A City Council is concerned about the safety of its neighbors. Cars pass too fast and pedestrians run the risk of being hit. Aware of the problem, they install radars to force drivers to slow down. Tens, hundreds or thousands of fines arrive in a few days.
They are universal stories. Because they explain stories and dynamics in Lleida or Albany, United States. What is certain is that speed in urban environments remains an issue.
13,000 fines in 10 days
In recent years we have seen how the interior of cities is opting to reduce traffic and the speed at which cars can travel.
The trend is crossing borders and the data reflects that there is a problem with speeding inside cities. Let us remember that, according to data from the DGT, at 30 km/h only f5% of pedestrians hit by cars die. The figure increases to 50% when the collision occurs at 50 km/h and 80 km/h, practically all pedestrians will die if they are hit.
With this data in hand, City Councils around the world have looked for ways to calm traffic as best they can. We have the Italian people who registered 128,000 traffic fines in just 10 days, since their 120 neighbors had problems getting around their own urban environment. Or the Asturian people who also managed 15,000 fines for speeding in two months.
The latest case in which a town records scandal figures thanks to its radars comes from the United States. Albanyin the state of New York (and its capital, in fact), has also joined this particular list in its attempt to protect the little ones on the way to school.
In its attempt to calm traffic in areas near schools, the City Council deployed three radars next to schools, where speed is limited to 20 mph (32 km/h). The result has been as discouraging as it is instructive. In 10 days, 13,000 sanctions have been registered.
Far from giving in to the drivers, the mayor of the city has recalled that the city will not only maintain these radars (they report in News10 that activate when exceeding the speed by 11 mph, almost 50 km/h) will also reduce the maximum speed on the vast majority of streets in the urban environment to 25 mph (40 km/h).
A problem for which all kinds of solutions are sought
In Spain, measures have been taken for years to reduce speed on city streets. Since 2021, a general reduction has been applied on all streets with one lane in each direction to a maximum of 30 km/h. And on those roads with two or more lanes, priority lanes for cyclists have been installed with the same maximum speed limit.
To this we must add the measures that have been taken related to tactical urban planning or the line of action that Pontevedra has established where no traffic accidents have been recorded in a decade. Measures that have their inspiration in the Dutch neighborhoods of the 60s with which the aim was to give a radical turn to the mobility of what, at that time, was a cochista hell.
Y aware of the danger which represent gigantic cars driving at very high speed through the interior of cities, some cities in the United States are taking all kinds of measures to try to calm traffic.
They have tried, for example, painting the floor of the intersections. The paint on the floor directly impacts our subconscious and helps us take our foot off the accelerator. According to data from Bloombergwhere the initiative has been launched they have managed to reduce traffic accidents by 50% and accidents with injuries by 37%.
The logic behind this decision is the same as that applied by the DGT to paint the famous red line on a secondary road or the circles on curves that Catalonia is implementing on its roads to try to reduce the number of motorist accidents. Similar measures are applied in Madrid at the entrance to schools and France has also tested these options with success.
But more bizarre measures have also been taken. In San Francisco, a police officer got tired of cars not respecting pedestrian crossings and driving much faster than they should. Solution: dress your agents as giant chickens.
The police department’s intention was to visualize the pedestrian and that there was a path for him. In just a few hours they discovered that the agents were reporting between 30 and 40 drivers who ignored the zebra crossings. Amy Hurwitz, responsible for the action, was clear: “if you can’t see someone inside a giant chicken costume“You have a problem.”
Photo | Tyler A. McNeil at Wikimedia Commons
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