneven gaps, smaller vehicles already going reasonable speeds can just weave through the gaps, larger vehicles going fast are required to slow.
Going slow doesn’t make the wheelbase shorter. Forcing people to drive onto the lane of oncoming traffic is bad infrastructure design.
Maybe, but if you insist on an oversized vehicle and don’t have the skill to keep it in lane, then maybe a little inconvenience is ok
The traffic engineer interviewed knows the wheelbase of common vehicles. Most people don’t need to drive into traffic, they’re just not turning the wheel enough, early enough.
But the people driving cars with the wheelbase of a semi can still take the turn, you just look for oncoming traffic before you use part of the lane.
Or too early. Part of the flood of bad driving since pandemic is everyone seems to cut corners now. Whether crossing lanes or the into opposing traffic on a curve, having trouble with a simple turn, or changing lanes while turning
They can either claim land of the residents to make the road wider, they could leave it dangerous for pedestrians/bicyclists, they could shut the road down completely, or just do what they have done in the video.
If they are comcerned about speeding, they could install speed bumps or speed cameras. Those actually work.
Making the lanes narrow also works. That’s why they did it. Also people vandalise speed cameras so that’s not worth it, and speed bumps don’t work because people just floor it between the bumps.
Plenty of research has shown that people will drive at a speed that feels comfortable. Narrower lanes are known to cause people to slow down without additional discomfort or fining speeders.
Probably, they are concerned about the people in the small lane. Bicyclists and pedestrians. Speed bumps doesn’t stop those large american vehicles from taking out a person in their blind spot during a right turn.
those large american vehicles
Don’t they have outside mirrors? I use those to check for bikes before making turns… 🙄 Like I was taught in driving school.
I was taught to do that AND check your blind spot, because the mirror doesn’t catch everything.
The example they used had the turning circle of an oil tanker and would have trouble with a lot of corners. Any normal vehicle would be fine.
Crashing into an oil tanker would probably be worse for the oncoming vehicle than crashing into a normal vehicle though. Forcing any vehicle into incoming traffic is dangerous design.
Are you a civil engineer or technician?
In my area MOST small residential roads will already require semis to turn into oncoming in order to make tight turns - this is not uncommon, and a reason there’s additional licensing for those vehicles. They have a wide turning radius and should know where and how to make that maneuver safely.
There’s nothing wrong with this setup - speaking as a civil engineer in road design.
Our city buses do it as a routine part of many routes, as do school buses. Large trucks and construction vehicles, too. Me, when I’m towing my boat sometimes. Intersections inherently force vehicles into crossing paths. That’s what an intersection is. So, if it’s dangerous, then we shouldn’t have intersections.
Call out the real problem here: shitty, entitled drivers.
What is the problem? Looks like enough room for the cars.
That’s not what the guy is complaining about. It’s a perfectly valid point that with a longer vehicle you have to cut into the oncoming lane or your rear tires will hit the curb.
Feel free to criticize people you disagree with, but at the very least you should criticize what they’re actually saying rather than your unfair interpretation of it.
Firstly, that’s a big ass car and no one other than tradesperson or people who work closely with construction should be driving that. Secondly, that’s a big ass gap, at least 1m, dude purposefully went all the way out there to proof his point.
No offense but that’s a basic F150. It’s got one of the shortest beds of the lineup.
A vehicle with a longer bed or dual wheels, or even with a trailer (say a municipal vehicle for the sake of argument) might have trouble making that turn. It’s not necessarily that his personal truck can’t do it. Just because his truck can doesn’t mean all vehicles can.
It needs to be safe enough for all vehicles that might have to travel that road.
And if that is the smallest turning circle of that vehicle I don’t know what to say. These shit bags are just too lazy to turn the wheel and likely have no idea where the corners of their truck are.
As I said, feel free to disagree but at least disagree with their actual point - not your interpretation of it.
It’s unclear to me what your personal opinion on pickup trucks has to do with any of this. I’m talking about fairly representing people’s views. I don’t know what it is you seem to take issue with.
I’m disagreeing their point by saying that’s actually a non-issue, they just have to drive more carefully, especially when they’re driving something that large. And it seems like they can’t navigate it, which kinda proof the point that it is not an issue. Even if they need to go out a bit to the opposite lane, that is still non-issue. A full sized truck does that all the time, you just have to be careful with it.
The amount of idiots who drive trucks and have no clue how to drive them is a huge problem. They buy them and then never use them for the intended purpose and then cause those of us who do need them for work, to pay premiums because the manufacturers no longer care about making non premium models. Why would they when you got idiots like this guy buying the most expensive trim level, just to drive around in the city.
Exactly. People who actually need these to earn a living don’t really care about the bell and whistle it come with, they just need it to run reliably. Not to mention it’s an incredibly dangerous car seeing how huge it is compared to a sedan, the size of it literally makes people feels invincible and drive more recklessly.
The truck they showed who was goint into oncoming traffic was 2m away from the curb. These people can’t drive or should buy a smaller car that they can drive.
The traffic engineer explained it was a skill issue.
it’s not a valid point because you can clearly see in the video that you don’t actually need to go out into the oncoming lane, they showed a pickup making the turn unnecessarily wide
