My municipality just finished a study that is quite an eye opener for this part of the world.

The speed limit on side roads is 40 km/h. Which is a reasonable number considering the number of cyclists, joggers and kids playing street hockey are out there.

But the previous administration also slapped up as many stop signs as they could and then constructed speed bumps in between stops.

All completely unnecessary, apparently, because this latest survey shows an average speed of 44 km/h when stop signs and speed bumps are present and only 41 km/h when a driver has a steady run.

Why is this so?

Because, apart from the cap on backwards, bumpers scraping the ground, coffee can muffler teenagers, most drivers are reasonable and responsible people with children, or grand children of their own.

But frequent stop signs and speed bumps bring out the frustration and down goes the the right foot.
Most modern cars have plenty of horsepower, so getting back up to speed is no problem at all.

Give drivers a clean run and they will comply much more closely with the law.

Who knew? Well, the Brits did, they abolished stop signs years ago.

Every time I receive visitors from Europe, I get the same reaction from them:
"What's with all the stop signs you fellows have, almost at every corner?"
And they're absolutely right. In the UK of-course there ARE no stop signs.
Everyone is trained to give way to the fellow coming from their right.
(It would be the left if we were to adopt such a system).

But, hell we can't even turn right on a red light in this part of the world, let alone suggest that we might have the
necessary maturity to actually give way to the left at an intersection.

The Brits also turn a lot of their traffic lights to flashing red at 11 pm. Another bright idea,
How many of you have to sat alone at an intersection controlled by traffic lights, at midnight, without another car in sight?

But to get back to the stop sign issue for a minute If the tree huggers and econazis wanted to earn any respect from me and many many other motorists, they would figure out that stop signs are one of the most polluting and energy wasting "ideas" that has ever been invented.

Let's see what stop signs do:

1) They wear out brakes and suspension.
2) They create extra engine load and clutch and transmission wear.
3) They pollute like crazy, because a car uses five times more fuel to accelerate to speed than to maintain a steady speed.
4) They are a major nuisance to to home owners in the immediate area since noise becomes all embracing as cars first
put on their brakes and then accelerate again.

I'm sure every long distance transport driver with a 16 speed manual gearbox, would be delighted if even half of the existing stop signs were to be dismantled.

City "engineers" use stop signs to placate the usual militant citizens who want cars to go back to the days when every car
had to have a man with a red flag walking in front.

You can imagine the conversation:
You say there's cars speeding on your street? Don't worry, we'll erect another stop sign.
That should put paid to the bastards. In fact this has now proven to be untrue.

And then there's the four way stop. Nothing I can imagine is more dangerous to motorists or creates more fender benders than the four way stop sign. It's illogical and insane and yet every municipality in North America does it and every one of them is guilty of rescindant thinking.

So the end result, particularly as gas prices rise, is that more and more otherwise law abiding citizens barrel through these stop signs, almost without slowing down.

For Gods' sake, municipal "engineers" do what we've done and rethink this whole crazy concept (and take out the speed bumps) And while you're at it, note that, as we said, all these devices are very environmentally unfriendly. They damage cars and give drivers a nasty jolt, but now speed bumps have now been found guilty of an even worse crime — they are helping to destroy the planet.
The traffic-calming measures double the carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption by forcing drivers to brake and
accelerate repeatedly. A car that achieves 29 miles per gallon travelling at a steady 30 mph will deliver only 15 mpg
when going over bumps or through stop signs.

In the UK, an independent engineer was engaged by the AA and he used a fuel flow meter to test the consumption of a small and a medium-sized car at Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.

The results, calculated by averaging the performances of the two cars, also showed that reducing the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph resulted in 10 per cent higher emissions. This is because car engines are designed to be most efficient at speeds above 30 mph.

A motorist who observed the speed limit on one mile of 20 mph road during a daily journey would produce an extra ton
of CO2 in a year compared with driving at 30 mph on the same stretch.

In an unusual move for a motoring organisation, the AA called for the introduction of cameras that detect average
speeds to replace bumps.

Edmund King, the AA’s president, said: “bumps are a crude, uncomfortable and noisy way of slowing people down
and this research has shown they are also environmentally damaging. We accept that traffic speed needs to be controlled in residential areas where there is a problem with accidents and children are playing. We think motorists are more likely to accept average speed cameras than bumps.”


Previous research by the Transport Research Laboratory found that air pollution rose significantly on roads with bumps.
Carbon monoxide emissions increased by 82 per cent and nitrogen oxide by 37 per cent.
The London Ambulance Service has claimed that the 30,000 bumps on the capital's roads cause up to 500 deaths a
year because its crews suffer delays in reaching victims of cardiac arrest.

Bumps tend to breed more bumps and stop signs more of the same. If one street has bumps and more stop signs
installed, the next street calls for bumps and signs and eventually you find no clear roads for movement of emergency
service vehicles.

Transport for London has been helping to test average-speed cameras on residential roads. No tickets are being issued yet, but the mere presence of the cameras has resulted in the proportion of drivers complying with the limit increasing by a third.

The new cameras are not linked but have synchronised clocks and each separately transmits information to a processing centre. This allows several cameras to work together without the need to dig up the road between them to lay cables. In urban areas this can halve the cost of installing the system.

Putting in 50 standard bumps on three or four connecting residential streets costs about $300,000. A set of eight average-speed cameras covering the same area would cost $500,000.