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Cake day: July 25th, 2024

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  • Honestly, in hindsight, the variability was the most fun part of Halloween. Every kid knows they could just as easily ask their parents for $10 and get a bag of candy bars, but it’s ultimately the variety of what I could be getting and the unpredictability that made me excited. Was there sometimes weird shit I didn’t like? Sure, but probably just as often, there was some weird shit I did like that other kids probably didn’t, so I think it evens out. There were definitely kids out there who were jazzed to get black licorice, or there were some parents that were jazzed to get a small treat on the side after a night of escorting their kid(s) around since their kid(s) didn’t want it.









  • For me personally, I think more cops isn’t the ideal solution. Instead, I think traffic calming measures should be introduced to make drivers feel less safe if they choose to speed.

    Better enforcement is 100% necessary, and I think speed cams can be a good way to prevent dangerous driving through the threat of enforcement. That said, I also think in terms of cost efficiency that direct preventative measures such as speed cushions, bollards, trees, medians, sidewalk extensions, lane narrowing, roundabouts, etc. will be more cost-effective to some point than and should be used in conjunction with speed cams.


  • people treat speeding like an oopsie daisy

    And often even this is too generous. Most drivers I’ve seen in the US treat speeding like a calculated risk that they feel out over time. They will with an unambiguous understanding of what the speed limit is choose to not just exceed it, but to actively target a speed that’s (usually 5 mph or 8 kph) over it.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldThere you go little guy
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    1 month ago

    Oh yeah, just to be clear, I’m a massive fan of urbanist channels like NJB and absolutely stan the shit out of traffic calming measures. Give me more trees on the sides of the road to make it feel narrower. Give me speed humps. Give me medians. Give me sidewalk extensions. Give me roundabouts. Inject that shit into my veins. I see speed cameras as just one tool in an arsenal to create safer driving conditions, and mercifully, it seems like the US is starting to warm up to those.

    I’m pretty sure we’re 100% on the same page here as far as traffic calming measures go, and I think we’d both agree too that if there are fines, they need to be adjusted to account for income. (Here’s an upvote by the way to counteract that downvote; this is one of like two reasonable takes I’ve seen in this thread against speed cameras.)


  • It should feel like a “gotcha” moment, though, or it only properly enforces speeds near the speed camera. If you can’t be certain that you’re not going to run into a speed camera but you have a general understanding that they’re around, you’re going to be much more likely not to speed in general versus just when you see the sign telling you to slow down. The reduction in speed from the sign is still better than nothing, but it lets drivers compartmentalize where there are “safe” zones to speed, and that partly defeats the purpose.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldThere you go little guy
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    1 month ago

    Nice of you to take that out of context.

    Thirty five studies met the inclusion criteria. Compared with controls, the relative reduction in average speed ranged from 1% to 15% and the reduction in proportion of vehicles speeding ranged from 14% to 65%. In the vicinity of camera sites, the pre/post reductions ranged from 8% to 49% for all crashes and 11% to 44% for fatal and serious injury crashes. Compared with controls, the relative improvement in pre/post injury crash proportions ranged from 8% to 50%.

    Authors’ conclusions: Despite the methodological limitations and the variability in degree of signal to noise effect, the consistency of reported reductions in speed and crash outcomes across all studies show that speed cameras are a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of road traffic injuries and deaths. However, whilst the the evidence base clearly demonstrates a positive direction in the effect, an overall magnitude of this effect is currently not deducible due to heterogeneity and lack of methodological rigour. More studies of a scientifically rigorous and homogenous nature are necessary, to provide the answer to the magnitude of effect.

    the consistency of reported reductions in speed and crash outcomes across all studies show that speed cameras are a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of road traffic injuries and deaths

    They know they’re objectively beneficial, and now they just want to firmly measure to what extent that is. They nonetheless express zero doubt that it’s positive based on the existing evidence.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldThere you go little guy
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    1 month ago

    If only speed cameras worked to lower the speed anyone travels at

    They do. They objectively do. How are there so many people all over this thread just confidently asserting complete, disprovable bullshit, and why is it getting upvoted? From the Cochrane systematic review:

    Thirty five studies met the inclusion criteria. Compared with controls, the relative reduction in average speed ranged from 1% to 15% and the reduction in proportion of vehicles speeding ranged from 14% to 65%. In the vicinity of camera sites, the pre/post reductions ranged from 8% to 49% for all crashes and 11% to 44% for fatal and serious injury crashes. Compared with controls, the relative improvement in pre/post injury crash proportions ranged from 8% to 50%.

    Authors’ conclusions: Despite the methodological limitations and the variability in degree of signal to noise effect, the consistency of reported reductions in speed and crash outcomes across all studies show that speed cameras are a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of road traffic injuries and deaths. However, whilst the the evidence base clearly demonstrates a positive direction in the effect, an overall magnitude of this effect is currently not deducible due to heterogeneity and lack of methodological rigour. More studies of a scientifically rigorous and homogenous nature are necessary, to provide the answer to the magnitude of effect.



  • American driver entitlement is the purest, most potent form of entitlement.

    I don’t know if you knew this, but with regard to US Interstates, there’s a common saying that goes “nine you’re fine, ten you’re mine.” It’s essentially saying “under 15 kph you’re fine, but over 15 you’re busted for speeding”. That is, if you want to exceed the already quite high speed limit, you should feel safe doing up to 9 additional mph over that. And they’re actually not wrong; many police literally don’t enforce traffic law up to that point, or they only do so if they really have a bee in their bonnet. In large part this is because nearly everybody driver’s doing it, which is one of the main reasons why cameras are useful: it doesn’t have to stop your car, ask if you know why it pulled you over, listen to you try talking your way out of a ticket, be subject to human biases such as ethnicity, gender, and personality in determining whether to let you go with just a warning or not, and generate enough paperwork to disincentivize the enforcement of traffic law as written.

    Except in a school zone, if you get pulled over doing within 5 mph (8 kph) of the speed limit, it’s seen by drivers as a huge power trip and something you should gaslight the court into believing you didn’t do, and from 5–10 mph, it’s basically seen as getting unlucky. The state of speeding in the US is so dire that even asserting that speed limits should be enforced as marked is something that will get you shouted down.



  • Boy, I can just feel the salt from a past speeding ticket coming from this comment.

    Maybe stop being a shitty driver who feels entitled to break traffic laws designed to keep people safe from entitled, careless idiots in their two-tonne metal box. 💀 You’re whining elsewhere in the thread about a 37 in a 35 (3.2 km/h over, which should actually be taken seriously by law enforcement but isn’t because of a culture of entitled drivers), so you’re not even complaining about accuracy so much as how much illegal driving you think you should be able to get away with. Speed limits are already across the board much higher than they should be to cater to cars; if you don’t feel like you’re competent enough to do something as trivial as stay exactly the speed limit when they’re already unfairly high in your favor, then it’s a limit for a reason: you can go a mph or two slower than it, and you won’t, like, die or anything.