"Sorry mate, I swerved to avoid the 3D pedestrian crossing"

[Cheesewheel]

The jury is out whether these $30 000 pedestrian crossings (set to be rolled out in Cairns) will make motorists more safety conscious or more unpredictable.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/innov ... 7a5353d33b

[Mububban]

If someone thinks they're about to hit a 4 inch high block of something solid, I'd say emergency braking and/or swerving is highly likely.

Also - $30,000 should buy a lot more white, black and grey paint than that?!?

[Philistine]

Do they have goldfish driving cars in Cairns? Surely, drivers will slow down the first time they encounter this crossing, then, once they have worked out it is an optical illusion, they won't bother slowing down again.

On a related note, my local council has developed a full blown fetish for erecting speed bumps in side streets, presumably to discourage hoons from speeding along them. Normal, careful motorists (who would have been driving safely in the first place) are slowing down as they negotiate the bumps, while the hoons blithely carry on their hooning.

[Shred11]

Surely, drivers will slow down the first time they encounter this crossing, then, once they have worked out it is an optical illusion, they won't bother slowing down again.

Yes. Our local council painted fake speed humps on a busy, narrow road, thinking it woukd slow people down. It had no effect whatsoever... apart from a few nose to tail collisions when tourists unexpectedly jammed the brakes on to slow for a non-existent speed hump.

[PA]

Once a week they will place real 3 dimensional speed humps over the painted ones and step back and watch the carnage. #suckedinlooser

[grimbo]

Do they have goldfish driving cars in Cairns? Surely, drivers will slow down the first time they encounter this crossing, then, once they have worked out it is an optical illusion, they won't bother slowing down again.

On a related note, my local council has developed a full blown fetish for erecting speed bumps in side streets, presumably to discourage hoons from speeding along them. Normal, careful motorists (who would have been driving safely in the first place) are slowing down as they negotiate the bumps, while the hoons blithely carry on their hooning.

I wish my council would do this. Every car taking a short cut through our street has to roar up it as fast as they can so they can slam the brakes on at the next stop sign. If they hoons are ignoring them, I assume the speed bumps are not bumpy enough?

[kb]

Do they have goldfish driving cars in Cairns? Surely, drivers will slow down the first time they encounter this crossing, then, once they have worked out it is an optical illusion, they won't bother slowing down again.

On a related note, my local council has developed a full blown fetish for erecting speed bumps in side streets, presumably to discourage hoons from speeding along them. Normal, careful motorists (who would have been driving safely in the first place) are slowing down as they negotiate the bumps, while the hoons blithely carry on their hooning.

I wish my council would do this. Every car taking a short cut through our street has to roar up it as fast as they can so they can slam the brakes on at the next stop sign. If they hoons are ignoring them, I assume the speed bumps are not bumpy enough?

The roaring just happens with much greater frequency. Plus some squealing taking off from the top of the bump

[fat and old]

Are the goons the same ones? Get yourself

1. Toy baby stroller, or a tip job
2. Large doll,

Place doll in stroller, wait for the noise. Push stroller into street. Hoon swerves into gutter, tree or fence, destroys car. End of problem. Tried and proven.

[Tequestra]

Happy Easter All!

If I could ask The Easter Bunny to grant one wish regarding speed-humps, I would wish that the crews who lay them across the road take a bit of care to build a proper ramp that rises gradually from the horizontal tarmac, so that a 26" wheel travelling at under 10km/h will roll gently up and over rather than colliding with the sharp incline before the bicycle has started its upward trajectory.

The damage that speed-humps do to rims and spokes of bikes without suspension, even at fast walking pace, is a bit like smacking the wheels with a 24oz hammer. The positive effect of encouraging road users to adjust their speed is reduced by the negative effect that sharp-edged speed-humps cause to the mechanics of the bicycle, just by rolling over them at anything over 5-6 km/h. It's almost bad enough to make me not believe in The Easter Bunny anymore, honestly.

[fat and old]

I would wish that the crews who lay them across the road take a bit of care to build a proper ramp

Errrr, they do. Your issue is with the design, not the construction. I’ve seen the City of Yarra have speed humps removed and relaid because they were 10mm high or low, or tha approach ramp was 10mm short. The average stone used in the asphalt mix is 10mm.

[Tequestra]

Errrr, they do.

Not where I come from they don't. Happy Easter Mr F&O.

Ten millimetres would be adequate, providing that the gradient was shallow enough that the tyre crossed that first 10mm vertical rise before its front edge hits the hump around half-way up, (guessing 50mm above road surface). Here in Perth, it is more like they just poured the bitumen out like icing on a cake, so there are high vertical edges (around 50mm on the road to The Beach), and then a gradient that is more of a barricade than a ramp for a 26" wheel. It's a bit like flying into little mountains in a plane. The mechanical thing does not have the intelligence to lift itself upwards before it strikes the mountain.

PS: Oh, back on topic, the idea of those 3-D crosswalk paintings is a bit too much of a tricky distraction in my books. It is not a wise move to surprise people with tricks when they are in control of heavy metal vehicles. As mentioned, the outcomes are less predictable when tricks are involved.

[BrisBoy]

Such a bad idea.

Let's train motorists to ignore their perception that there's a solid object in the road. What could go wrong.

So to the start of April, had to check the date on the first post. Shame really.

[Scott_C]

As an alternative to the 3D pedestrian crossing we now have 'smart' speed bumps:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/s ... ty/9642572

They seem to leave enough room to ride around them but they don't look friendly to ride over if they have been activated.

[AdelaidePeter]

As an alternative to the 3D pedestrian crossing we now have 'smart' speed bumps:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/s ... ty/9642572

They seem to leave enough room to ride around them but they don't look friendly to ride over if they have been activated.

They don't look friendly to ride a bike over even if they are not activated! Still, so long as they're signposted and able to be ridden around, I guess they'd be ok.

[Tequestra]

They don't look friendly to ride a bike over even if they are not activated! Still, so long as they're signposted and able to be ridden around, I guess they'd be ok.

Thank you Peter and Happy Friday. When I saw this I was going to start a thread on it because I did two years hard tme at Curtin uni and I've ridden a few bikes around there before, but there was a foot or more on the left, so the photo did not implicate bicycles, so I did not consider that anyone else here would see the relevance.

Thank you for your foresight.

You see, Mr Peter, I can see that this ultimately stupid idea defies the original concept of Newtonian physics, for pneumatic, rubber appendages. The imbecile who thought of such a dangerous and totalitarian kind of idea most likely gets a lift to school with his *mum in the mornings, and has never fixed a puncture in his godforsaken life!

* and she used to know an ABC 'journo' when she went to that phuking uni.

[Jmuzz]

"Crying wolf" on the roads is stupid.
It just desensitizes people to real hazards or causes swerving.

[mikesbytes]

Would $30k pay for a real speed hump for the pedestrian crossing?

[Jmuzz]

It's not a pretend hump though.
It is pretend undercarriage destroying concrete sleepers on the road, which could cause emergency braking and swerving rather than normal speedbump response.

If you want a cheap hump I can just dynabolt and polyurethane a length of 4x2 hardwood between the two gutters and paint it yellow.

[Mububban]

Would $30k pay for a real speed hump for the pedestrian crossing?

I dunno but it could buy 1200L of exterior paint from Bunnings....

[Jmuzz]

They claim it has to be fancy paint.
Sounds like BS though, $140 to paint my garage with good two pack non slip stuff which hasn't worn through at all.

[bychosis]

Would $30k pay for a real speed hump for the pedestrian crossing?

Should be well under $30k to install an asphalt hump there. One of the proper ramp up, flat crossing section and ramp down. If there are changes necessary for the kerb then it could get to $30k pretty quick.

[jakejhonson44]

Surely, drivers will slow down the first time they encounter this crossing, then, once they have worked out it is an optical illusion, they won't bother slowing down again.

Yes. Our local council painted fake speed humps on a busy, narrow road, thinking it woukd slow people down. It had no effect whatsoever... apart from a few nose to tail collisions when tourists unexpectedly jammed the brakes on to slow for a non-existent speed hump.

That's why I think that humps should've been implemented instead of this.

[Cyclophiliac]

I miss the old-style speed bumps, which were narrow and in a roughly hemispherical shape. Anyone who drove over those at more than about 5km/hr regretted it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the complaining motorists obviously won, and now speed bumps are pretty useless.

[trailgumby]

Would $30k pay for a real speed hump for the pedestrian crossing?

Should be well under $30k to install an asphalt hump there. One of the proper ramp up, flat crossing section and ramp down. If there are changes necessary for the kerb then it could get to $30k pretty quick.

'
Nope. This is a case where "Should be" and reality head in different directions. They're about $100k a pop by the time you add stormwater engineering, removal/excavation of existing roadway, and traffic management during construction, according to our local council's traffic department lead engineer. Pretty crazy when there's probably $20k-$25k of materials absolute max.

[Shred11]

I realise that this is an old thread back from the dead, but they tried painted in fake speed humps in Launceston at one stage.

Trevallyn Road is a notoriously steep, winding road that carries a lot of traffic and many drivers (plus some cyclists) traverse it at inappropriate speeds. Local residents periodically request speed humps, but installing them would create a nuisance from noise and big tailbacks of traffic at busy times of the day.

The Council painted “fake” speed humps - that didn’t look very convincing - on the road as a solution. Nothing changed. I guess some locals proceeded a little more cautiously the first time they drove over them and the tourists infuriated the locals even more by driving slower than they usually do. After a few months, the paint wore off and it looked pretty ordinary. The paint was never refreshed.