Calgary Speed limits to be standard 30km/hr?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Acey

Wrong. 85th percentile speed is an actual thing that traffic engineers take into account, hence the alleged measures that will be taken to reduce the design speed of the road. People in Druh's camp have already said lowering limits alone potentially has a negligible impact until you fix the road.

But has the city earmarked the hundreds of million or billions of dollars it will cost to retrofit existing roads to reduce the design speeds?

This reminds me of the move to reduce the blood alcohol limit for impaired driving without ramping up check stops. It's a superficial gesture that will inconvenience the law-abiding and do little to curb dangerous driving.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Speaking as a developer - I'd love to see further changes in the residential (and especially collector) road standards for new neighbourhoods. Narrower carriageway is cheaper to build. Or at least I can put the spending into space that actually creates value for the community such as street trees instead of excessively wide pavement that encourages people to speed through the neighbourhood. There's a good reason why homes on collectors are less valuable than those on quieter and lower speed streets.

This actually makes a lot more sense than 'wont someone please think of the children.'

Of course pandering to developers isnt a great political strategy either, but at least it makes more sense.

But then why change the speed limits on the roads we already have that dont appear to be a problem?

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

But has the city earmarked the hundreds of million or billions of dollars it will cost to retrofit existing roads to reduce the design speeds?

This reminds me of the move to reduce the blood alcohol limit for impaired driving without ramping up check stops. It's a superficial gesture that will inconvenience the law-abiding and do little to curb dangerous driving.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3621113/i...rta-stats-can/

Over the last 10 years, the number of police-reported cases of impaired driving appears to be trending downward in Alberta. Province-wide, there were 12,191 incidents last year.


In Edmonton, there was a peak of 4,223 incidents in 2009. In 2016, there were 2,812 cases recorded.

Twenty cases of impaired driving causing death were recorded across Alberta in 2016, tying for the lowest number in a decade.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local...own-in-alberta

There were 15 per cent fewer alcohol-related fatalities last year than in 2013, according to the report, and overall that number has dropped 19 per cent since 2007, when Alberta’s first Traffic Safety Plan was introduced.

Would be nice just to see a number of drinking and driving accidents causing fatalities by year since 2012.

Of course, alcohol related fatalities was trending downwards due to education, vehicle changes over the last decade could have saved people that otherwise would have died, etc. but I think the onus should be on you to provide evidence that the changes did "little to curb dangerous driving" given the statistics do not support your argument.

[Bunk]

I’d say there is a problem in that 1/3 of collisions are in the local street and children are over represented in injuries. I’d also say that collectors still are a bigger problem - they are being examined as well.

The real, real solution is autonomous vehicles. Humans are horrendous operators of very dangerous devices. Ultimately, we need to be saved from ourselves - the current level of carnage on our streets day by day is a slow motion catastrophe. In the meantime though, we should try and reduce the frequency and severity of the consequence of inevitable human error. The debate should be how exactly is best (it’s going to be multiple strategies) not whether action is needed.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Of course, alcohol related fatalities was trending downwards due to education, vehicle changes over the last decade could have saved people that otherwise would have died, etc. but I think the onus should be on you to provide evidence that the changes did "little to curb dangerous driving" given the statistics do not support your argument.

You pretty much did that for him. Correlation does not equal causation, and you already mentioned the confounding factors (increased education, improvements in vehicle safety).

That said, I actually think reducing the allowed BAC level probably had some influence. If you know the ceiling is lower, you're probably more likely to play it safe with the drinks at dinner, even if check stop frequency isn't increased.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

But has the city earmarked the hundreds of million or billions of dollars it will cost to retrofit existing roads to reduce the design speeds?

This reminds me of the move to reduce the blood alcohol limit for impaired driving without ramping up check stops. It's a superficial gesture that will inconvenience the law-abiding and do little to curb dangerous driving.

So I'll give you an example based on my neighbourhood. 8th Avenue runs at the south side of the neighbourhood and is a pretty wide road. It also has a lengthy playground zone that runs right in the middle of it. The street is very wide and includes bike sharrows that drivers often ignore. I've had one friend hit by a car on his bike on 8th.

What would make sense is to add a protected bike lane along there. It's heavily used by cyclists and has a lot of children around. Someone tried to install a traffic calming roundabout at 8th Ave and Remington Road, but you have a collector and a residential road intersection and roundabouts don't work with incompatible road types like that, at least not for traffic calming.

But you can't put a bike lane there because due to the 50km/h speed limit, it's too narrow to accommodate a bike lane. If you lowered the speed limit to even 40km/h then it changes the street requirements and you can make a safer road for cars, bikes and pedestrians.

[Bunk]

On distracted driving, I fear the only effective solution would to have to be quite draconian. A combination of laws like not being able to have your device accessible to you while driving (having to store it away in a glove box or something), criminality if using it while in motion, non-criminal fines if using while not in motion, but not in a parking spot. Exceptions for mounting them for navigation purposes.

Can't see the political will for it, at least not yet, but it would save many, many lives and prevent a lot of life altering injuries. It has to be viewed as an impairment to driving like drinking and driving. The consequences are similar.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

You pretty much did that for him. Correlation does not equal causation, and you already mentioned the confounding factors (increased education, improvements in vehicle safety).

Obviously I'm aware that correlation does not equal causation, hence, suggesting other reasons that the statistics have seemingly gone down. But if a program is implemented with the design to reduce alcohol related fatalities, and alcohol related fatalities continue to go down, there should be an onus on the person arguing that the program was a "superficial gesture" to provide some actual evidence contrary to the statistics.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Royle9

I can almost guarantee in 2-3 years this reduction on the limit will fail to mitigate any impact on collision injuries and deaths if reported correctly. Over 80% of the accidents we see today involve distracted driving AND speeding, I'd sooner step onto the road at a crosswalk in front of a car doing 60 in a 50 paying attention vs a car doing 40 in a 40 and texting on their phone.

This is my main issue with this. Sure I'll concede that pedestrian collisions are a problem, but I don't believe this to be the correct plan of attack.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Bunk

The real, real solution is autonomous vehicles. Humans are horrendous operators of very dangerous devices. Ultimately, we need to be saved from ourselves - the current level of carnage on our streets day by day is a slow motion catastrophe. In the meantime though, we should try and reduce the frequency and severity of the consequence of inevitable human error. The debate should be how exactly is best (it’s going to be multiple strategies) not whether action is needed.

Computer controlled mechanical devices will never be perfect and have their own obvious vulnerabilities. Plus it opens up a whole new world of litigation it could actually happen that auto companies are sued out of existence.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by zamler

Computer controlled mechanical devices will never be perfect and have their own obvious vulnerabilities. Plus it opens up a whole new world of litigation it could actually happen that auto companies are sued out of existence.

Indeed. It would be hard to imagine they would be worse, however. The liability equation is an interesting puzzle, you're right.

But, to me it does seem an inevitability - a matter of when, not if.

[Bigtime]

There are some fascinating reads/listens out there about potential legal liability when it comes to autonomous vehicles. I think one was done with Radiolab and was very good.

[Bunk]

Just on the scale of the matter - 1.3 million are killed annually. That's the population of Calgary each year. A 9/11 every day. 8000 737 airliners crashing and killing all on board, annually.

20 million to 50 million are injured or disabled to various degrees.

We accept a certain amount of risk for mobility - we have to, but this level of carnage seems a moral failure on our part. Because it's so dispersed and incremental, it's not viewed the same way as a visceral event like a terrorist attack or a plane crash. Yet, its actual impact on society and people individually is orders of magnitude larger.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Bunk

On distracted driving, I fear the only effective solution would to have to be quite draconian. A combination of laws like not being able to have your device accessible to you while driving (having to store it away in a glove box or something), criminality if using it while in motion, non-criminal fines if using while not in motion, but not in a parking spot. Exceptions for mounting them for navigation purposes.

Can't see the political will for it, at least not yet, but it would save many, many lives and prevent a lot of life altering injuries. It has to be viewed as an impairment to driving like drinking and driving. The consequences are similar.

Distracted driving already kills more people than impaired driving, and we have pretty draconian laws around drinking and driving. The problem is we haven't developed the moral disgust around texting and driving that we eventually developed around drinking and driving. When it comes to attitudes towards distracted driving, we're basically where we were at in 1978 when it came to impaired driving.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Distracted driving already kills more people than impaired driving, and we have pretty draconian laws around drinking and driving. The problem is we haven't developed the moral disgust around texting and driving that we eventually developed around drinking and driving. When it comes to attitudes towards distracted driving, we're basically where we were at in 1978 when it came to impaired driving.

Indeed. MADD was one of the most effective movements ever in this regard. It really drove that moral disgust that led to legislative changes all over the place - with tangible results.

[Fuzz]

Could we create a new type of MADD for distracted driving? We could call it Mothers Against Distracted Driving, or MADD, for short.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Just on the scale of the matter - 1.3 million are killed annually. That's the population of Calgary each year. A 9/11 every day. 8000 737 airliners crashing and killing all on board, annually.

The overwhelming majority of that is outside of the developed world. If the rest of the world could afford Canadian standard vehicles, training, infrastructure and enforcement, the number of fatalities would be over 90% lower.

[gasman]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Just on the scale of the matter - 1.3 million are killed annually. That's the population of Calgary each year. A 9/11 every day. 8000 737 airliners crashing and killing all on board, annually.

20 million to 50 million are injured or disabled to various degrees.

We accept a certain amount of risk for mobility - we have to, but this level of carnage seems a moral failure on our part. Because it's so dispersed and incremental, it's not viewed the same way as a visceral event like a terrorist attack or a plane crash. Yet, its actual impact on society and people individually is orders of magnitude larger.

Originally Posted by Bunk

I’d say there is a problem in that 1/3 of collisions are in the local street and children are over represented in injuries. I’d also say that collectors still are a bigger problem - they are being examined as well....

Your posting in this thread has has some seriously cherry picked "facts".

For Canada that number of fatalities is 3129 for 2016 (which is 0.2% of the number you pointed out).

In Alberta ( I couldn't find stats for just Calgary) that number droped to 288, 92 of which happened in an Urban setting.

Of the 288 Province wide casualties, 36 were pedestrians (95 killed on calgary roads from 2005-2014, so 11/year) and, 2 of them were under 15 (4 under 19) - so how are kids over represented?

When it comes to just injuries, there were 1200 injuries, 271 were under 15.

Of all of the collision incidents, less than 30% occurred when the driver was driving properly, which I interpret as the issue isn't we need to change the rules, its that we need to enforce the rules we have.

I found one article that indicated Calgary's stats are 31 pedestrian casualties/100,000 populations compares to that of other major Canadian cities which are 52 pedestrian casualties/100,000 population.

You compare the total number of people killed in the entire world in a year to a single isolated tragic event. Your post is nothing but an attempt at an emotional response and bears no actual data that could be used to justify the speed limit change decision.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by gasman

Your posting in this thread has has some seriously cherry picked "facts".

You compare the total number of people killed in the entire world in a year to a single isolated tragic event. Your post is nothing but an attempt at an emotional response and bears no actual data that could be used to justify the speed limit change decision.

Man, have you seen the new C-Train or the typical motorcyclist in Calgary these days?

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by gasman

Your posting in this thread has has some seriously cherry picked "facts".

For Canada that number of fatalities is 3129 for 2016 (which is 0.2% of the number you pointed out).

In Alberta ( I couldn't find stats for just Calgary) that number droped to 288, 92 of which happened in an Urban setting.

Of the 288 Province wide casualties, 36 were pedestrians (95 killed on calgary roads from 2005-2014, so 11/year) and, 2 of them were under 15 (4 under 19) - so how are kids over represented?

When it comes to just injuries, there were 1200 injuries, 271 were under 15.

Of all of the collision incidents, less than 30% occurred when the driver was driving properly, which I interpret as the issue isn't we need to change the rules, its that we need to enforce the rules we have.

I found one article that indicated Calgary's stats are 31 pedestrian casualties/100,000 populations compares to that of other major Canadian cities which are 52 pedestrian casualties/100,000 population.

You compare the total number of people killed in the entire world in a year to a single isolated tragic event. Your post is nothing but an attempt at an emotional response and bears no actual data that could be used to justify the speed limit change decision.

You're misreading the sentiment in that post. It was more related to the global issue of what autonomous vehicles can eventually do to help solve a societal public safety problem (which is what I had talked about in the previous post). In the shorter term, there are other incremental things that can be done. It wasn't a specific endorsement of lower speed limits on Calgary residential streets.

It's absolutely true that the less developed the country the bigger problem it is. I would not dispute that fact. The upside for developing countries in the long term is obviously much higher. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

With respect to the specific assertion that "kids overrepresented" that was the stated fact by the city with respect to injury collisions (not fatalities specifically) in the context of residential streets only. That was in response to saying that this response doesn't solve a problem.

Maybe just ask for clarification, rather than attacking me as trying to be manipulative. I try (and I think I have a good track record) of having conversations on any number of issues in good faith.