1st-February-2008

You only need a layer of snow and ice to realise how useless speed bumps and stop signs and other "traffic calming"
measures really are. Probably through lack of funds, the cities install stop signs, but don't bother to salt or sand them.

So what's a poor motorist to do? Slide gently up to the sign and then wait 30 seconds while the wheels find traction again?
Noooo - everyone and I mean everyone disobeys stop signs when the roads are covered in ice and snow.

At the same time, the speed bumps have disappeared into the surrounding snow and they can come as quite a shock
to your suspension if you don't happen to know they're there.

Particularly since the warning sign is plastered with wind blown snow and therefore completely unintelligible

Every time I receive visitors from Europe, I get the same reaction from them:
"What's with all the stop signs you guys have, almost at every corner?"
And they're absolutely right. In the UK of-course there ARE no stop signs.
Everyone is trained to give way to the fellow coming from their right.
(It would be the left if we were to adopt such a system).

But, hell we can't even turn right on a red light in this part of the world, let alone suggest that we might have the
necessary maturity to actually give way to the left at an intersection.

The Brits also turn a lot of their traffic light to flashing red at 11 pm. Another bright idea,
How many of you have to sat alone at an intersection controlled by traffic lights, at midnight, without another car in sight?

But to get back to the stop sign issue for a minute If the tree huggers and econazis wanted to earn any respect from me and
many many other motorists, they would figure out that stop signs are one of the most polluting and energy wasting "ideas"
that has ever been invented.

In my part of the world, I swear the mayors' brother actually must manufacture the things, there are so many of them.

Let's see what stop signs do:

1) They wear out brakes and suspension.
2) They create extra engine load and clutch and transmission wear.
3) They pollute like crazy, because a car uses five times more fuel to accelerate to speed than to maintain a steady speed.
4) They pollute again, because of item 3.
5) They are a major nuisance to to home owners in the immediate area since noise becomes all embracing as cars first
     put on their brakes and then accelerate again.

I'm sure every long distance transport driver with a 16 speed gearbox, would be delighted if even half of the existing stop
signs were to be dismantled.

City "engineers" use stop signs to placate the usual militant citizens who want cars to go back to the days when every car
had to have a man with a red flag walking in front.

You can imagine the conversation:
"Yes, Mrs Smith, you say there's cars speeding on your street? Don't worry, we'll erect another stop sign.
That should put paid to the bastards"

And then there's the four way stop. Nothing I can imagine is more dangerous to motorists or creates more fender benders than
the four way stop sign. It's illogical and insane and yet every municipality in North America does it and every one of them is
guilty of rescindant thinking.

So the end result, particularly as gas prices rise, is that more and more otherwise law abiding citizens barrel through these stop
signs, almost without slowing down.

For Gods' sake, municipal "engineers" rethink this whole crazy concept (and take out the speed bumps while you're at it!!)

And while you're at it, note that, as we said, all these devices are very environmentally unfriendly.

They damage cars and give drivers a nasty jolt, but now speed bumps have now been found guilty of an even worse crime
— they are helping to destroy the planet.

The traffic-calming measures double the carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption by forcing drivers to brake and
accelerate repeatedly. A car that achieves 29 miles per gallon travelling at a steady 30 mph will deliver only 15 mpg
when going over humps or through stop signs.

In the UK, an independent engineer was engaged by the AA and he used a fuel flow meter to test the consumption of a small
and a medium-sized car at Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.

The results, calculated by averaging the performances of the two cars, also showed that reducing the speed limit from 30 mph
to 20 mph resulted in 10 per cent higher emissions. This is because car engines are designed to be most efficient at speeds
above 30 mph.

A motorist who observed the speed limit on one mile of 20 mph road during a daily journey would produce an extra ton
of CO2 in a year compared with driving at 30 mph on the same stretch.

In an unusual move for a motoring organisation, the AA called for the introduction of cameras that detect average
speeds to replace humps.

Edmund King, the AA’s president, said: “Humps are a crude, uncomfortable and noisy way of slowing people down
and this research has shown they are also environmentally damaging. We accept that traffic speed needs to be controlled
in residential areas where there is a problem with accidents and children are playing. We think motorists are more likely to
accept average speed cameras than humps.”

Previous research by the Transport Research Laboratory found that air pollution rose significantly on roads with humps.
Carbon monoxide emissions increased by 82 per cent and nitrogen oxide by 37 per cent.

The London Ambulance Service has claimed that the 30,000 humps on the capital's roads cause up to 500 deaths a
year because its crews suffer delays in reaching victims of cardiac arrest.

Humps tend to breed more humps and stop signs more of the same. If one street has humps and more stop signs
installed, the next street calls for humps and signs and eventually you find no clear roads for movement of emergency
service vehicles.

Transport for London has been helping to test average-speed cameras on residential roads. No tickets are being issued yet,
but the mere presence of the cameras has resulted in the proportion of drivers complying with the limit increasing by a third.

The new cameras are not linked but have synchronised clocks and each separately transmits information to a processing centre.
This allows several cameras to work together without the need to dig up the road between them to lay cables. In urban areas this
can halve the cost of installing the system.

Putting in 50 standard humps on three or four connecting residential streets costs about $300,000. A set of eight average-speed
cameras covering the same area would cost $500,000.