(Photo: PBOT)
One line in a recent Beaverton Police Department press release caught my eye: “Between 07/01/2015 and 07/01/2016 over 94,000 drivers were traveling 11 mph or more, above the speed limit.”
I’m well aware that most people drive faster than they should. But 94,000? That’s a lot of speeders! (And don’t even get me started about the standard practice of only citing for 11 mph or over the posted speed.)
Thankfully there’s a silver lining. The release also announced that BPD would start issuing citations to some of those people this coming Tuesday, October 16th (warnings have been mailed since September 15th). The way they’ll manage this sudden influx of enforcement activity is by using photo radar cameras thanks to a law passed in 2017 that allows them to cite speeders using cameras that have until now only nabbed red light runners.
Portland will take advantage of the same law, but it will likely be at least several months before our cameras are ready. Here’s why:
The City of Portland has been in a leader in using automated enforcement. They started operating mobile photo radar vans in 1995 and put up their first red light camera in 1999. Portland received authority to install its first speed cameras in 2015 and as of February of this year they’ve installed eight of them. Two cameras are placed (one facing each direction) on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway (between Hillsdale Town Center and SW Shattuck Road), SE Division Street (between 148th and 162nd), SE 122nd Avenue (between Foster and Holgate), and NE Marine Drive (eastbound near NE 33rd Drive, westbound near NE 138th Ave). As per the law, Portland can only install speed cameras on high crash corridors.
In the 2017 legislative session, Oregon passed House Bill 2409 which allowed cities to use existing red light cameras to catch speeders as well.
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Beaverton’s 94,000 speeders were counted at just four intersections. Portland has red light cameras at 11 intersections. Will we follow Beaverton’s lead and start using them to cite speeders too?
Unfortunately not.
Eager to see more automated enforcement, I asked PBOT Communications Director John Brady if our red light cameras will take advantage of the 2017 law. Brady said it’s in their plans, but it won’t happen in the near term. “This is because the existing red light camera technology that we have is too old and can’t be adapted to also serve the speed safety function,” he shared via an email today. “We’re working on an RFP for a new contract for these cameras.” That new contract would allow PBOT to upgrade the cameras so they can serve both functions. Brady added that the RFP will be released “in the coming months.”
Hopefully the camera upgrades can be made by next year so they’re up-and-running by the time we see major road design changes as part of the Central City in Motion projects. Unlike the existing speed cameras which are all located far outside the urban core, several of our red light cameras (that will eventually cite speeders too) are in the urban core. The locations include: NE Grand Ave. and E. Burnside St.; NE Sandy Blvd. and NE Cesar Chavez Blvd.; NE Cesar Chavez Blvd. and NE Sandy Blvd.; W Burnside St. and 19th Ave.; NE Broadway St. and NE Grand Ave.; SE Foster Rd. and SE 96th Ave.; SE Stark St. and SE 102nd Ave.; SE Stark St. and SE 99th Ave.; SE Washington St. and SE 103rd Ave.; SE Grand Ave. and SE Madison St.; and SW 4th Ave. and SW Jefferson St.
These cameras work and they’re a potent weapon in PBOT’s arsenal in the war on speeding. The first three speed cameras PBOT installed resulted in an 85% decrease in “top-end speeding” (defined as 10 mph or more over the posted limit).
Stay tuned.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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The cameras might work, but sadly so do the illegally placed tinted license plate covers that need to be ticketed. Might as well go after the too dark and illegal tinted windows that obscure driver’s face (and the illegal cell phone use). I know traffic cops have a lot to do, but people who feel they can act with impunity will not usually act in a civil manner.
The easy solution to this is to have parking enforcement handle it. They will already ticket people for things like expired tags, so why not these? Would also make an easy way to keep the “we can’t possibly have traffic laws enforced because of bias” crowd happy.
Would be interesting to know for sure whether that’s 94K discrete cars, 94K discrete persons, or just 94K instances of speeding.
Whatever, it’s still 94000 times too often
Or it goes to show that people can safely speed.
right…..
40,000+ dead in the US last year. What is your definition of safe?
That 96K people did something and no one got hurt does not mean it was safe, but that 40K people got killed somewhere else does not mean it was dangerous, either.
imagine suddenly EVERYONE drove the speed limit. all the time.
what do you suppose would be the drop in auto deaths? would it drop to 0?
more directly, what would be impact on bicyclist/pedestrian v auto deaths?
would THAT drop to 0? would it be cut by 50%?
fixed it for you: “imagine suddenly EVERYONE drove BELOW the speed limit.”
“Below” the speed limit is a different conversation.
Question is simply how many lives do we save (esp vulnerable) if speed limits are suddenly 100% obeyed?
I’m wagering 35% of auto…but curious if anyone has real #s
Wagering <20% of vulnerables…but again just a guess
MY question is how many angels fit on the head of a pin?
What is an angel?
Is this some reference to dead pedestrians?
Imagine we stayed focus on the example in the article. Show me how those 94k speeding incidents contributed to more accidents for that location.
MOTRG, yea…that was my point…although was allowing to expand the exercise to the entirety of the city
Are deaths and accidents the only reasons to curb speeding? Nobody has been killed or harmed in front of my house, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with people speeding by it. The noise and terror caused by people speeding is a problem too.
Yes, exactly. Speeding has negative impacts beyond actual crashes, as you said.
Plus, I’m fine with someone getting a camera speeding ticket on one street, even if that speeding wasn’t creating any imminent danger, because it may make that person watch their speed more carefully on other streets subsequently.
Also, anyone who drives knows that you have to constantly change your own driving to accommodate others’ poor driving. People who speed, change lanes without signaling or looking, etc. are constantly being saved from crashes by others around them braking, yielding, or otherwise altering their own driving to prevent crashes. People who say their speeding isn’t creating any problems are likely oblivious to what others are having to do to accommodate their speeding.
If you are in a car about 15,000 miles a year, you will be involved in a crash with a fatality of a pedestrian, cyclist or vehicle occupant about once in every 5,700 years. Given our 3+ trillion miles of vehicle miles traveled, driving is incredibly safe compared to past decades. We do NOT have a crisis today – just too many cities using for-profit ticketing rackets vs safe drivers.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
National Motorists Association and James C. Walker support the killing of 40,000 plus Americans every year rather than slowing down and following the rules. Drivers are the number one killer of children.
A child runs out into a residential street posted at 25 MPH. A driver going 20 stops before hitting the child. A driver at 40 doesn’t even have a chance to break and kills the child. National Motorists Association and James C. Walker blame the child.
If they support speeds set for safety, our local roads posted at 40 would be posted at 25 MPH and 26 MPH would get you a ticket, not 36 MPH.
James C. Walker can rationalize the death of other people’s family members. How does he feel about the death of one of his own family members? A fair sacrifice in the name of freedom to drive fast?
“Drivers are the number 1 killer of children”?
What?
You’re not answering the question. You’re appealing to emotion.
According to https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html, leading causes of death:
Age Cause
<1 Conegenital Anomolies
1-4 Conegenital Anomolies
5-9 Malignant neoplasms (???)
10-14 Motor Vehicle deaths
15-24 Motor Vehicle deaths
25-34 Unintentional poisoning
35-44 Unintentional poisoning
It's perhaps not shocking that motor vehicle deaths are dominant in age groups where people (or older siblings) are both inexperienced drivers and inherent risk takers/thrill seekers. To me, this mostly speaks to the nature of being a young adult.
HK- i saw the same numbers and further found that nearly 45% of those MV deaths occurred with the victim not being restrained in the car…so was questioning the stretch between a function of youth(similar to what you say) and unsafe behaviors vs. “cars are the #1 killer of children” which seems extreme.
“If you are in a car about 15,000 miles a year, you will be involved in a crash with a fatality of a pedestrian, cyclist or vehicle occupant about once in every 5,700 years.”
15,000 miles per year times 5,700 years = 85,500,000 miles traveled per death. If that’s true, there must be a lot of really safe driving going on somewhere outside of Portland, and beyond where any of us know anyone. I personally have known several people who have died in car crashes. I don’t think I’m unusual in that regard.
Plus, how did the conversation move from “safety” to “deaths”? I’d guess the injuries per mile driven are far higher than deaths per mile.
Driving can be made safer with training, experience, and adherence to ‘safe practices’, but any activity where you can kill an entire family in a split second through a momentary lapse of attentiveness is a dangerous activity. Driving is so dangerous that we provide instruction to ordinary humans (and sometimes even special clothing!) so that they can mostly avoid being killed when they are in the proximity of people participating in this activity. It is so dangerous that we put steel bollards in our walkways to prevent nearby vehicles from smashing into our buildings and killing the people inside (and buildings are still crashed into 60x a day in the US). I can think of very few legal activities that are as dangerous as driving.
Smoking, drinking, and gunning come to mind.
Smoking, drinking and gunning by others aren’t nearly as likely to kill me as others driving into me. I can easily avoid almost all danger to me from any of those other activities without any change in normal habits. The exception is drinking done by someone driving.
Every day when I walk on the sidewalk on a busy street with my dog, I have to assume that if I drop the leash and he for some reason wanders into the street, he will be killed. Several times a year, I would have been killed or at least injured by people driving cars into me if I relied on them to drive minimally legally or safely.
In fact I’d be injured or killed several times per year even if I count only the times it would happen if I relied on drivers to see me when I was crossing with the light within a crosswalk in daylight.
Even for people who engage in “dangerous” activities, for the most part they’re more likely to die or be injured driving to and from them than from the activity itself.
I agree our current system of transport is dangerous. I was taking issue with the idea that it is something that is singularly dangerous or hazardous; it is not.
If exercise a reasonable standard of care (and by reasonable, I mean what most people would agree was reasonable), your risk of being killed by a driver while not driving is reasonably low (with some possible areas of exception).
Some places are safer to speed than others. Do you agree?
For who? The driver?
Whether it is generally safe to be above a posted limit depends entirely on whether the limit was set for safety, or not. Many are not.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
So… safe when it’s safe, not when it’s not? How’s the average driver supposed to tell the difference?
Mr Motorist,
Unless and until you trouble yourself to reply to q’s excellent responses to your comments here I’m not going to pay any more attention to your posts here.
Not just interesting, critical. This is a meaningless statistic without more context. How many vehicles passed these cameras over that time period? Is this 10% of vehicles? 1%? 90%? 0.001%? How many were repeat offenders? etc, etc, etc.
94,000 examples of a high-risk behavior that is associated with around half of serious injury crashes.
meaningless!
Illogical, Captain!
That speeding is a common factor in fatal crashes elsewhere does not mean it is high risk in this area. We simply do not have the data before us to know if this behavior is “dangerous”, which is itself a rather nebulous term.
are you arguing that blowing through a red light at 11 mph greater than the posted speed limit is not generally high risk?
I don’t think that’s what happened. This was speeding only, no?
From the first sentence of the story you are commenting on:
Where does it say anything about blowing through a red light?
also, the 94,000 speeding violations were not in one area but in four separate locations.
That changes nothing.
There are many studies showing that reducing vehicle speeds leads to safer roads. I’d take the precautionary approach and assume the same is true at these four intersections in Beaverton, Oregon. Are you arguing we need to prove this point for each and every road before taking measure to slow things down?
The comment I was responding to was arguing the idea that the fact that speed contributes to crashes in other contexts means that it does so in this one as well. That cannot be established without more data.
I don’t know what the posted speed limit on these roads is, or what the cycling and pedestrian environment is like. All of those would be factors I would consider when deciding whether to lower the speed limit. So, to answer your question, I would want at least some consideration of the particulars before making a decision, though I wouldn’t use the word “proof”.
All this arguing about speeding is so revealing.
You and others appear to be operating from the perspective that speeding is a right, only to be infringed upon if it can be shown to be dangerous.
I would question the premise. Not only is speeding not a right, the statistically measurable risk of death or maiming of someone is not the only scale against which to measure speeding’s social utility.
I see it as a system optimization problem, where multiple variables trade off against others. Safety is certainly an important factor, but there are others.
When limits are typically set 10 mph lower than the safest levels, driving about 10 mph above the improperly posted limits is NOT high risk behavior – it is the safest behavior.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
OK, please rationally establish that the speed limits in these areas are set 10 mph slower than the safest levels.
You virtually never find a speed camera on a street with a limit set at the safest 85th percentile speed level because it would lose money.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Only because we set our speed cameras to look for people going 11mph over the speed limit. Are you advocating lawlessness?
But currently, since only cars going more than 11 miles over the limit are being ticketed, and those cameras appear to be profitable enough that cities and companies want to add more, that means your argument makes no sense unless the 85th percentile speed is substantially more than 11 mph faster than what’s posted.
James Walker’s head just exploded.
OK, please rationally establish that setting limits at the 85th percentile is somehow (universally?) “safest.”
Guess I might agree for roads that serve only one mode, such as freeways. But non-freeways are not freeways.
Jay Dedd October 16, 2018 at 10:07 am
OK, please rationally establish that setting limits at the 85th percentile is somehow (universally?) “safest.”
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
And see the last Article here, a Powerpoint by the safety dept. of the Michigan State Police
https://www.motorists.org/issues/speed-limits/articles/
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
From your 85th percentile document “motorist on the nonlimited access rural and urban highways”
So we should only take this into account in those areas right? So pretty much nowhere in the city. Also the whole idea is basically just giving up on the notion of making our roads safer. What it really says to me is signs and enforcement aren’t enough we need to redesign our roads for people not cars.
Your second link is a great example of how your continued spread of misinformation works its way into our government. Gotta keep selling those big fast vehicles 100 deaths a day is just the cost of doing business.
A guy who likely spends 80% of his work week behind the wheel advocates higher freeway speeds. Yawn.
This has nothing to do with city streets.
Well, at least the piece at the second link _mentions_ other modes. (The first is from 1992 and appears to mention only throughput of cars.)
I guess I agree with you that redesigning streets is, of, course, best. But I disagree that the 85th percentile technique for setting speed limits is as valid on multi-modal and/or urban streets as on the freeway.
Maybe that will change in a few years when American drivers have more experience parsing multi-modal settings. Thanks for the responses.
You’re being dishonest here. You KNOW speed limits are not based on setting below the “safest level”. Most speed limits in the Portland metro are actually set based on how fast people already go (whether that is “safe” or not).
Speed limits are not set 10 MPH faster than the “safest speed”. In Oregon, posted speeds are typically set by road classification or how fast people drive, this has nothing to do with the safe speed. Safe speeds are often well below posted speed because of sight distance or conditions. Safe speeds are never higher than the legal maximum. The risk of killing someone always increases with speed, because decision stopping distance and kinetic energy increase.
If you think drivers are operating at safe speeds, try this experiment. Place a log in the street. If everyone is driving a safe and reasonable speed, no one will hit the log. Think this is absurd, look at the one-lane pinch points used extensively in Europe.
If the slowest 85% of the drivers feel safe and comfortable at speeds up to XX mph and you want lower actual speeds, then you must re-engineer the street so the slowest 85% of the drivers now feel safe and comfortable only at speeds up to XX minus YY mph. That works, it gets voluntary compliance, for-profit enforcement rackets become impossible, but you must accept the possible negatives as well of congestion and diversion.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
“The NMA opposes any measure or regulation that is deliberately designed to inconvenience and hinder the legitimate travel of responsible motorists.”
https://www.motorists.org/issues/traffic-calming/
I would oppose any measure or regulation that is deliberately designed to inconvenience and hinder the legitimate travel of responsible cyclists.
The NMA is opposed to all traffic calming.
https://www.motorists.org/issues/traffic-calming/build-opposition/
https://www.motorists.org/issues/traffic-calming/flyer/
‘We’re going to drive as fast as we feel is safe. If you want to stop us, change the street. If you try to change the street, we will fight it, and provide materials to help that fight.’
“I would oppose any measure or regulation that is deliberately designed to inconvenience and hinder the legitimate travel of responsible cyclists.”
As you should. Cyclists killed how many people last year?
Most people on this forum are well aware of the 85 percentile speed and that it that it is not a representation of speed. How safe people feel is not a measure of safe . How many drivers insist they were being safe even after they crash.
I once started an article on risk with “We all make risk based decisions every day. The problem is we an not very good at it. We tend to equate risk with fear”. Fear or feeling safe are primal, emotional responses to perceived dangers. Risk is the statistical probability times the consequences. Emotions and feeling are not found in this equation.
The statement: “The NMA opposes any measure or regulation that is deliberately designed to inconvenience and hinder the legitimate travel of responsible motorists” says nothing about opposing rules designed to improve safety, only those specifically intended to inconvenience drivers.
This statement may differ from NMA practice, but it is, on its face, a reasonable position to hold. It is, in fact, a position I have consistently argued for since I began posting here, and I fully support lowering speed limits, installing traffic calming, (much) higher gas taxes, and even speed cameras (contingent on resolving my civil liberties concerns).
There is no need to caricature the NMA — they offer plenty of legitimate attack vectors.
https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/traffic-calming-fact-sheet.pdf
“meaningless statistic”?
Hardly.
That figure suggests widespread speeding (here defined as more than 11mph above whatever was posted). If we extrapolate this figure to include everyone who was btw 1 and 10mph over we’re in territory that makes the ‘scofflaw cyclist’ trope seem absurd.
Crazy idea, but I drive a car occasionally and would actually welcome a speed limiter that could be manually or automatically engaged using GPS data. So, in town? Engage the 30mph limit. Hit a school zone? GPS automatically triggers a 20 mph limiter.
“But, what if there’s a life threatening situation and the only way out is for me to stomp on the gas (not the brake) Jason Statham style?”
1) There won’t be.
2) A little AI programming could easily handle that. Sudden and significant throttle push gives you up to 35% of limit for 10 seconds, plus a manual override.
Sell it as a feature that prevents you from getting speeding tickets and lowers your insurance premium. Million-dollar idea?
I drove a vehicle recently that had this, more or less. You could easily set a max speed, like a reverse cruise control. Give it gas and it would accelerate normally, then gently stop and hold the set speed. If you actually floored it it would go beyond the set speed, take your foot off and it would slow, but otherwise it would ignore any extra throttle input. It was a really really nice feature, especially in an overpowered modern car, and tying it to a nav database should be trivial.
Awesome. Production car or no?
Living in Germany ~15 years ago, I drove a Mercedes with this feature. It was a pretty high-end car (my boss’s), so I can’t say whether the feature is wide-spread there (anywhere), but can say it’s been around awhile.
“Million-dollar idea?”
i don’t think so.
presumably the ins cos would be willing to incentivize this thru lower premiums, but the drivers will self-select…best drivers opt in, worst drivers don’t. Ins Cos are left still likely exposed to the majority of their auto liabilities, but are reaping lower premiums…thats a no go.
forget about the % of drivers who don’t bother to carry insurance. think issue is like health care, we don’t solve anything by getting healthy people to pay less.
Bike Snob has a chart that is relevant to how we (as a society) perceive traffic violations:
“There’s a lot of finger-pointing and whatabout’ism in cyclist-driver discourse. “Those darn cyclists don’t obey traffic laws!” “Yeah? Well neither do drivers!” And so forth.”
“By way of facilitating future discourse and hastening the inevitable conclusion that cycling is more ethical than driving, here is a handy chart for converting the common cyclist violations (or perceived violations) into their motor vehicle equivalents…”
https://www.outsideonline.com/2348546/stop-comparing-cycling-and-driving-violations
That speed camera law should be repealed. Our political leaders are using “safety” as a guise for adding cameras all over town to enable more domestic spying. Congress already has the authority to spy on its own citizens; don’t think for a moment that they won’t use this technology against us. In this age where we are inching closer and closer to a police state, we should always consider the impacts of giving the government more power.
It’s OK, Patriot. You will be safe as long as you wear a tinfoil hat.
Sarcasm, right? Please please please let this be sarcasm.
Mr. Patriot, I am as much against the police state as the next guy, but from my view here on the ground it seems like our problem is not that of which you speak, but a gradual creep towards a lawless state of chaos. Many motorists have given up any semblance of following the rules of the road, and other dwellers in our fair city make a living by stealing bikes and dismantling them in open air chop-shops, only rarely molested by the authorities. I think we can tilt a little towards improving public safety and not end up with our own Portlandia version of the Stasi.
Set collector, arterial, highway and freeway speed limits at the safest 85th percentile speed levels to reduce crashes to a minimum and you will find enforcement neither necessary nor profitable. Realistic limits get voluntary compliance, artificially low ones don’t.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
The 85th percentile is only appropriate in the circumstance in which it was first adopted, limited access high speed roadways with center barrier/wide medians and roadside obstructions cleared.
As vehicles have become more insular of their occupants to the exterior world and feedback of actual road noise, surface roughness and the numerous interior distractions, not to mention the majority of motor vehicle operators’ predominant lack of experience regarding how fast things can go wrong while driving, the 85th percentile has become less of a true gauge of ‘appropriate’ speed and more of a popular vote.
Urban settings are inappropriate places to use the 85th percentile to determine the maximum speed a reasonable driver should operate their motor vehicle. The myriad of additional external distractions, conflicts and other users compels us to abandon this metric in favor of more rational, evidence-based design standards that consider all users of the rights of way, not just your favorite mode.
Presidents should be chosen by popular vote, not speed limits.
I have to disagree with your last point. I think presidents should be chosen by speed limits.
This is flatly false. 85th percentile methods go back 75+ years which I can show in the 1941 National Safety Council Report on Speed which says to post between the 80th and 90th percentiles for the best results. The 1992 Parker study for the FHWA, the largest ever done on raising & lowering limits, was on both urban & rural roads showing the safety of 85th limits.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
What on earth does the 85th percentile have to do with people on bikes using streets, or people walking across them or alongside them? Are you saying that the driving speed that is safest for people who use the streets but are not driving is best set by drivers, who will adjust their driving speed to what is safest for people walking or biking? And that people walking or driving should accept the speed that drivers have deemed safe for them? Are you claiming that the 85th percentile idea is based on a scientific fact that drivers will drive the speed that is safest for others as well as themselves?
These aren’t rhetorical questions–I’d like you to answer them.
You cited studies nearly 80 years old and nearly 30 years old. Those are some significant stretches of time. Among paikala’s points against 85th is because cars have become more insular … over time. (Not to mention the advent of added distractions such as smartphones.)
So, um, aren’t you kind of handing paikala a win here?
Your posts here are so full of wishy washy terms, and combined with your obvious propagandistic and fact free pitches makes this great fun to take pot shots at but is hardly something anyone here is going to take seriously.
Just saying.
It would be very simple to use the cameras to catch speeders without significantly increasing domestic surveillance: if there is no violation, discard the data.
I would favor a law that made it illegal for police departments to use this equipment for purposes other than immediate law enforcement, and also prohibited building databases of vehicle locations without some sort of individualized suspicion.
All of that could be done without impairing the the installation of speed and red light cameras.
Note to the paranoid: in the future this will all be irrelevant. Cars will be automated and will obey traffic laws, and there will be a complete database of where they all are and who is in them at all times. Focus on getting ahead of that problem (require a warrant, for example, to access Google’s vehicle database), and don’t waste your energy on this much more minor and temporary issue.
HK,
The current cameras only record the violators. They are only triggered if the loops detect red light violations, so could also be set to only trigger if a pre-set speeding amount is detected.
Technically, what I want is trivial. Enshrining the practice into law, which I think is necessary, is much more difficult.
Most of us already use cell phones that allow Big Brother to track our every movement, all of our cashless transactions, and even what we like or dislike. The fact that 94,000 drivers passed a set of cameras is proof that Big Brother really doesn’t give flying **** about us. Neither apparently does PBOT, as they continue to allow vulnerable pedestrians to be killed without fixing what they know needs fixing.
I’m not worried about Big Brother – they’re too lazy and inept to “control” us. I am however worried about hackers using the same technology to really screw up our society. But then, we are already there…
There are different “Big Brothers”. One is corporate, like Google, mostly interested in making money off of your data. The other is governmental, mostly interested in (at the moment, and in this country, at least) finding subversives and tracking (and arresting, and sometimes killing) terrorists and criminals. To not care about the government tracking is a vote of confidence that those tools will never be used for political control. It’s an optimistic outlook, an assertion we have learned from our history, and expresses more confidence in the good judgement and moral character of our political leaders, present and future, than I believe is warranted.
But hey, the world is a grim place; we need more optimists!
“…don’t think for a moment that they won’t use this technology against us.”
Well, they are speed cameras designed to catch people speeding and issue citations…
😉
Stick it to the man. Get a bike and a fake mustache.
“In this age where we are inching closer and closer to a police state…”
Well, here’s a comparison that may or may not be the best, but in this discussion where “safe speeding” has been used several times now as though it weren’t an oxymoron, let’s consider a so-called police state. If I live in some kind of totalitarian regime where I can be arrested on a whiff of suspicion of anything at any time, I might scrupulously curb my own freedoms, watch what I say, who I talk to, what I look at, where I go—all out of fear that I might get arrested at any moment for any reason. I could live for years and years—possibly my entire life—without ever being arrested for anything, but does that take away the fear and stress of constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering whether today will be the day? Now if I’m a party member in good standing, perhaps working in the government and buying into the system because it gives me certain advantages and privileges, I might have less fear—and even more freedom to break some of the little rules that the hoi polloi are more strictly bound to. If I am in a position of power or authority, the amount of fear I live with would probably be less, and the amount of freedom would be greater—I would better enjoy life within “The System”. Is this not the situation on the streets? I might ride or walk down the road being passed by drivers “safely” speeding a thousand times, but I will also live with that nagging fear that today might be the day that some motorist’s speeding will turn unsafe and significantly injure or kill me. I have to either curb my own freedom to travel along certain routes—routes that might be the most direct to my destination—or suffer greater fear of being killed by a “safe” speeder. When I drive, however, I enjoy vastly greater privileges to travel on any road, at virtually any speed I choose, I can roll stop signs and rights on red, drifting from lane to lane while the other “party members” look the other way. I can bully people and prevent them from crossing the street—even threaten them with my vehicle if I feel mean—and know I will not suffer in the slightest. But is that really how we want streets to operate? Maybe those who only ever travel inside of metal cocoons believe so, but there are others who believe there is a better way.
Marshall has a good idea. If it was all just automated (tickets & speed) things would sure be easier. Would love to see speed cameras on freeways too; seems like road warrior out there nowadays compared to 5-10 years ago.
Indeed. Even a quiet drive at 5:30am can now be quite scary.
Here’s a piece of (social) infrastructure that almost all of us can get behind. Yes, it’s been long delayed in arriving (and is to be delayed even longer in PDX and most of the state), but at least it’s finally being delivered in small doses. Yes, that 10 mph cushion is horrid, but like the joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea it’s a good start.
As automated speeding citations become a normal tool in the transportation tool box, I do hope the few cops doing traffic law enforcement will turn their attention to people using devices to confound it (license plate covers and illegally tinted windows). I recognize the risk to both the cop and the people in the car that is pulled over for the tinting, but unless we’re going to change to much more intrusive technologies to keep some minimal level of accountability for motorists or continue to hand our largest public space over to uncivilized behavior, something has to give here.
“As automated speeding citations become a normal tool in the transportation tool box”
Considering that state law prohibits automated (un-manned) speed camreas on ~95% of portland’s streets, they are hardly normal.
It should be mandatory to include speed cameras and red light cameras with any “safety” construction project, such as ODOT’s Powell Boulevard Safety Project currently under construction.
I have children attending Cleveland HS and see motorists blow the red light westbound on Powell Boulevard at 26th Avenue almost every day.
Or, hear me out, people learn to drive the speed limit, instead of under it. Then maybe you wouldnt have to pass people at 11mph over! Seriously, more people in Beaverton CRAWL than they do speed.
Drive at exactly the speed limit at all times? Even if you don’t account for the laws of physics (acceleration, deceleration), that’s pretty much impossible. And it would be in violation of Oregon’s basic speed law.
Also, I’m not sure why you are required to drive 11mph over the speed limit to pass someone who is going below the speed limit. That defies logic.
It’s a limit, not an average. If you’re trying to go exactly the limit then you’ll likely find yourself slightly over the limit when you crest a hill. I prefer to go a couple under the limit so I have room to keep from accidentally speeding due to physics.
It’s not a race. It’s not a competition at all.
If you plan accordingly then going slow isn’t stressful.
I’m in Beaverton, and that’s just not true. Unless of course, maybe you’re driving behind me in my neighborhood, then yes, you’re crawling.
I live in Beaverton. This is blatantly not true lol. If this was true, I imagine the speed cameras wouldn’t have so many instances on speeding on green too.
The statute seems to allow any red light camera to also be a speed camera, as long as 1) speeding tickets are only issued for at least 11 mph over and 2) simultaneous speed and red light tickets are not issued unless the speed violation is even more severe.
That’s not perfect but still we could do a lot with such cameras.
My question is, are there any legal limits of where the city can place red light cameras? Is there any reason why we couldn’t have them all over the place?
Yes, I agree from a traffic safety standpoint, the threshold for speeding should be much tighter to the posted limit [during ideal conditions], say 5MPH and higher a ticket and below that a warning. It is good to have this data for discussions that are sadly often more political than cut and dry enforcement. 94,000 speeding events are too many… though I would have thought it would be much more…
But I do have to raise a question: these 94,000 “speeding events” encountered at 4 locations over 365 days might break down to 64.4 speeders per day per roadway (which could occur over one minute of one hour…or if these 4 roadways had 94,000 vehicles per day (23,500 per road, which is not unusual for many suburban arterials), then all these speeding events could have occurred on one calendar day!
A better cut off per Vision Zero is 5 MPH and over…which is considered “aggressive driving in traffic safety circles….
The law permitting red light cameras to also be speed cameras was passed in June 2017. It is October 2018 and PBOT is still working on getting an RFP out.
Why will it have taken over 1.5 years to get an RFP out? Is speed enforcement not a priority for PBOT?
At this rate, might it take 4 years from the law’s passage until we see the first speed + red light cameras actually issuing tickets?
(Fixed speed cameras were permitted by law passed June 2015, and it took 2 years for the first SE Portland camera to issue a ticket and 3 years for a camera to start ticketing on Marine Dr. The speed + red light cameras seem to be rolling out even slower than the speed cameras.)
“Is speed enforcement not a priority for PBOT?”
Most PBOT emplyees drive for transportation and most of them speed when they do so.
I know. Mind blowing. A,most outrageous enough to empathize with those who think gov’t can’t get its act together….
No. Speeding is a safety concern. Speed enforcement is the purview of the Portland Police Bureau.
If speed enforcement is a priority in Portland, then the way it could/should work is:
– PPB and PBOT should agree on whether and where they’d want to have automated speed enforcement, independent of whether laws allow it
– The city’s Legislative Affairs folks would try to get Salem to change the laws to allow what PPB/PBOT want
– When this bill is proposed, the city’s Legislative Affairs folks support and track it as it progresses through the Legislature. This bill was introduced Jan 2017 and seems to have moved relatively smoothly through the various committees, the votes were fairly lopsided in favor, so it was a reasonable bet for passage and thus for city contingency planning
– PPB and PBOT have implementation plans including RFPs ready to go as soon as the bill is signed
– RFPs are issued within weeks, not years, of the bill signing
I would be interested to know how it actually works. Was the bill actively supported by the city’s lobbyist in Salem?
Beaverton is a poorly laid out city with unreasonable traffic speeds on every major road passing through it. They failed to widen roads and assess traffic before the predictable influx of building and population growth. Intersections lights need to be reprogrammed, streets widened, turn lanes added, and speed limits raised. It is easy to go 11 mph over the speed limit when you are on the only road to get anywhere with a ridiculous limit of 30 mph. I’m more concerned about the surveillance aspect. Still 94,000 times, but how many of these resulted in accidents? Probably not many otherwise the drivers would have been ticketed and BPD wouldn’t have to go back to send them warnings. So that’s actually good evidence that speed limits should be raised even by 5 mph.
30 MPH is too fast.
“Intersections lights need to be reprogrammed, streets widened, turn lanes added, and speed limits raised.”
Why?
Unreasonable traffic speeds?!
How do you determine this, Mr. Sucks?
I would agree about reprogramming some traffic signals. There are several that will not detect a waiting bicyclist, thereby inducing them to exercise their rights under Oregon’s recently-passed “dead red” law, and proceed on the red.
Beaverton is “poorly laid out” because we continue to prioritize cars over any and all other transportation modes. There is only one way to reduce traffic in the long-term, and that is to get cars off the roads. You do that by running effective public transportation; prioritizing pedestrian and non-motorized vehicles; and making the expense of driving come closer to matching the cost to society.
Attitudes like yours are the reasons for tens of thousands of American deaths annually. So, thanks for that.
Maybe they could pick up all the buildings and move them really close to your house
The risk of a pedestrian or cyclist dying if struck at 30 mph is in excess of 75% – OECD (from 2005 graph by Wramborg).
94,000 is a good number. If you do the math, that is only 32 cars per location, per day. That is a small fraction of what passes through these busy streets.
when a bike rolls a stop sign at 4 mph (with no humans around) it’s a crime against all that is good and decent in our society.
when 94,000 people blow through a red light at 11 mph over the speed limit (while threatening human beings ) it’s a “good number”.
My vote for comment of the month!
It looks like you’re trying to establish a contradiction. Beaker said the second thing; who said the first?
Or is it a strawman?
Gotta pay for the new Public Safety building some how.
You completely misunderstand where the money for the fines goes. The largest amount goes to the courts for their costs; another significant portion goes to pay the company that installs, owns and operates the cameras; another portion pays the salary of officers involved in reviewing the citations; some goes to designated safety programs required by state law. Little, if any, goes to new buildings.
Depends on the jurisdiction. Portland is not permitted to have it’s own courts, so much of the revenue after paying venders goes to the courts. Not sure Beaverton is the same set up.
The for-profit racket of speed cameras is terribly simple to understand. Post the speed limits at least 10 mph below the safest 85th percentile speed levels, put up the cameras, and count the loot that will roll in from mostly safe drivers being robbed for the crime of driving safely.
Speed cameras are illegal in many states and should be illegal in every state. They are always used as for-profit rackets, not safety programs.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Thank you for the propaganda. See you next year when this topic comes up again.
The NMA is opposed to VRU-friendly speed limits, speed cameras, speed traps, mandatory seat belt laws, tolls, congestion pricing, red light cameras, black boxes, road blocks, current DUI laws, and distracted driving laws. They have just one ad at the top of their website, for a law firm that specializes in handling tickets for excessive speeding.
You should note the things we support: Speed limits set for safety & not revenue; freedom from warrantless traffic stops per the 4th amendment; not having double-dip pricing of tolls plus fuel taxes; properly timed traffic lights to prevent profiteering with red light cameras; freedom from congestion pricing that is far too regressive on lower income service workers; and others.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Well, don’t let the facts get in the way.
* Speed limits set based on 85th percentile speeds provide no safety/environmental/noise benefits for people outside of the vehicle, and are akin to monkeys running the zoo. Feel free to drive at or below the speed limit though.
* Warrantless traffic stops? Okay, sure, those can go away. I’ve never in my life been subjected to one, but they sound scary.
* Feel free to explain how fuel taxes fully cover the EXTERNAL costs of gasoline and road construction. Show your math.
* Do you support timed lights that encourage drivers to drive at or below the posted speed limit? Feel free to explain how much profit we can expect to receive from the few red light cameras we have in operation. I’d like to use this to hire an additional traffic cop, since we have about 5 on patrol in all of Portland.
* There are ways to adjust congestion pricing to make it less regressive on lower income workers, and there are studies that indicate there are very few lower income workers who would be affected by congestion pricing. Do you share a similar concern for these lower income groups who breathe polluted air living near freeways, or do not drive and have to walk/bike on busy roads where many of the drivers are going well over the speed limit while playing with their phones, or who take the bus and are still stuck in traffic with SOVs, or who are missing out on social programs due to the large amount of federal & state dollars dumped into adding car-only lanes around the country? We are headed towards the start of a $500 million quarter-mile highway ‘adjustment’, and $500 million could do a lot of good for lower income workers. Please tell us why that money shouldn’t go towards affordable housing in the city that would make it easier for people to get to work, and would be better spent on adding a couple of longer highway merge lanes.
– Posted limits have almost no effect on actual travel speeds. You must re-engineer main collector & arterial streets if you want lower speeds, and be willing to accept the negatives.
– Federal fuel taxes have not been raised in 25 years and we advocate they should be.
– Traffic lights can be timed for XX mph, but then you must have signs for drivers to understand that timed speed if you want high compliance.
– Affordable housing is possible in any area willing to tax its residents to pay for it.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Posted limits have almost no effect on actual travel speeds. You must re-engineer main collector & arterial streets if you want lower speeds, and be willing to accept the negatives.
* But you don’t advocate for lower speed limits, do you? You only advocate for raising them, in as many places as YOU think are reasonable, you deny that speeding is a significant factor in crashes, and you fail to acknowledge the affects of speeding on people outside of motor vehicles. It’s a very myopic approach.
– Federal fuel taxes have not been raised in 25 years and we advocate they should be.
* About 30 cents a gallon in states where the fuel tax hasn’t been raised (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2016/11/28/this-motorist-group-wants-you-to-pay-more-in-fuels-tax-but-it-also-wants-to-chuck-traffic-cameras/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3efd6340e321). That’s not even in the ballpark of what’s appropriate, and is akin to Les Scwab advocating for a $15 studded tire tax, or whatever it was. Not enough to cover the bill, just enough to make people stop bringing it up for a while.
– Traffic lights can be timed for XX mph, but then you must have signs for drivers to understand that timed speed if you want high compliance.
* This sounds like an odd excuse to me. The NMA doesn’t advocate for compliance, unless by compliance you mean, “we’ll drive the speed we want, and the government must set speed limits to match how we drive.”
– Affordable housing is possible in any area willing to tax its residents to pay for it.
* Sure, we’ll get right on that, after we pay off the $500 million that ODOT wants to spend on 1/4 mile of roadway.
We advocate for 85th percentile limits that match the ACTUAL travel speeds to prevent the use of for-profit speed trap rackets. If a city wants lower actual speeds, re-engineer the streets to achieve them. What must stop is the deliberate mis-engineering of lights and limits to create for-profit enforcement rackets that target mostly safe drivers who endangered no one.
We advocate for reasonable user fees. The cheapest & fairest way is with fuel taxes.
Set 85th limits, time the lights for the limits, and put up signs saying that.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Do you really think that safe drivers endanger no one? I’d that’s true, we should make penalties automatic for all car fatalities. And I guess we can do away with the EPA too, cough cough.
How would you define “safe”?
“We advocate for”
* “Speed limits set for safety”
* “85th percentile limits”
You just countered your own argument. “85th percentile” and “safe” are opposites.
What’s an example of a “warrantless” traffic stop? A drunk driving roadblock?
Any roadblock where cars are stopped without any warrants and without any probable cause that any particular drivers have done anything wrong. It is equivalent to the despicable “papers please” methods used in dictatorships. I have lived and worked in Russia. We should NOT have those methods in America.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
This is already illegal in Oregon. But, as I said elsewhere, all of these issues are short-term problems. When automated cars arrive, there will be no further need for drunk driving roadblocks, but every trip you take will be recorded, which is far more intrusive. You should focus on getting ahead of that problem, requiring warrants for law enforcement access to car company databases, or prohibiting the retention of travel data altogether.
The for-profit racket of car lobbyists is terribly simple to understand. Post tired car-first propaganda at least 10 times per day, argue against anything that would reduce the hazards inflicted by motoring, and count the loot that will roll in from car companies robbing society of traveling safely.
Car lobbies should be illegal in every state. They are always used as for-profit rackets, not safety programs.
Gary B., Portlanders Against Death by Cars
Why should the 85th percentile garbage be allowed anyway? Deaths on the streets and roads hurts business, too.
Because setting speed limits so the slowest 85% of the drivers are legal tends to produce the fewest crashes and the greatest safety – as proven with research over 75+ years.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Again, with complete disregard for humans outside of a vehicle.
I see you’re avoiding answering my earlier questions about that. Show me something that proves that that strategy provides the greatest safety for people walking and biking.
Traffic engineers must deal with BOTH safety and the realities of efficiently moving vehicles. It is not possible to maximize safety for pedestrians and cyclists and efficiently move large numbers of vehicles that permit commerce to work properly.
JCW – This will be the last set of replies, we are repeating now.
“It is not possible to maximize safety for pedestrians and cyclists and efficiently move large numbers of vehicles that permit commerce to work properly.”
Another whopper.
large numbers of vehicles that permit commerce. hahaha
I thought your favorite 85th percentile shtick solved this.
What happened to that?
It does, but the risks are never zero for anyone.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
I think this is the meat of the situation, as it were.
I think we would both agree that there is a tradeoff between pedestrian safety and vehicle speed. Many people here value the first higher than the second; you seem to do the opposite. Why do you feel that moving people quickly is more important than reducing injuries/fatalities?
Engineers must consider commerce which requires moving large numbers of commuters, shoppers, tourists, visitors and commercial traffic into and out of cities efficiently. The risks are never zero. My town is about 115,000 population + 45,000 students. We have 70,000 people who enter and leave by car per day – and that has to be done efficiently.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
My sense is that you feel the current balance is the right one. I would like to move the needle a little more in the direction of safety. Perhaps less than many here, but more than you.
I think we can do that without overly damaging commerce.
Quite simply, the National Motorists Association does not include the safety of vulnerable road users in any of their materials. The closest I could find is this:
Does your youngster have skates, a skateboard or a bicycle? Speed bumps attract children into the street and into traffic. It’s fun to jump those bumps! The ambulance will be there — later!
If you are a person on foot, you are essentially irrelevant to this group, and are interfering with their ‘freedoms’.
That regrettably snide tone is reminiscent of Representative Reardon’s ill-considered video
https://bikeportland.org/2017/08/11/editorial-jeff-reardons-public-disservice-ad-campaign-does-more-harm-than-good-238333
or ODOT’s Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself pamphlet.
https://bikeportland.org/2013/06/17/odot-publishes-the-bicyclists-survival-guide-88529
Correct traffic safety engineering takes all users into account and collects statistics on all types of crashes. It is what we support.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
“This will be the last set of replies, we are repeating now.”
I only repeated my question because you kept avoiding answering me and the several other people with similar questions who you also were avoiding answering, and when you finally did, you agreed (without saying it directly) that the 85th percentile thing doesn’t work for safety of anyone not driving. So I understand why you’re not willing to say any more.
Traffic safety engineering takes account of all users and counts all the data. It does not say pedestrians and cyclists have zero risks.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
It’s interesting you use the wording, “moving vehicles”. Moving vehicles is irrelevant. The point of transportation is to move people and goods. (And even that isn’t any sort of ultimate goal.) Vehicles are just one of several means of moving people and goods.
If your focus is moving vehicles, then of course the 85th percentile stuff takes on significance far greater than it deserves, as you’ve made so evident.
If everyone wanted to and actually traveled by foot, cycle, subway, etc. — the situations would be entirely different. But that is not reality and I am interested only in reality.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
“If everyone wanted to…”
Preferences aren’t the only reason the variation on reality you’re not interested in might come to pass.
“It is not possible to maximize safety for pedestrians and cyclists and efficiently move large numbers of vehicles that permit commerce to work properly.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
OMG, you’re killing me over here. This has got to be one of the biggest lies I’ve ever heard coming from an official source. You really have no vision beyond the windshield.
That theory hasn’t worked well on TV Highway / SW Canyon Road in Oregon.
If there are issues, it almost certainly means there are engineering defects to fix.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
assuming the lowest 11mph over, the class c traffic violation can bring in from $80 to $500. Assumed fine is $160. $160 x 94,000 is $15million dollars. Cyclists should lobby that the funds from traffic cameras be used to improve road safety with at least 35% going to bike paths. Follow the money.
The revenue situation is much more complicated than that. The majority of cited don’t make it through the system and there are other expenses the city is responsible for – like nearly $4,000 per camera per month lease. PBOT says their program isn’t even paying for itself yet. And fwiw any money left over is already earmarked for traffic safety projects.
“Paying for itself” is not a measure we should be concerned with — making money plays directly into the hands of opponents. “Crashes prevented”, “lives saved”, etc. are what we should be talking about. I would argue that it is worth ongoing public investment to improve on those metrics.
It wouldn’t work out this way. These systems operate at a loss. Their value is in reducing crashes, not raking in money.
The city has to buy/install/maintain the cameras, the vendor takes a cut of the revenue, the city has to litigate, and the city has to convince the public of the system. All these are costly. It’s important to place the cameras at high-crash, high-speed locations because this is where they can have an impact that provides value to the greater good through fewer crashes. To others commenting about how these cameras should be everywhere, do some reading and do the math. That would be a huge waste of resources.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=administrative+cost+of+red+light+cameras
“That would be a huge waste of resources.”
Compared to what?
Are you tallying the full costs of these cameras only, or also the full avoided cost of having fewer deaths or maimings these cameras could be credited with? It seems too common here in the comments for folks to only tally the costs of doing something while scrupulously failing to tally the other side of the ledger: the costs of continuing with business as usual.
Is this idle curiosity or in response to ORS 810.434.3bA?
810.434. (1) Any city may, at its own cost, operate cameras designed to photograph drivers [and] (b) Once each biennium, conduct a process and outcome evaluation for the purposes of subsection
(4) of this section that includes:
(A) The effect of the use of cameras on traffic safety; […]
Jonathan, I would like to thank you for letting through all James C Walkers comments. I don’t agree with his point of view but find it eye opening and educational. It gives us a look behind the curtain at the dark forces we are up against in trying to save our cities, our selves and our planet.
Agreed, and thanks. There are (at least) two very different views and open debate is the way to discuss them. I think we have made our views pretty clear and I won’t respond much again because we have covered the issues pretty thoroughly.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Except it’s not really a debate if you just keep posing the same tired 85th percentile **insult deleted by moderator** over and over again. The same things you post on every other comment board that brings up this topic (for years). It’s also not a debate if you ignore the very good rebuttals to your comments and just continue to post the same thing over and over. What you’re doing is more akin to spreading misinformation in the hopes that uninformed voters and elected officials will be duped into maintaining the status quo for the companies that pay your salary. Big fast moving dangerous vehicles are just too profitable to worry about all those road deaths.
When rebuttals deny traffic safety engineering science, the only realistic reply is the science.
JCW – This will be the last evening of replies, the topics are now just repeating.
Oho. Science.
A favorite club with which to beat one’s opponents who may be better at actually crafting an argument. Evidence is important, but your interlocutors are also mustering evidence that you refuse to acknowledge.
I have studied these issues for 50+ years and talked to some of the best experts in the field.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
From all your replies, you’re misunderstanding the science. The 85th percentile stuff doesn’t consider safety of people outside vehicles.
What about the science that shows the faster a vehicle is going when it strikes someone crossing the street, the more serious their injuries?
There’s nothing wrong with science, but you need to consider all of it, not pick one small bit and exclude the rest.
Traffic safety engineering and researchers take all users into account. Life is not without risks and efficiently moving large numbers of vehicles into and out of cities is an absolute requirement of commerce.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
So this doesn’t actually come down to engineering and science so much as it comes down to _values guiding application_ of engineering and science.
To your credit, you are clear about your values: Commerce trumps all, and you perceive its requirements as absolute.
Are you Ferengi?
That’s my point, and it contradicts your earlier claims about the best safety being achieved through applying the 85th percentile approach. The 85th percentile approach does not take all users into account, especially in urban environments where there are many people walking and biking.
I totally agree, but I think there’s something missing the real point they’re making. Those advocating for the 85 percentile rule say that lowering speed limits will not change overall driver behavior (because many will continue to drive at their comfort speed), but will make the roads more dangerous because there will greater variation in speed and behavior on the road. If true, this may not help cyclists or pedestrians much, while endangering drivers.
The way to change behavior (and thereby increase safety) is enforcement and, ideally, engineering.
Ya. You didn’t say anything. The evidence you supplied above only supports very specific roads without considering other road users in it except in the conclusion where it doesn’t back that up with any data at all. It also just as easily suggests that since only redesigning the roads slows people down that we should do just that not give in. You’re just repeating yourself again. Which is all you do. You haven’t responded to any of the legitimate criticisms of your comments and just continue to repeat the same thing over and over. It’s obvious that you’re just trying to mislead people to believing your agenda. I just hope they realize what you’re doing and it creates a backlash. It’s obviously not working here.
Well nice seeing you. I’m sure you’re off to find another article to spread your misinformation. Maybe the guilt of being complicit in making our roads less safe and how that leads to actual real people dying will get to you and you’ll stop. Unfortunately that only seems to happen when folk of your type have a personal loss related to it. I hope that’s not the case and you have some empathy for all the unnecessary peopled killed and injured on our roads.
I am only interested in realities. Engineering is the only way to achieve particular speed ranges or limits on all types of roads. Any other approach is doomed to failure and I have no interest in failure of the methods.
JCW – signing off tonight, we are just repeating. Thanks for good exchanges.
Again your comment makes no sense in relation to mine. I respond to the engineering you sited above and you say I’m not talking about realities and engineering is the way.
From your engineering citation the 85th percentile rule was done on roads that don’t have libraries, schools, and pedestrians on it. Your engineering study says the only way to reduce speeds is to redesign the roads (yes please.) Your engineering study assumes pedestrians are safer around faster cars then pedestrians expecting cars to be going slower when they’re not (in the conclusion). There is no basis for that they just include it at the end cause they didn’t factor in vulnerable road users.
The fact is the highways in this study, you continue to bring up as the basis of road engineering, are seeing the most deaths. Even if the study makes sense from a car safety standard it doesn’t make sense from a people safety standard. 20 of the 30 road deaths this year in Oregon were by vulnerable road users. The road design you’re advocating for with 75 years of engineering is doing a great job keeping people in cars safe and no one else.
Tell that to several million people around the country driving 10 mph in tomorrow morning’s rush hour on freeways designed for vehicles going 55-70 mph. The engineering does not change during the day. Or is the fact that traffic speeds vary during the day not a “reality”?
If speed enforcement is a priority in Portland, then the way it could/should work is:
– PPB and PBOT should agree on whether and where they’d want to have automated speed enforcement, independent of whether laws allow it
– The city’s Legislative Affairs folks would try to get Salem to change the laws to allow what PPB/PBOT want
– When this bill is proposed, the city’s Legislative Affairs folks support and track it as it progresses through the Legislature. This bill was introduced Jan 2017 and seems to have moved relatively smoothly through the various committees, the votes were fairly lopsided in favor, so it was a reasonable bet for passage and thus for city contingency planning
– PPB and PBOT have implementation plans including RFPs ready to go as soon as the bill is signed
– RFPs are issued within weeks, not years, of the bill signing
I would be interested to know how it actually works. Was the bill actively supported by the city’s lobbyist in Salem?
In the UK we have fairly large red-edged circular signs with a number on them. The existence of speed cameras must be notified to drivers by equally large/larger signs saying “Warning Speed cameras”. The latter legal requirement was made a legal requirement when the laws introducing speed cameras was introduced.
Naturally, having called for these signs, the motoring lobby, including the AA and the RAC were happy because drivers would have sufficient warning and would not speed and would therefore not suffer speeding fines. Long pause for cynical laughter. The complaints about the cameras only being there for revenue raising purposes continue unabated. “War on Motorists!”….”Persecution of law abiding (sic) drivers!” headlines in (especially) right wing papers.
First rode motorbikes in 1960, passed car test in 1967. Strangely enough, in spite of being a persecuted law-abiding driver, I’ve never been fined for speeding. Odd, that.
Your parameters are showing.
There is nothing salutary about speeding anywhere any time. Your engine burns more fuel at higher rpms, wind resistance increases with speed at the fourth? power. Under a whole variety of circumstances your need to speed slows things down for others. I could go on.
I drive my dad’s car last weekend. It got better mileage at 40 than it did at 20. Don’t oversimplify.
Sounds like a design flaw. Is there some reason auto makers haven’t figured out how to make autos more efficient at lower speeds?
Not a design flaw, but rather a long standing effort by auto manufacturers to tweak their engines to perform well (or not terribly) for the test cycle on which the CAFE standards are based.
Also a consequence of how gasoline engines work.
Did you read what I wrote?
RPM and wind resistance are the two most important parameters. That doesn’t mean that the computer in your dad’s car can’t tell you that 40mph at 1,000 rpm in overdrive will use marginally less fuel than going 20mph at 2,000 rpm in second gear. I’m sure you could drive backwards at 10mph at 4,500 rpm and use even more fuel…
None of those are properly the kind of speeding Mr. Motorist (or MotRG) would have us enjoy.
I’m glad to see this forum being used to converse about this topic. Thank you for allowing both sides to be discussed here.
Both sides?
Hm.
I’m always for debate, especially lively debate among people who disagree, but your characterization suggests a binary symmetry that I don’t think is present here. And for debate to be meaningful, all sides (note that I didn’t say both) need to have an open mind, be willing to engage with those who disagree, discover where they may be in error, etc. Without some give and take, some commitment to facts, evidence, logic, it isn’t always clear to me what the point is.
My vote for nonsense comment of the year.
Removing cars altogether, never mind reducing their speed, is guaranteed to reduce the number and severity of crashes and improve safety.
#Car Head
And fortunately, such a solution would involve no tradeoffs or other societal costs. It’s pretty easy to optimize a system for one variable!
Agreed, and well designed pedestrian precincts are a very good idea.
JCW – This will be the last set of replies, we are repeating now.
“pedestrian precincts”
That doesn’t sound auspicious.
Coming from you, it would appear you are suggesting removing pedestrians from ‘your’ streets so you can keep speeding.
“the topics are now just repeating”
Now?
Oh i know exactly what a highway is and I disagree with the designation of roads with library’s on them being highways. Using data from a study done using sparsely populated roads with very little vulnerable road users on it for roads that may be designated a highway but are significantly different is a gross application of the science. You still haven’t addressed anyone’s points about vulnerable road users and how your 85th percentile doesn’t take them into account.
Ya and I agree speed limit signs and enforcement do very little and we should re-engineer our roads to make people drive slower so lets redesign the roads. But your group doesn’t want that either.
MICHIGAN VEHICLE CODE (EXCERPT)
Act 300 of 1949
257.20 “Highway or street” defined.
Sec. 20.
“Highway or street” means the entire width between the boundary lines of every way publicly maintained when any part thereof is open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel.
History: 1949, Act 300, Eff. Sept. 23, 1949
It is necessary to understand the terms and the 75+ years of traffic safety engineering research and data to be able to discuss or debate.
JCW – Thanks again for good exchanges. Signing off this thread.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
Wow. It’s like you don’t even get it (cause you’re not trying to). Quoting the Michigan Vehicle Code (not Oregon) and not acknowledging that even that statute (from 1949) ignores people not in cars, is meaningless. Please address people not in cars on the road. Please quote engineering science that factors in people on the road and speed. You’re just a lobbyist for the car companies because they make more money selling big cars that move fast. It’s obvious. Please care about the people dying on our roads.
Dear JCW,
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/27/ntsb-speed-kills-and-were-not-doing-enough-to-stop-it/
“cannot be used as a for-profit speed trap”
This is not how it works, as several folks have already explained to you upthread.
The fact that you saying this blows your cover.
What engineering changes do you support?