I’m aware of the edges of my vehicle and don’t hit things, but if I saw a sign that said “Maximum Width X’ X”” I can’t say that I’d instantly know I’d fit.
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I took a look on google to see what was going on and it’s not a case of people going through a gap that’s too narrow for their car (as you can see by the truck going through here 
) but people mis-judging just how far the left wheel is from the right
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Some of these accidents look like the driver was doing maybe 10 mph. This installation violates virtually every tenet of roadway design. There’s no way to know that you’re lined up correctly until you’re scraping paint. There’s no crash attenuation in place to soften the impact if you fail to align yourself exactly. There’s a bollard literally right at the end of a curb cut (arguably the placement of the entire attenuator is dangerous because of that, regardless of the bollards themselves). It’s not making the road safer, and it’s certainly not doing anything to protect pedestrians when a driver fails to enter the Death Star Trench right beside them. Automated car wash tracks are more forgiving than this.
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The designers have not even thought that this might be the consequence, and have shown themselves to be singularly inexperienced and unqualified in this area of design, given that there are (as you say) plenty of better designs (as my two earlier examples above show).
He does fit the profile of a typical Dr Who fictional baddie PM.
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The protection is from commercial HGVs. Not domestic cars and light vans. It is domestic cars and light vans that are getting the repair bills. No HGVs were seen trying to get through. Their drivers already know they cannot use that route.
Note in that pic how there is zero narrowing of the road on the LHS - which is almost a design pre-requisite for width restrictions. Trouble is that this road is too narrow, to start with, to allow two lanes (one each way) AND a central bus lane.
Thus, the earlier suggestion of cameras to catch infringing vehicles may be a suitable alternative.
Also, someone needs to tell this guy to put a camera in his front bedroom (so the hedge does not obscure the scene), set up a website and ker-ching. If the bridge can do it, so can the width restrictors. 
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In the UK, of course, it’s a kerved kerb
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That was a rather a-cerb-ic comment! 
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Seems like they should put up some soft, flexible things at 10-12 foot intervals before the hard, unmovable things, and if people hit the soft things then they know that they’re not lined up properly for the bit that they’re about to run into.
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Hurray for the jobsworth.
This is the exact purpose of a narrowing road with the kerb sticking out into the road (like a notch in the road) before the actual bollards. This road can’t accommodate that so your idea is a good one for this precise location, but may not comply with UK road fixture regulations (I have no idea). But if they were soft and flexible I bet they would not last five minutes before being ripped out by offending motorists, offended motorists, or local piss-heads and ne’er-do-wells.
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Unlike in the US, where everyone drives cars the size of a small truck, and trucks the size of a semi, over here in the U.K., cars have always been relatively compact, but in recent years, car manufacturers have been gradually increasing the size of vehicles because of the safety features required by legislation, bigger crush zones, front and rear crumple zones, airbags in every conceivable part of the structure, etc, have made cars wider and taller, (leaving aside the popularity of SUV’s and crossovers), but static infrastructure hasn’t changed to take into account the size increase. Parking spaces are a case in point, the dimensions were set down around forty years ago! I’d be interested in seeing when that obstacle was actually built - it’s supposed to stop larger commercial vehicles apparently, but the layout of one side is clearly very badly designed; having the posts set right into the kerb is unforgiving, but the real issue is that there’s a dropped kerb for the driveway into the house just before the chicane, so whereas a regular height kerb would just guide the tyre into the chicane, the dropped kerb will, by its very nature, guide a tyre straight up and into the post! It’s inevitable that even misjudging the width by a centimetre would cause the tyre to ride up onto top and the car hit the post.
And victim-blaming drivers for not knowing the width of their vehicles is bullshit - many modern cars are very difficult to judge their width, I’ve driven hundreds of different cars over the last five years as it’s my job, and I have issues with some, including my new car!
I owned a Skoda Octavia for fifteen years, it was nineteen years old when I got rid of it, and I never had any issues judging the width. I now own a Ford EcoSport, a significantly shorter car, with a very short hood/bonnet, due to having a tiny 3-cylinder engine, compared to the 1.9 TDi in the Octavia.
Due to a thread on a biking forum about this exact structure, I thought I’d compare the two cars. The Octavia was about 1.8 meters wide, the EcoSport is over two metres, it’s actually 9.56 inches wider! My ‘little’ compact crossover would barely fit through that structure, which shows the issue lies with the actual construction of the chicane.
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THIS!
Well-observed. This is not merely utterly incompetent design, it is almost negligent. If I had damaged a car there, I’d be consulting lawyers.
I am convinced one of our fleet is wider behind the driver than in front. I often park parallel to the parking space lines on one side and see the other side of the car is at an angle to the white line on the other side of the space.
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You’re not directing this to the originator of the comment quoted. However, knowing the width and height of the vehicle is part of the driver’s responsibility. This is why, if someone gets into an accident for that reason, the insurance company will blame the driver.
In the car-passing-car scenario I mentioned, there are things on most vehicles in the US that make it easier to judge width. Those are the side view mirrors. The mirrors on two vehicles passing too close can hit each other. The mirrors can also hit infrastructure like poles, overpass supports, etc… In the absence of proximity alerts and warnings embedded in the roads, that’s one indication that the car is too far out of position and gives the driver a chance to correct it before more damage occurs.
In this restrictor scenario, it looks like they aren’t very tall. During the video a car went through without any problems, and the mirrors were well above the top of them. The type that I’ve seen in the US were much taller, and had padding around each one. So a close encounter with those might result in the mirrors being pushed in (or broken, depending on the type of mirrors involved and the vehicle speed).
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Neither of the well-designed examples I added earlier had bollards at mirror height. Far from it. The width limit the signs refer to is the width at road level. Mirrors are varied in their size and not a reliable width attentuation factor.
Ok. Off of the top of your head, what is the exact width of your vehicle in metric or imperial?
I’m just going to project my ignorance on the topic and speculate that the percentage of people who know the exact width of their car in metric or imperial are in the single or fractional digits.
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This could be solved if someone installed an 11 foot 8 bridge over the bollards.
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(and @PsiPhiGrrrl)
Interestingly, my car’s specs say it is 2119mm wide.
That is 83.425 inches = 6ft 11.425 inches.
Yet it goes through that 6ft 6ins width restriction in Kingston - which is restricted only at kerb level - just fine (but probably only just).
ETA - apologies - 2119 includes mirrors. It’s 1861mm/6ft 2ins without mirrors. At wheel level it seems to be about 3-4ins narrower.
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So, so long as you don’t paint your car in the future it should fit.
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There is no paint on my car at kerb level. Just rubber and aluminium. The point is that the width spec is probably somewhere around top of door level - and is wider than at the wheel level. And most (properly designed) restrictions, if they do have taller bollards than those cones in Kingston (see my earlier photos), have the bollards set an inch or two back from the edge of the kerb. If your tyre/wheel hits the projecting kerb in front of the bollard, you already know that the (slightly wider apart - but you don’t need to know that) bollards will likely hit your car’s bodywork. It’s a key design point - the kerb has already stopped you trying to go further. If your wheels do go through, the slightly wider apart bollards should allow you to pass unscathed - but the onus is still on you to know if your car’s body is very much wider than the width at wheel height.
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