The Federal Highway Administration quietly stripped bike lanes and other safety recommendations from a key list of best practices. Critics say those measures are proven to cut crashes and save lives.
Bike lanes, variable speed limits, speed safety cameras, appropriate speed limits for all road users, and road diets
Were all the things removed
our traffic fatalities by 100,000 inhabitants far exceeds that of many industrialized countries and puts the U.S. in the company of Chile and Costa Rica
Speed cameras do reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities, ~20% reduction in a lot of cases. If they also generate income from dangerous drivers is that a bad thing?
Speed cameras help reduce speed. It’s undeniable.
Some places will put speed cams in places with recently reduced speed limits (sometimes lower than the road should be) and would be used to generate income. Some highway speed traps are notorious for this.
Both things can be true.
The last time speed cameras went up in my area, there was an increase in accidents overall despite an unrelated reduction in traffic volume (this was during the gas price spike under Bush). They were taken down as soon as they found out all the money was going to the vendor and the local government was losing money on each ticket.
The same logic applies to cops enforcing the speed limit, some cities will put them in a speed trap to collect revenue, that doesn’t mean all cops enforcing speed limits are a scam for revenue or that we shouldn’t use them.
And that is the alternative to speed cameras, more expensive, more discriminating, more dangerous cops enforcing speed instead, because speed has to be enforced or people will die or get seriously injured if we don’t.
Yes. I didn’t say all X that enforce speed limits are scams. In fact, I said both things can be true.
I agree that speed cams are better than more cops.
That doesn’t change the fact that some jurisdictions will use them not to improve safety, but for income generation.
I wish they mentioned whether the sites included posted warnings of the presence of cameras, or real-time driver speed on digital signs. My gut says those cause a bigger and more consistent reduction than cameras themselves.
And if the signage is inconsistent it would be a big confounding factor
I’m sure it depends entirely upon implementation and placement. The cities I’ve been in that used them had only a few, and everyone knew where they were. The driving behavior just outside of the camera’s reach was made worse than it would be without them.
I wonder how the 20% compares to having LEOs that do actual traffic enforcement, where a human witnesses the violation and physically writes the ticket.
I’m actually glad they’re illegal where I’m at currently. It seems to have a chilling effect on the local surveillance state in general, plus we get to interact with our accuser and, if necessary, appeal much more easily than in places which contract out for autonomous enforcement.