Quote:
Originally Posted by DriverWanderer ...various agencies are using different measures to reduce speed (aka calm traffic) to reduce the number of fatalities. Some of the measures employed are: - Legislation: Passing of relevant laws to ensure that motorists and vehicles adhere to safety standards. Some ongoing examples are Speed limit rules in MVAB (Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill) and Speed governors on commercial vehicles.
- Engineering: (This is the highlight of this post) Using different techniques to reduce the speed of vehicles. 'Engineering' as a traffic calming measure will be mentioned below.
- Enforcement: Using the police force to ensure that vehicles travel only below the speed limit and fining errant vehicles.
- Emergency: Treatment of crash victims to ensure no loss of life.
- Education: Teaching the community and society on the rules of the road and how to be safe on roads.
This post is a humble request to the Team-BHP community to help identify the various engineering measures that are used throughout the country to identify the best practices along with the bad (ineffective and dangerous) practices. |
The first part of your post sounds perfectly logical. There are the 4 E's - education, engineering, enforcement, and emergency response, all of which are supported by rational legislation; standard steps to reduce road fatalities, I agree.
I would however, point out that your choice of the priority sequence among the 4 E's is not logical (but I'm presuming it was written without thinking it through). Indian legislators are unable to create sensible laws, of course, yet their priority is right on top... and education takes a back seat in any case.
Then, Team-BHPians are being asked to help identify various
engineering measures to identify best practices
to reduce speed! Without basic education and logical legislation, all we can think of is to reduce speed on our roads? Fine then, let's revert to the highways and roads of the 1980s and 1990s... dug up narrow roads, bitumen washed away, potholes that can swallow a 4-year-old who would be unable to climb out without help...
Without basic driving education (drivers, even commercial drivers, need not be able to read or write, far less comprehend traffic laws), without basic laws (e.g. India has no specific law that has a penalty clause for not driving in one's lane), and without at least some semblance of enforcement on high-speed corridors (e.g. no drink-driving checks on YEW/ALE/MPEW etc.), we want to create "engineering solutions" to reduce speed? Seriously? All over the First World, roads are designed to have specific speed limits based on pedestrian density, cross flow of traffic, width of road & number of lanes, and whether it is an access-controlled road (whether tolled or not). And here we are, in India, with a standard order of
"Go Slow" on our roads. How slow? 5 kmph? No wonder drivers are not prepared to follow rules!
The more engineering solutions we put up to force drivers to slow down below reasonable limits (these limits are well defined internationally), the more impatient drivers will be, the more crashes will increase, and the further we shall try to slow down our traffic flow, until walking would take us faster wherever we are going.
So start with sensible legislation and intensive driver education, follow it up with rational speed limits with strict (and bribe-free, preferably remote-controlled through cameras) enforcement, and we won't need to find ridiculous engineering solutions such as barriers and bumps in the middle of a high-speed corridor.
Edit: This is written even as I am driving over 100 km every day in Melbourne, Australia. Expressway limits within the city are 100 kmph, highways are 80 kmph - and that applies to ALL vehicles - cars, bikes, trucks, double-decker buses, even road trains. Very unlike India, where larger vehicles are expected to go slower than LMVs, and motorcycles are not supposed to exceed 50 kmph by law! When will we get sensible legislation (and legislators)?