Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[ijmorlan]

Of course you can’t and they refuse. By definition, it’s not illegal to drive under the speed limit, and it’s obviously insane to have a road designed to be unsafe at the posted limit (just as insane as having the normal road design be unsafe for non-drivers).

That being said, the fix would be to lower the limit in many cases, re-design the street for the new limit, and enforce the new limit, including with automated techniques.


I’m pretty sure the 60% bar is on reversing the same council’s decision. City government is allowed to change previous policies, just not keep flip-flopping during a single council term depending on who is away that day.

Well this simply isn't true.

Speed limits are upper limits, despite how they are treated. There are many cases where it is unsafe to travel at the posted limit. Obviously in bad weather, but also if your vehicle is less capable, for example, because you have an emergency tire.

You can argue that those are contextual issues that lower the safe speed, but even road design is often unable to be made safe at the legal speed limit. Bends in major roads are one example. The top local example being Weber St. Now you may point out that the bend has a "lower speed limit" but it doesn't, it has a yellow advisory sign recommending a lower speed, but it is not a legal requirement. As far as the law is concerned, you can travel at the speed limit given on the previous white regulatory sign and you cannot be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit.

But even leaving that aside, there are still roads which do not meet the design speed of 50km/h, and do not have a lower speed limit.

For example, here is an alley near Downtown Kitchener: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4571863,...312!8i6656

It is a legal public road in the city. It has no signed limit, which means the default limit of 50km/h applies here.

It is clear to everyone that driving down this road at 50km/h would be extremely unsafe.

You make some excellent points. In particular, you’re absolutely right that many public routes with no speed limit signs cannot support travel at the default speed limit. Nevertheless you say it yourself — “you cannot be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit” (referring to exceeding advisory limits on curves). I think that applies both to automatic speed enforcement and enforcement done by police. If you’re going to have automatic speed enforcement, there needs to be a sign forbidding the behaviour which triggers the enforcement mechanism.

I agree that Council should not have reversed their decision. They should at least try the lower limits for a while, rather than cancelling the program before it’s even implemented.