The absurdity of the proposal is already in the title, and shows how motonormativity is spread all over the world.
Berlin has a very good public transit system, and a few 30 km/h zones cannot be that bad.
I would love to hear opinions from someone who lives there!
crossposted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/114732266280428499
That’s something I noticed in the last two weeks that I spent in the UK. You simply cannot reach the speed limit. If you actually drive through a normal UK city at the given speed limits, you’ll lose your dentures or your teeth, and/or your car.
I was sent by my GPS on a “road” that was about as wide as my car. Left and right it was greens, more than a mans height, and the “road” zig-zagged through nowhere. You had to drive at walking speed around the corners, as there was traffic in both directions. Official speed limit: 50mph / 80km/h
Oh yeah, a lot of our country roads are like that. Single lane, tall hedges both sides. Usually the limit is 60mph, but most people drive slower. I do 30 or 40mph and just be ready to brake for oncoming traffic.
Yeah, plenty of those about. Have fun getting past that caravan, only to find a tractor in front of it, or one of the locals in a Range Rover two inches from your back bumper who is annoyed that you’re not flying around a blind bend at the speed limit.
I like the 60mph roads with the nice dry stone walls alongside. A guy I work with hit one a few winters back. It bit into his bumper and spun him like a top. Those things were built to last.
Yep, experienced both on that trip. Except the oncoming vehicle was the garbage truck, and I had a taxi behind me.
And the stone wall street was terrifying. It had about a hands breadth of green growing on it that made it look more harmless.
There’s a reason it is like that in most of the world, and it is rather stupid. Speed limits are calculated, not mandated.
Transit authorities record the average speed of drivers in an unmarked stretch of road. Then the speed limit is that average plus some number chosen by local authorities, rounded up. Then the government go ahead and say, “if it is not measured, it is 50”. And you end up with ridiculous numbers all over the place.
That’s why people say that to limit speed you have to build for the speed desired. Ordering a speed limits lower than the one people do spontaneously, without changing road geometry, doesn’t reduce the overall speed of traffic. It just increases the number of infractions, a common police funding strategy.
The most successful speed limit projects include infrastructure budgets to change the roads.