Roads, Highways & Infrastructure

[Mountain Man]

On the issue of road safety. I'm completely against the removal of speed radars. Imagine if transit riders got the province to remove fare inspectors because it's a "money maker". Imagine having a method to reduce speeding and all the cost of the enforcement is paid for the by the people committing the offence! I don't think it should go into CPS general revenues and probably should tie directly to roadway safety improvements (speed bumps, flashing beacon, bump outs, etc.), but removing them was a terrible mistake.

Calgary police investigate the death of NE toddler, residents say it could be speed - LiveWire Calgary

Calgary police are investigating the death of a two-year-old girl who was struck by a vehicle Monday night. At around 7 p.m. on Aug. 4, the girl was hit by a white truck in an alley near the 600 block of Taradale Drive NE. Calgary Police Services (CPS) said that the girl had life-threatening...

livewirecalgary.com

I'm 100% in favour of the removal of photo radar in speed traps. Active enforcement I like, but paying some CPS "officer" to sit in a ford explorer while scrolling his instagram while generating revenue is just lazy and does nothing to increase safety. CPS should not be allowed to check their phones while on duty, pay attention and do your fucking job!!

 

[CBBarnett]

I'm 100% in favour of the removal of photo radar in speed traps. Active enforcement I like, but paying some CPS "officer" to sit in a ford explorer while scrolling his instagram while generating revenue is just lazy and does nothing to increase safety.

I just don’t think there should be “traps”. Traps imply a trick or something sneaky to catch people.

There should be nothing sneaky about it. There should be photo radar so frequently the expectation is drilled in that you are likely to get a ticket if you speed. Enough risk of tickets in enough places no one can ever confidently speed recklessly.

That is after all, the point of deterrence-based enforcement. If the risk of penalty is so minor people aren’t deterred from dangerous behaviour, then it’s not worth doing.

 

[kora]

With modern technology we could govern cars remotely to only be able to drive the speed limit wherever they are. We could get 100% compliance and speeding would be a thing of the past!

Of course, such a move would be seen as wild overreach and would never survive the first dose of politics. It’s our human right to be able to speed and drive recklessly occasionally in a vehicle, of course.

As a thought exercise it’s interesting though. If you physically cannot drive faster than the speed limit, it would make every painfully aware how our streets are over-engineered everywhere.

Put another way, driving the speed limit makes you aware our streets are usually designed to drive faster than the speed limit.

I don't know. Trains, light rail, elevators, escalators, chair lifts, e-bikes (etc.) all have maximum enforced speed limits and no one ever talks of government over-reach. It's just common sense for safety. Let's bring on the technology to get 100% compliance.

 

[Mountain Man]

The benefit of controlling car speeds would be to eliminate the very slow drivers as well as the very fast. I was merging onto Stony last week behind a woman who was doing 70 and hitting the brakes as she was merging. This is how people die on freeways, and this woman probably thinks she's a "safe driver" since she goes slow.

I don't know. Trains, light rail, elevators, escalators, chair lifts, e-bikes (etc.) all have maximum enforced speed limits and no one ever talks of government over-reach. It's just common sense for safety. Let's bring on the technology to get 100% compliance.

If we are going to go this route, then cars need to be automated. If you are on a train, you have no control over the throttle, so it's a bit of a unique scenario.

 

[kora]

The benefit of controlling car speeds would be to eliminate the very slow drivers as well as the very fast. I was merging onto Stony last week behind a woman who was doing 70 and hitting the brakes as she was merging. This is how people die on freeways, and this woman probably thinks she's a "safe driver" since she goes slow.


If we are going to go this route, then cars need to be automated. If you are on a train, you have no control over the throttle, so it's a bit of a unique scenario.

You do have control over e-bikes and some scooters, yet their maximum speed is capped. Cars aren't really that unique. The only vehicles that should be able to "speed" are emergency services

 

[CBBarnett]

The benefit of controlling car speeds would be to eliminate the very slow drivers as well as the very fast. I was merging onto Stony last week behind a woman who was doing 70 and hitting the brakes as she was merging. This is how people die on freeways, and this woman probably thinks she's a "safe driver" since she goes slow.


If we are going to go this route, then cars need to be automated. If you are on a train, you have no control over the throttle, so it's a bit of a unique scenario.

I hear this rebuttal a lot that slow speed is also dangerous, I’m sure there’s situation-specific stuff available but …. come on, it’s hardly an equivalent risk to the public safety on the roads.

I would like to know the ratio between the number of people killed by vehicles going to fast / number of people killed by vehicles going too slow. If it’s lower than 10,000 to 1, I’d be shocked.

 

[zagox]

I just don’t think there should be “traps”. Traps imply a trick or something sneaky to catch people.

There should be nothing sneaky about it. There should be photo radar so frequently the expectation is drilled in that you are likely to get a ticket if you speed. Enough risk of tickets in enough places no one can ever confidently speed recklessly.

That is after all, the point of deterrence-based enforcement. If the risk of penalty is so minor people aren’t deterred from dangerous behaviour, then it’s not worth doing.

I consider the photo radar cars permanently parked at Memorial westbound just after the Mewata Bridge, or Airport Trail westbound just before the Deerfoot interchange to be "traps." In both cases, the roads are designed for much higher speeds than the posted limit. In the case of Airport Trail, CPS constantly parked a photo radar car on a downhill on a super-wide road where tourists leave the airport in rental cars and are adjusting to Calgary's roads and signage - not a population that is going to respond to deterrence-based enforcement by getting a ticket in the mail from their rental car company six weeks later.

These locations were obviously places where it was easy for CPS to rack up revenue in a road design environment that encouraged higher than posted speeds from a large proportion of drivers - 'tricks' to catch people. The response to those conditions should be narrower lanes and other design modifications to reduce the inclination to speed, or higher posted limits. Not to focus enforcement on those spots just because they collect higher fine revenue per camera hour.

I'd like to see pervasive deployment of automated photo radar, plus random mobile photo radar that is unpredictable. And a focus on road design changes to address areas where violations are common. Automated speed governors would also be great but it would take decades of sustained political will to make the transition in the whole vehicle fleet.

In reality we are going backwards in terms of enforcement. If local police had been less cynical in their use of photo radar across the province, maybe they could have incrementally increased camera deployment. But they reached too far into the cookie jar and got their hand slapped.

 

[Mountain Man]

I hear this rebuttal a lot that slow speed is also dangerous, I’m sure there’s situation-specific stuff available but …. come on, it’s hardly an equivalent risk to the public safety on the roads.

I would like to know the ratio between the number of people killed by vehicles going to fast / number of people killed by vehicles going too slow. If it’s lower than 10,000 to 1, I’d be shocked.

Are you serious? you don't think merging onto a freeway or highway going 30km/h slower than traffic is dangerous? should all the people driving on the highway have to slam on their brakes to accommodate someone going way slower than the rest of traffic? I'm not saying speeding is more or less dangerous, but going way slower than every other driver is clearly dangerous, especially on a road with a speed limit of 100km/h or more.

 

[zagox]

Are you serious? you don't think merging onto a freeway or highway going 30km/h slower than traffic is dangerous? should all the people driving on the highway have to slam on their brakes to accommodate someone going way slower than the rest of traffic? I'm not saying speeding is more or less dangerous, but going way slower than every other driver is clearly dangerous, especially on a road with a speed limit of 100km/h or more.

I’ve never once in my life read a news story about a serious accident caused by the slow speed of one of the drivers involved. Has it happened in the history of the world? Probably but it’s just not a material safety risk in anything close to the magnitude of too much speed

 

[JesseLikesCities]

Are you serious? you don't think merging onto a freeway or highway going 30km/h slower than traffic is dangerous? should all the people driving on the highway have to slam on their brakes to accommodate someone going way slower than the rest of traffic? I'm not saying speeding is more or less dangerous, but going way slower than every other driver is clearly dangerous, especially on a road with a speed limit of 100km/h or more.

Merging onto freeways below and sometimes much lower than the freeway speed limit has superseded my pet peeve of driving slow in the left lane. I just notice it so often these days, anecdotally I would say 80% of the time I'm behind someone merging onto one of our freeways we don't get to the speed limit by the time we merge. Crowchild to Stoney North bound can be tricky if your car doesn't have enough oomph with the grade there so that I can understand but more often than not it's some stunned driver lollygagging onto the freeway holding up multiple vehicles.

 

[lemongrab]

Are you serious? you don't think merging onto a freeway or highway going 30km/h slower than traffic is dangerous? should all the people driving on the highway have to slam on their brakes to accommodate someone going way slower than the rest of traffic? I'm not saying speeding is more or less dangerous, but going way slower than every other driver is clearly dangerous, especially on a road with a speed limit of 100km/h or more.

This just sounds like impatient and aggressive drivers struggling to deal with a somewhat unexpected (but usually totally obvious and predictable) event in front of them.

Anxious drivers struggle more because everyone is tailgating and blocking space to merge, instead of helping to create space. It's a shared responsibility in Alberta - there is as much obligation on drivers already on the roadway to 'make a gap' as there is a merger to 'find a gap'.

 

[FCC1982]

I agree the slow mergers are frustrating and dangerous - especially when they hit the breaks.
Another similar problem is drivers who slow right down (I’ve even seen breaking) just to change lanes on a high speed road.
Another pet peeve is when a car changes lanes to be in front of you (for no apparent reason) and immediately hits the breaks.

 

[CBBarnett]

Are you serious? you don't think merging onto a freeway or highway going 30km/h slower than traffic is dangerous? should all the people driving on the highway have to slam on their brakes to accommodate someone going way slower than the rest of traffic? I'm not saying speeding is more or less dangerous, but going way slower than every other driver is clearly dangerous, especially on a road with a speed limit of 100km/h or more.

No one said driving slow can’t be dangerous in certain situations, but do you seriously not think that vehicles going too fast is the more common and widespread safety issue on our roads than slow merging on highways?

I can’t recall the last time it was reported that a cause of death or injury in a collision was a slow vehicle - not to say it doesn’t happen, but slow vehicles are metaphorically a small tree in the giant forest of road deaths, injuries and destruction.

 

[Mountain Man]

Never said speed wasn't dangerous or a problem, not once.

There are a lot of articles that mention going 10mph slower than traffic flow make you 6x more likely to be in an accident, and that it's a higher rate than going 10mph over the limit. I'd like to see an actual study instead of a paraphrased article. If I had time this morning I would try to look into it more but I have to prepare for a meeting.

 

[trtcttc]

I agree there's too many people merging slowly, or completely oblivious they are going too slow in the left lane. And I'm sure accidents happen, but generally those accidents happen as the car going faster is braking, therefore the collision is not as deadly. It's like collisions in traffic, they happen, but it's usually minor and not life altering.