What the heck is wrong with people?!

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

So... say you're worried about speeding on your street.  You fear for the lives of the children playing in front of your house.  You and your neighbors make phone calls, complaints even put together a petition to the Town.

Your concerns get heard, and action starts to happen.  For the first step, you get an automatic traffic recorder (i.e. hoses across the road leading to a box on the curb) so that your problem can be quantified and an appropriate response selected.  Nothing else can happen until the data is collected and analyzed.

So, then... why would you cut the ATR's hoses?

TWICE?

Arrgh.   

[Aggie]

Walking in skates?

Did it look to be random, stupid vandalism, or is it related to the larger action?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

May be is something similar to what is happening to speed cameras in France?

[Darlica]

I don't think it's the same people that worries over the safety of their children that cut the cables. They might very well live in the neighbourhood but they didn't sign the petition.

Some people like to think that it is their god given right to drive like maniacs no matter if they are on the highway or in a housing area.

My experience is that men in the age 30-55 in expensive cars are the worst kind (expensive car= bells and whistles which in some odd way is supposed to make up for the drivers poor judgement ), closely followed by stressed mothers in posh SUVs who probably drive very careful in areas where their own kids play but have no problem putting the pedal to the metal once the kids is inside the car and they drive through other areas where other kids play. 


We had a portable speed bump put out on the road that leads to the area where my mum lives after the family living next to the road had got two cats killed by cars in three months and one of the kids almost got hit by a speeding car in the same period.
The speed bump was removed by someone almost every night and could in the morning be found in the ditch or in the nearby pasture... Finally the father in the house by the road got bored with putting the speed bump in place every morning so one evening he prepared an ambush, laying hidden on his own yard with a camera.

We are talking about a narrow, curvy, gravel road that goes in slopes about 3m from the house wall. There are also a lot of wildlife around including moose's and wild boars so there are plenty of reasons to go slow and watch out.  The maximum speed is set to 30 km/h on the road in general, 20 km/h is recommended speed where "warning kids at play" signs are posted.

The perpetrator was a man in his early 50's that recently bought a house in the area and in his defence stated that the speed bumps where bad for the suspensions on his BMW doing 60 km/h down the little slope.

Well  that is why you should drive slowly over them.

He stopped moving the speed bump after getting caught red-handed, in the winter after he did a magnificent off road tour totalling the BMW (probably speeding on the icy road, you need to be speeding to fly 5m out on a snowy field without leaving a trace until you land on the roof...) and then sold the house the coming spring.
 

[Aggie]

So..... instead of slowing down for the speed bump, he went to the trouble of stopping and moving it? 

Very logical thinker, this man. 



I must admit to getting a photo radar ticket in a playground zone a few years back.  Yes, it was posted, but somehow I wasn't actually aware it was a playground zone and assumed it was 50 km/h (could be because it's an empty field of grass where I've never ever seen children).

I was going 45 km/h. 

[Opsa]

Lambi,

Good for you for looking out for the wee ones. I am sure people would rather deal with a concerned neighbor than run over a child, no matter how selfish they are.

I have similar protective feelings about my street and have had several signs put up. The first one was a 25-mile-an-hour speed sign. I emailed my local Division of Motor vehicles and politley requested it, stating that we have old people, children and pets on our street and that if we see people speeding it would be very convenient to be able to point at a sign in order to make a point about safe speeds. They very nicely responded and I sent them a thank-you note.

Since we used to be a through-street but have since been blocked off at one end, I later requested a "No-thru Street" sign, saying that people had been driving through the neighbor's yards (sigh) to get around the baricade at the other end. I thanked them when it went up.

Finally, I requested a "Do Not Block Intersection" sign, because a business at the open end of our street allowed trucks to park ACROSS the that end, effectively blocking residents in or out of our own street. The truckers didn't care, even when we asked them to move.  I went out and took several photographs of trucks parked across our street that didn't even have the drivers in them to move them in an emergency and enclosed them in an email to the DMV, suggesting that ambulances or fire equipment might have a hard time getting through. It was easy to get three really good photos that clearly showed our street sign and an unattended vehicle blocking everyone's way. One even had a few cars sitting and waiting to go through.

The DMV wrote back and said that they'd put up a sign, but that it would be up to us as vigilant neighbors to call in any offenders. We had a couple of trucks try the same thing afterward, but one day I was trying to get my kid to school and there was a truck in the way again. The driver was just leaving the cab. I called to him- "Hey- the sign says not to block the road!" But he just shrugged and continued walking. I said "I hope you don't mind if I call the police!" and he said "Do what you gotta do." I didn't have a cell phone, so I was rather annoyed. I had to drive partway onto a sidewalk in order to get around the jerk, but luckily, I noticed a squad car sitting at the local library and I pulled up and told the officer about the trucker. The cop said that if the trucker was caught disobeying a traffic sign he could have his licence suspended and went to check it out. By the time I came back home there was no truck, no police car. BUT: IT NEVER HAPPENED AGAIN!

So the key may be to collect your own evidence, present it clearly and respectfully to the authorities, and back up whatever law you wish to enforce by helping the police get the people who are causing the problems.

I felt like a real busybody doing all this, and I felt bad thinking I could have messed up the trucker's livelihood, but he knew full well he was doing the wrong thing and chose to ignore it for his own convenience. If some granny on the street died because the ambulance couldn't go tyhrough, he would have had that on his conscience, as well.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Did it look to be random, stupid vandalism, or is it related to the larger action?

Dunno - I didn't see it personally.  I'm just going on our traffic counting guy's report.  Based on his description, it sounds deliberate, but I don't know the perpetrator's motivations.

I don't think it's the same people that worries over the safety of their children that cut the cables. They might very well live in the neighbourhood but they didn't sign the petition.

Could be, I suppose... it looked like everyone on the street signed the petition, but the road is used by non-residents (hence the petition).  It would take a fair bit of gall to do that in full view of a street full of angry residents, though.

We had a portable speed bump put out on the road that leads to the area where my mum lives after the family living next to the road had got two cats killed by cars in three months and one of the kids almost got hit by a speeding car in the same period.
The speed bump was removed by someone almost every night and could in the morning be found in the ditch or in the nearby pasture... Finally the father in the house by the road got bored with putting the speed bump in place every morning so one evening he prepared an ambush, laying hidden on his own yard with a camera.

We are talking about a narrow, curvy, gravel road that goes in slopes about 3m from the house wall. There are also a lot of wildlife around including moose's and wild boars so there are plenty of reasons to go slow and watch out.  The maximum speed is set to 30 km/h on the road in general, 20 km/h is recommended speed where "warning kids at play" signs are posted.

You had a speed bump on a gravel road?  Really?

In this area, speed bumps aren't used on roads or streets at all (we do have milder "speed humps", though), and speed humps are never used on gravel roads.  Common wisdom here is that gravel roads move and shift around so much that something like that would never stay in place.

Personally, I see things like speed humps/bumps/tables as measures of last resort after all other types of traffic calming have failed.  They (especially speed bumps) can interfere with things like emergency response, create a problem for snowplows, and if not designed properly can interfere with drainage of the road surface.

So the key may be to collect your own evidence, present it clearly and respectfully to the authorities, and back up whatever law you wish to enforce by helping the police get the people who are causing the problems.

That's the thing: in this case, I am the authorities... or represent them, anyway.  My firm's doing the study at the request of the Town.  We were the ones who hired the traffic counting people to put the ATR out there.

Your problem with the truckers sounds crazy - why would they even think that they could park blocking a road anyhow, sign or no?  Arrgh.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I felt like a real busybody doing all this, and I felt bad thinking I could have messed up the trucker's livelihood, but he knew full well he was doing the wrong thing and chose to ignore it for his own convenience.

Depends, Op. Truckers get three strikes their license gets taken--this, I think, includes tickets, but I'll have to ask. At the very least, he got slapped with a hefty fine, since trucker tickets are waaaaaay higher than a normal one.
_{I'm also inclined to think being slapped in the wallet is going to be more effective than other methods of punishment.}

[pieces o nine]

Good for you, Lambi.

It seems "common sense" is, once again, not all that common...

[Alpaca]

I'm fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood designed so that thru streets are big streets with no houses, and the streets with houses are in drivers' own neighborhoods, so people tend to be pretty reasonable.

Still, the traffic situation here is pretty unhealthy. I grant that the police have recently seemed to make an effort to be seen patrolling more, so it's now impossible to drive any distance without seeing at least one or two squad cars, but their main goals seem to be getting people to slow down. Other cops lie in wait on straight, empty sections of major roads and shoot their radar guns.

The problem with these tactics, though, is that they're going after the wrong sorts of behavior. Ticketing people for going six miles over the speed limit (below that an officer can only legally issue a warning) on an empty bit of straight road with no surroundings just builds resentment, although it's a great way for the police to get cash. And crawling all over town in squad cars is good for getting people to slow down, but it also makes people act like complete idiots, driving ten miles below the limit, not daring to pass the cop, and generally being an obstruction.

On the other hand, people still feel at liberty to run red lights, pass on the right, dodge and weave, and generally do stupid things - only their angrier because they're late.

[Darlica]

You had a speed bump on a gravel road?  Really?

In this area, speed bumps aren't used on roads or streets at all (we do have milder "speed humps", though), and speed humps are never used on gravel roads.  Common wisdom here is that gravel roads move and shift around so much that something like that would never stay in place.

Personally, I see things like speed humps/bumps/tables as measures of last resort after all other types of traffic calming have failed.  They (especially speed bumps) can interfere with things like emergency response, create a problem for snowplows, and if not designed properly can interfere with drainage of the road surface.

OK, there are speed humps too? My English still fails me now and then... 
I describe the thing instead; it's like a threshold made of sturdy industrial rubber about 6cm high with slanted edges, about 15cm a cross and wide enough to almost stretch from ditch to ditch(you can run a bike past it but not a motorcycle). It's also heavy as sin usually it takes two persona to put it in place, doing it single-handedly is an excellent way to acquire a hernia...

And oh yes, we still have it in the summers. In the winters when there is less traffic the hump(?) is removed (there are a lot of summerhouses in the area) so no snowplow problems. in case on heavy rain the family in the house by the road just fetch their tractor and lift the hump to the ditch and place it back when the rain has stopped.
This type hump is passed by the emergency authorities and other vital road users, which isn't the case with most home built contraptions.
This is on the country side (as the gravel road may indicate) and the road is a private road which means that everybody who has a real estate along the road holds a share in it, this also means that there are an owners board who has the deciding powers over pretty much everything that has to do  with the road: speed (below 50 km/h that is) humps/bumps, maintenance, snowplowing, etc.

The humps on this road was kind of the last resort, as I said pets had been killed, a kid got away by a very close shave, people walking on the side of the road had been forced to literally throw them self into the bushes beside it, information about this and pledges to lower the speed had been sent to everybody in the area but very little happened. 

People still drive like car thieves at that road but not right there by this house...

[Aggie]

OK, there are speed humps too? My English still fails me now and then... 
I describe the thing instead; it's like a threshold made of sturdy industrial rubber about 6cm high with slanted edges, about 15cm a cross and wide enough to almost stretch from ditch to ditch(you can run a bike past it but not a motorcycle). It's also heavy as sin usually it takes two persona to put it in place, doing it single-handedly is an excellent way to acquire a hernia...

That sounds like a speed bump....  I've seen similar ones here but they are generally bolted down.    Typically in Canada, a "speed bump" is fairly narrow (<30cm) with a rounded or slanted profile; they are usually only found in parking lots or areas where VERY slow speeds are desired, such as a laneway through a park. 

A "speed hump" is the same as a 'quickie' is usually longer (1 m or more), lower, and more gently sloped, so that cars going a reasonable speed would not notice a bump as they passed over.  They are fairly new from what I've seen (or maybe it's just because I moved to a big city) and found on main roadways where a significant slow area is present.  I wasn't really familiar with the term myself, so don't doubt your English.

[Alpaca]

We have these things called "speed tables" over here, where there's a short slope, then a stretch of flat, often with a crosswalk painted over it, then a short slope down.

Speed bumps come in many varieties here, too. The best are short little things that get neatly absorbed by the suspension of a car moving at the proper speed. But there are also monstrous ones that require slowing down to nearly a standstill and then edging over them at a crawl. Most recent are some plain sadistic ones that consist of two separate bumps on either side of the road. Even if you start from zero, it still feels like you're breaking something when you drive over them, so the proper technique (apparently - I don't think it's supposed to be this way) is to dodge and weave around them, which requires slowing down to an equally ridiculous speed. (Fine in a residential neighborhood - not so fine on a pretty crowded thru street with a speed limit of 30.)

[pieces o nine]

Some Denver parking lots had *extremely* aggressive speed bumps. The company my brother works for constructed a new building and one of their new speed bumps was so high that even his 4-door family sedan was close to getting high-centered while crawling -- cautiously -- over it.

Perhaps blocking the lane by trapping an entire car was the plan all along, as an effective means to slow down speeders!

[Griffin NoName]

OK, there are speed humps too? My English still fails me now and then... 

That sounds like a speed bump....  .................  I wasn't really familiar with the term myself, so don't doubt your English.

In the UK it's correct official name is a "sleeping policeman".

I guess they consider it bad form to call it a "sleeing policewoman".