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| Re: A a Vision Zero Town Hall Meeting (292358) | |||
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Re: A a Vision Zero Town Hall Meeting |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Wed Apr 16 15:44:42 2014, in response to Re: A a Vision Zero Town Hall Meeting, posted by Stephen Bauman on Wed Apr 16 11:06:37 2014. So here we go again with the percentage of death vs speed argument. That seems to be all you have. You accuse me of having no compassion or guilt if I caused someone's death or injury. You don't know me and have no right to accuse. So let me ask you. Why are you willing to accept even a 5% chance of death with a 20 mph speed limit? Isn't it worth saving even one more life if we lowered the limit to 10 mph on every road?Dangerous is exactly what it sounds like-- likely to cause injury or damage. Is gong through a red light "dangerous"? Not always. That does not mean I am advocating drivers to ignore signals. If there is any type of traffic, it usually is dangerous and therefore only allowed for emergency vehicles or to get out of the way and go through a red light with looking carefully if that is the only way an emergency vehicle can pass. I'm not sure what you mean by modest braking rate. It is modest if you are not that close to the signal. I have had many instances where I am going at the speed limit and sometimes slower when I have had to use considerable force to stop and even then I am a few feet into the crosswalk and have to back up. If you decide to go through the amber on any wide street, there is not enough time to get to the other side within 3 seconds and you have to finish on the red. It takes at least six seconds to cross a street like Woodhaven Blvd and you are only given a three second amber. So what do you do if the signal turns amber just as you are passing the crosswalk? You can't stop on a dime and you can't get through to the other side while the light is still amber. So DOT allows like three or four seconds where both sides are red to allow cars to get across the intersection.. At most intersections there are now two seconds where both sides are red where there only used to be one second. That is dead time. I don't understand where your 11% comes from. We could take the one second off the green and make it amber. Does your 3 seconds of amber take into account someone going downhill and needing a greater distance to stop? Three seconds is adequate for 20 mph, but not for 30 mph. On streets with a 20 mph speed limit, are the ambers shortened to 2 seconds, or is it still 3 seconds? I bet it is still 3 seconds. There are also many intersections with less than three second ambers because no one ever checks them. There is a lot we can do to reduce accidents like having warning signs before merges and lanes that suddenly become left turn lanes and you have to make a sudden lane shift to get out. We also have lanes that disappear without warning. Poor and improperly placed signage, dark stretches of road, missing lane and directional markings. I could go on. But it is so much easier just to blame everything on speeding and blame the drivers even when speeding is not the cause, than for DOT to do a proper job to make the roads safe. |
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