Chalk, and a lack of concern for others, do not make a safe and effective speedbump

IME kids make terrible speedbumps, they’re too squishy, they don’t stay where you put them, and don’t get me started on all the noise the first time they get run over. :roll_eyes: :upside_down_face: :rofl:

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Two things to consider:

  1. Lifted pickup trucks and soft-suspension SUVs can ignore speed bumps with impunity. So the feature often fails to serve the function.
  2. Speed bumps inordinately penalize low vehicles and vehicles with stiff suspensions, which, ironically, are more maneuverable than the land yachts that ignore them.
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I thought I detected a hint of snark in the writing style. :wink:

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I thought all the snark was in the time-honoured term “gentlemen”.

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That was my thoughts, assuming this is done in a residential area.

Perhaps these local gentlemen are attempting to prevent the loss of a child. The next, more unfortunate step would be for them to blockade the road with rocks that effectively stop all traffic each way. And I have personally experienced such a blockade after a gentleman and his family of a different, similarly rural locale lost their daughter to a lorry. Or, maybe they could just ask the council to build some sidewalks?

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A speed table is evidently the next step up from a speed hump, and gets used to elevate large surfaces like entire crosswalks to reduce vehicle speeds in the immediate vicinity.

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The next phase…

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The term may act like a magnifying glass, focusing the snark, but there’s still an unlimited supply of snark available here either way. :wink:

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To be fair, markings with no bump seem safer than a bump with no markings.

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In Costa Rica they’re called muertos (corpses).

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Oh but faux outrage is all the rage on BB. When there’s nothing real to rage about one must go with the faux.

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Not anymore?

Or just “policemen lying”, but that’s redundant.

In the US police lying down would often be awake but eating a donut. And very hard to drive over.

(Edited to delete exactly wrong figure of speed, I mean speech.)

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Nah, this is classic @jlw. Siding with dangerous drivers, drunk drivers and the like. Ask him about his licence plate.

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Didn’t Boing Boing used the share the clever optical illusion illustration that looks like a child running in the street when seen from a specific distance?

I don’t see the problem here. The people in the neighborhood want drivers to not roar down the street. If a speed bump – real or fake – make a driver spin out, they are just as likely to spin out when they see a child in the street. It is a lesser of two evils in my humble opinion.

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“Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?” “How much?” said Arthur. “None at all,” said Mr. Prosser,”

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Same here (Thailand), and the locals have no compunction about just laying them down wherever suits them best - ie just after their driveway so it doesn’t inconvenience them, but does interrupt the through traffic. No paint or markings, and often just a dangerously sharp ridge of asphalt or cement.
If they at least followed through with some yellow paint, it would seem less diabolical.

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That sorta works, until the people who drive through there more than once realize that they don’t need to slow down for the fake speed hump.

Here’s a question: why do the traffic engineers put slots in some of the speed humps? I was riding my bike in a residential area one day and saw this young guy tearing down the road, heading straight towards a speed hump. He appeared to be doing over 40 mph in a 25 zone. I thought he was going to go airborne when he hit the hump, but he steered his car so that the wheels went right through the slots in the hump. Dude didn’t even slow down, at all.

I’ve seen other speed humps like that, too. I’m thinking that’s bad design.

A couple of reasons depending on the situation. Narrow slots can be to allow water to run off. Slightly wider gaps are for bicycles and mopeds. A gap at both sides, or a gap that lets you drive down the middle of a 2 lane road is to allow wide emergency vehicles to pass without slowing while normal vehicles should still have at least one side engage speed hump. Unfortunately with the size of modern trucks and SUVs this doesn’t really work for a large fraction of the vehicles out there.

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Okay, there are at least two confusing things about that video: First, he has an English accent and a right-hand-drive car, yet the speed limit is measured in mph, not km/h? Second, the regular speed limit on that narrow dirt road is 60 mph? That sounds really unsafe.