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| Re: How to Meaningfully Improve Traffic Safety (1241471) | |||
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Re: How to Meaningfully Improve Traffic Safety |
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Posted by BrooklynBus on Wed Nov 19 14:24:11 2014, in response to Re: How to Meaningfully Improve Traffic Safety, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Wed Nov 19 11:56:51 2014. I misread what you wrote. You did not state buses are not mass transit. That aside...There are many streets where drivers safely and do drive at 40 mph which is now 15 miles over the legal speed limit. There is one street that was nicknamed "the Boulevard of Death" and that was done by the media always looking for sensationalism. The newspapers quickly picked up on it to sell newspapers. The street was Queens Boulevard and it had legitimate problems. The main one was that there was inadequate time for the walk signal which did not permit you to cross the entire street on one signal. You had to pause midway and wait for he next one. Many people were too impatient to wait and tried unsuccessfully to out run cars. Then you had those crossing mid-block. Cars going safely at 40 mph were not able to stop in time because the pedestrians had no business being there in the first place. That is what led to the high number of injuries and fatalities. Speeding cars was not a major cause of the problems that existed. Of course a few idiots were doing 50 or over and those idiots will continue to drive at those speeds even at a 25 mph limit. DOT studied the street and undertook a number of changes to remedy the problem and this was all before Vision Zero. First they greatly increased the walk signal permitting someone who starts at the beginning of the walk cycle to completely cross the street at a leisurely pace before the signal turned red. That solved most of the problems. They also installed fencing along the medians where a high number of pedestrians were crossing forcing people to cross only at the corners. Of course there are still a few who will insist on crossing mid-block by jumping the fences. They added parking along the service roads to create more congestion and force cars to drive slower. Of course the merchants were all for that. Drivers opinions were not solicited. Finally they reduced the speed limit from 35 to 30 mph which didn't make the slightest difference since drivers are still safely driving at 40 mph. However, all the other measures together had a huge impact in increasing pedestrian safety. DOT therefore hailed the new speed limit as a success. Still not satisfied, people such as yourself insisted that the speed limit should have been lowered to 25 mph. DOT refused. Commissioner Trottenberg stated that DOT engineers have studied the boulevard and have concluded that 30 mph is the proper speed limit for the street. But the pressure primarily from Transportation Alternatives continued and word has it that the speed limit will again be lowered this time to what they are asking 25 mph. Yet some believe that only 20 mph should be the limit wherever a pedestrian needs to cross the street? When will this nonsense stop? At a speed limit of 10 mph or 0 mph? There are other factors that need to be considered other than pedestrian injuries and fatalities that have been totally ignored. Those are the factors i have been discussing in my articles. Now that Queens Blvd is no longer the most dangerous street in Queens, now Woodhaven Blvd is targeted with a fatality rate of four per year. There will always be a "most dangerous" street even at one fatality per year. We don't take a drug off the market because of a single fatality. Commercials even warn you that fatalities are possible (to avoid potential liability) when taking the drug. Well guess what? Fatalities are possible in most anything we do even taking a bath where people slip and fall and are killed. Should we stop taking baths? So like everything else it is a possibility too, though a very small possibility when crossing the street that you may be killed. Does that mean we shoudn't try to make streets safer? Of course not. But everything has to be put into perspective and this entire thing about pedestrian deaths has totally been blown out of proportion. What percentage of people safely cross the street each and every day without incident? Tens of millions. How many are killed each year 182? So what is your chance of safely crossing the street? 99.999999999%. A speed limit of 25 mph on the service roads of Queens Blvd may be appropriate because of parked cars and pedestrians and where there are no service roads, although I think it still should be 30 in those areas. 25 mph is not appropriate for the main roadway where pedestrians only cross at corners and parked cars are not an issue. The lanes are wide enough and with a four second amber light at intersections, a 40 mph speed limit is perfectly appropriate and safe. This will not cause drivers to drives faster than they are currently driving, but will cause them to pay more attention to speed limits which is what we want anyway. Those are the angles you are not seeing. |
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