Replace speed cameras with road diets and other geometric choices that restrict traffic speed without relying on drivers following rules (they don’t)
The Ottawa Protocol
90 kph
Speed camera
50 kph
Past speed camera
90 kph
While not ideal, this can still be useful. In Sweden, we employ speed cameras strategically around areas of higher risk, such as intersections with cars coming onto a larger road with an obscured view. Reducing the speed in that particular spot does probably save lives.
Still, adjusting the design speed is the preferable alternative, but that does not make speed cameras completely ineffective.
Nobody drives 90 in Ottawa. Especially not on the 417.
Oh they have speed cameras on the 417?
No, and they really don’t need them. Ottawans merge somewhere between 60 and 80, and drive more slowly in general. In most Ontario cities, driving at 100 in the left lane will get you run over. In Ottawa, you will be passing everyone.
We’re talking about speed cameras, that’s my point, why the hell would you assume I was talking about the 417.
Ever driven on walkley road?
Maybe take it down about 20 percent there, friend. You commented that Ottawa drivers speed up to 90 between speed cameras. I replied, a bit tongue in cheek, that Ottawa drivers don’t drive 90, not even on the 417, where they’re supposed to. Ottawa is the only city I have driven in where significant numbers of people drive at or below the speed limit, even when traffic would permit them to go faster, and that was the case even before the speed cameras. That generally forces everyone else to be honest enough, but I concur, Ottawans definitely hammer the brakes down even harder right before a speed camera. Or while merging on the 417.
Ok, didn’t realise I was responding to a mouth breather. Go back to reddit, clown.
Sorry I had assumed you were making a point, my bad
Yes, yes, ban all cars, cars bad, drivers bad, noxious exhaust bad, aggressive drivers bad, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. See y’all in December-March at -400C on your electric scooter that is totally non-polluting (what? is electricity totally non-polluting?) trying to navigate uncleared, dilapidated, pot-holed. roads to get anywhere.
Or better still, let’s spend billions beginning with car-friendly infrastructure destruction; neglect regular road, bridge, and tunnel maintenance; and create nodes of community: 15-min walking cities. (*walking times vary by mobility, weather, and your health).
Well, villages.
Well, enclaves.
Well, compounds.
Do car-haters ever think farther than the end of their noses? Do they know what cause and effect is? Do they understand that 15-min walking cities make NIMBY communities? New mental health facility? NIMBY. New correctional facility? NIMBY. New addictions treatment center? NIMBY. Who gets them? The Untermensch who cannot afford to resist their placement.
All in the name of regressing away from cars and making tribal enclaves of like-minded, equally righteous, and (perhaps, most importantly) fiscally advantaged homogeneity.
Hating on cars is the tissue paper veneer of classism and, by extension, racism.
You really want to fight climate change? Too late: you have missed that during your fixation on one aspect (exactly as the petro-industry wanted) of the fight. Now start looking at how you’re going to survive it’s effects. Cause while you were raging against cars, we have passed the PNR on climate devastation.
And if your scooter doesn’t have A/C, it’s pretty useless in the April-November +400C period as well. Because that’s what climate change is: extremes.
At no point did the article claim a desire to ban cars, we are just asking cars to go the posted limit. The idea that hating car dependancy is classist and racist is absurd. Providing free public transit can be one of the most effective ways to lift people up in society. Plenty of people would use their electric scooter in the winter. Tons of people have fun all winter in cold conditions riding snow mobiles, the same gear that works for them could keep a scooter rider warm. The bigger issue for scooter riders is our cities refuse to maintain safe infrastructure for them.
