|
|
| Re: Signal priority in NYC (342561) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > BusChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: Signal priority in NYC |
|
|
Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Jun 4 23:24:22 2021, in response to Re: Signal priority in NYC, posted by Stephen Bauman on Fri Jun 4 15:25:43 2021. I never said there was a single strategy for achieving the goal. I said that better education was one of those strategies and you dismissed it out of hand with a handful of statistics that didn’t dispute what I said.As far as achieving the goal, it is an unachievable goal. It will never be close to zero until the speed is close to zero. That is the problem. For four years we have been consistently lowering speeds, and deaths have gone up not down, so why should we even believe that further lowering of the speed will help achieve that goal? My other point is that lowering the speed limits further is unrealistic and drivers will not abide by unrealistic speed limits and it actually makes drivers drive more recklessly increasing fatalities. When every speed limit is 10 or 20 miles below what the road is designed for, drivers tend to ignore all speed limits. I believe you should drive at a limit that is sensible for the conditions. If a road is designed for 70 mph and most everyone is going 70, although the speed limit may be 50, no one is doing anything that is dangerous. But someone doing 50 is the one posing the danger. Then when there is a realistic speed limit, drivers will automatically think they can safely exceed it, when they can’t, and then there is an accident. So it’s better to do what is safe. Yesterday, I got off the New Jersey Turnpike northbound at exit 2. There was a sharp curve and I could only do 25 mph safely. Then I noticed the speed limit was 45. I can’t see how someone even could have exited at 45 mph. Now someone used to seeing these unrealistic speed limits and seeing a 45 mph limit could easily think he could go 5 or 10 mph above that. That’s why I believe these unrealistically low speed limits make it more dangerous, not safer. I did not say statistics doesn’t have its place. Just that there are many other factors involved like human nature which is often overlooked, and statistics only tell a part of the story, not the entire story. That also holds true when studying bus patronage and bus routes. Relying only on statistics and never riding the bus to actually see what is happening, could lead you to erroneous conclusions because you might be overlooking something very important. Statistics is only one tool. We have to balance safety with the need to get places efficiently. We can’t say that we must try to approach zero deaths ignoring everything else in spite of the fact that you may believe that a 5 mph speed limit is the answer to achieving zero fatalities. |
|
(There are no responses to this message.)
|
|