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No shit sherlock, of course crashes are always present.

The point is speeding makes them worse.



https://canadasafetycouncil.org/traffic ... fic-deaths

   

Just need to know if you realize PR is not used on Provinical Highways outside municipal city limits.

   

If it was used the same way it is in Germany, I would support that.
Tickets are sent to the registered owner. if someone else was driving they can have the demerits assigned to them, after completing the appropriate documentation.

If a driver receives a number of tickets, driving school, here ya go.

   

Boots, how do you feel about highway speed limits? do you think they should be raised or lowered?

   

Don't get me wrong, I prefer real police officers to photo radar any day.

Anyone who gets a speeding ticket from a cop gets punished three, maybe four times: a fine, demerits (with the potential for increased insurance costs) and the public humiliation as people pass the speeder and laugh their asses off.

However, cops in Alberta have been killed handing out tickets in high speed locations - it doesn't happen often, but even once a decade is too many for my liking.

Speed massively increases severity and if you do have a crash at 140 km/h - even if the QE II/Yellowhead/Hwy 3 is clear and the weather nice, the chances of you surviving it or walking away uninjured decrease dramatically over 120 km/h. And as I said above, a huge number of the brain injuries Albertans suffer each year are directly due to speed-related collisions. So even if speeding doesn't kill you (or your passengers), it can irrevocably change your life for the worse.

   

All good ideas...





Wrong...



https://canadasafetycouncil.org/traffic ... fic-deaths

   

In general, I think speed limits are pretty much fine the way they are. Personally, I think it all depends on the road and what it was engineered for.

If you were going to increase speed limits, we'd have to spend an awful lot of money re-engineering roads.

The Deerfoot for example had two different sets of standards - where it is 100 km/h, the interchanges and speed transitions are closer together than areas where it is 110 km/h. Same goes for the Henday and Stoney Trail (Calgary's ring road), while the QE II was designed to a faster standard with interchanges farther apart, which is why the speed limit drops in Red Deer.

I get that a lot of people like to drive fast, and hey, I was young, dumb and full of cum at one time too. Then I grew up and realized the consequences of speeding.

Sounds like many haven't had that same ephihany yet.

   

I'm glad we agree about the police.

You're right, it does. For the most part I don't ever go over 120kph. Fuel costs are a bitch and I do value my life. But if traffic is doing 130kph or 140kph, I'm going to go that fast because at that point I'm more of a hazard to myself and others if I do 120, or even 110, than if I was doing 140.

But there lies my point. If traffic is going at 130 or 140, the photo radar is going to ticket you for speeding even though you are merely doing the safest thing and keeping up with traffic. A cop wouldn't ticket you for it. As notorious as the Anthony Henday is for cops nailing speeders, I once saw someone get pulled over for doing a hair under the limit (90~kph) because they were creating a hazard when the traffic was predominantly flowing at 110kph. I also witnessed a very similar incident of someone doing 75kph on the 4 lanes of highway 14. In this case they weren't obstructing traffic (except for me, I needed to make a right hand turn so didn't bother passing), but should traffic approach them from the same direction doing the speed limit, that person would become a hazard. I'm not sure whether they were ticketed or not, but the cops addressed an issue appropriately where the PR would just hand out tickets to everyone doing 101+ in a 100 zone.



I didn't know the limits dropped in Red Deer. When did this happen?

110kph rural/100kph city makes sense for winter when the pavement is cold and you can't get as much grip. But really you'd need minimal changes to the road to make them suitable for a rural limit of 130kph for vehicles with GVW <5500KGs, 120kph GVW >5500 KGs (recreational/personal vehicles included), and a urban limit (Henday, Stoney) of 110kph.

What I do think we need is a far more intense drivers training program in every province.

   

It doesn't matter what everyone else is doing - it's still illegal and dangerous.

And it's actually much safer to drive the speed limit in the right lane than it is to speed. That's why the signs tell "Slower traffic to stay right".

Doing 90 in a 110 zone is a danger and that's why he got pulled over.

Now, people like to argue that doing 110 in a 110 zone while lots of other people do 130 or 140 is hazardous, but the fact is the dangerous people on the highway are NOT those doing the speed limit - it's the reckless ones who are speeding and most cops will tell you that.






QE II has been 100 km/h in Red Deer for my entire driving life (since the late 80s) - and that's because there is lots of traffic merging and it is unsafe to have people going faster.

Actually, re-engineering provincial highways would cost a fortune because you would have to rebuild entire interchanges (many of which were built decades ago to different standards). Look at the NE Henday project - they have to rebuild four interchanges (Broadmoor Drive, Baseline Road, Sherwood Park Freeway & Whitemud Drive) to bring them up to modern standards.

If you want to increase speeds, multiply that by a couple dozen interchanges and it's going to cost about $5 billion. Tack on building new flyovers/interchanges (all those at-grade intersections currently on Yellowhead, QE II, Highway 43 and elsewhere) to accommodate your proposed 130 km/h rural speed limit and it's getting even more expensive. A standard interchange ranges from about $50 million to $200 million, depending on what you put in. All told, you're probably looking at $100 billion or so - unless of course you eliminate access to those highways at most places like they do on US interstates.

Our highways were designed as a trade-off between the interstates and simple two lane highways. Changing things now after 100 or so years of highway construction is going to be hugely expensive.

   

I asked the local cops about that. They said pretty much the same thing, but with a nuance; that someone doing 90 in a 100 zone is more hazardous than someone doing 110.

The rational was if the distance between two vehicles travelling in the same direction are the same between the 90-100 scenario and the 110-100 scenario are the same, the faster driver will have an equal amount of time to react. It doesn't matter if the slower car is 50 and the faster car is 60, or if the slower car is doing 130 and the faster car is doing 140, if the distance between the two is 1km, it will take 6 minutes for the faster car to catch up to the slower one.

The problem is when there is more than 2 vehicles. If you have 10 vehicles, all but 1 are doing 100. If that 1 is doing 90, they are forcing the other 9 to react once to a different situation from the norm (which is everyone doing 100kph). If that 1 is doing 110, they are the only ones having to react to slower vehicles, and that reaction is the norm for them.

At face value, there are 9 reactions in either scenario. But the problem is damn near everyone suffers from road hypnosis when they drive, everything is normal and there is a resulting lack of sensory input. It isn't until they catch up to someone that they have a different input that they now have to snap out of their state and react. On the contrary, someone who is constantly reacting to the slower vehicles is less likely to get into this state because they are consistently reacting to the slower vehicles in front of them.

It isn't a huge difference; the equivalent danger to others of doing 10 under the limit/flow of traffic is the same as doing 15 over. The cop ended the conversation telling me they'll ticket me if they catch me going a hair over the limit.

As for staying right, there is still a danger. When I say the predominant traffic is doing 130, that means that IS the right lane doing 130. You are still a hazard in that case because now the 130kph drivers have to either react and slow down, or pull into a 140kph lane to pass you.





What were the design limits of the highways? BC was able to raise their limits because they were already designed for 130kph travel.

As for the at-grade intersections with the range and township roads, I think that's crazy as it is with the limit at 110, never mind making it higher. For the most part I'd like to see the range road crossings gone on 4 lane freeways. Let there be a turn-off for the range road on the one side of the highway, but no crossing traffic.

As for the interchanges, I don't see why they'd need to change. Keep the flyover speeds where they are at. The most you'd have to do is add an extra 100 meters to the merge and exit lanes to allow traffic to get up to or slow down from that extra 10kph.

As for Red Deer, you might want to double-check that. The signs are quite clearly marked as 110. Hell, the southbound flyover just north of gasoline alley has an advisory sign for it so people don't forget to speed up before they merge into the left hand lane.

   

I have to admit, I never expected the thread to explode the way it has. Here are some of my thoughts...

I don't necessarily disagree, Bart (although we'd have to do a lot of studying to determine what constitutes a safe speed when Canada is a frozen wasteland six months of the year, while the only ice in many parts of the U.S. is what people put in their drinks) but what about the douchebags who just rip through at double the posted speed limit? When you talk about "surface streets", are you referring to municipal roads, or also intermunicipal highways?

There have been multiple crashes and deaths on Highway 63 which leads to and from Fort McMurray, oftentimes because people have been going way over the speed limit. Harmonics, as you describe them, don't really sound practical to me except in places like downtown Edmonton or a residential street-in some place like the Anthony Henday freeway or the St. Albert Trail, I can't see it working.



Pretty well-thought out ideas here, Xort, especially #4. That is, of course, one of the things that kills support for photo radar to the extent that it exists, and I imagine that a municipal politician could go to town on something like that if they were to put it in their platform-e.g., specifying in legislation that they have to go on major thoroughfares, school zones or something like that, with public input on the areas of greatest risk?





As a little kid, I actually recall cops pulling my Dad over a couple of times for speeding. I can't see the same thing ever happening today.

It makes me wonder if a hybrid approach might work:

Plainly visible photo radar and large warning signs in school zones and playground areas, with extremely stiff fines for violation. Outside these areas, photo radar is only placed in areas deemed "high risk" to the public, which are selected with input from the actual public themselves via hearings, the Internet, etc. The fines are lower than in the school zones-say, half of the school zone cost. The money is transferred to another level of government, or perhaps to another municipality, as Xort suggests.

In all other cases, the police are the ones who do the enforcing. The cops would be trusted to use their discretion, based on their training and assessment of the situation. If everybody is going 130 down the Queen Elizabeth II, well then the cops might let it slide. If you have some douchebag screaming down 97th Street in Edmonton 25 kilometres over the limit, then said douchebag gets to experience the pleasure of public humiliation by being pulled over and getting demerits on his record.

   

Yes, I do.

Let me reiterate:

   

Ask the fire department for the top five locations for speed related deaths or something similar.

We have the records to pin point the locations of the most deaths relating to speed.

You could also ask the insurance providers.

While the reaction is to throw them down in school zones that might not actually be the most effective area. Same for on major roads. Just because it seems like a good place, doesn't mean it is. That's the importance of data collection. Currently police set up in areas to collect a large number of tickets. So at the bottom of hills leading onto open roads, just after speed changes, on large roads with good hiding spots and speed limits well below the effective traffic speed, stuff like that.

That's maybe not the best location if the goal is public safety. It might be, but I have strong doubts to that. I don't subscribe to the theory of if everyone drove faster it would be safer. But I am willing to accept that speed limits being lower might not do much of anything to make a road safer even if people followed the law.

   

And every police officer I've talked too - and working in traffic safety, it's a lot - have told me unequivocally that speeding kills and makes crashes far worse.

As I said, you can argue that someone doing 110 in 110 zone is a danger because many others are doing 130, but the fact is they are all breaking the law - and on the bright clear and sunny day you pre-supposed on the QE II, there should never be a problem with passing someone doing at/near the speed limit.





Actually, BC raised their limits on a couple highways to 120, not 130.

Most of our highways were built to a 110 km/h standard, as were most BC highways.

Drive up Highway 43 to Grande Prairie or west towards Jasper on 16 sometime (or QE II or Highway 1). There are dozens of at-grade intersections that would need a flyover at the very least (allowing traffic to cross the freeway safely, but not merge onto it - think 82 street on the Henday). Flyovers are the cheapest things to build, but you'd need to build dozens of them on each highway.

But because all the rural towns and villages on those highways would suddenly lose access to those four lane highways, you'd have to build diamond interchanges on some of them, and cloverleaf or partial cloverleaf interchanges on probably half of those (not cheap at all) - there may not be many rural folk in Alberta these days, but they are very vocal and bend the ear of their MLA quite often on transportation-related issues.

As for the QE II, it used to slow to 100 km/h at Highway 11 and stay that way until after the exit to Gasoline alley, but I haven't driven it in a year and a half or so, so maybe it changed.

   

I don't understand the problem here. What's it to you if the spending isn't coming from your taxes? And given that tax cuts are a popular and never ending budgetary demand, your tax cuts can be funded by the people who choose to speed.


Wow you really don't get it. The FEDERAL government, which is a completely separate government from Provincial government, hands out foreign aid based on it's OWN foreign policy objectives, not on how many people are speeding on local roads. Did it ever occur to you that the Federal government may actually WANT to give a certain amount of foreign aid money to a country regardless of how many people are speeding?

Did you imagine that somewhere in the department of foreign affairs, they're saying "it is absolutely crucial to our national security to improve relations with Afghanistan.....unfortunately, speeding fines are down in the GTA so we're just going to have to damage our relations by cutting aid and telling them that they're "cheeky xxxxx".


Ummm no you are so wildly dead wrong. The federal government is not the king of Canada. Provincial governments do not answer to the Federal government. Traffic laws are provincial law, so fines levied against those laws belong to the province - not to the feds and not to the police.

Besides, almost all police departments (except RCMP) ultimately report to the province not the feds(even municipal police departments only exist at the pleasure of the province since all municipalities are "creatures of the province"). Even where RCMP is engaged to enforce local laws, they do so under contract to the municipality of province and so act as creatures of the province in those situations


Noted, but that can be addressed - after all, an acceptable number of people seem to be able to heed other signs about sharp turns, moose crossings etc so I'm sure we can figure out a way to adequately save an acceptable number of people from their own stupidity and ignorance, fully understanding that you can never save 100% of the people.

Also, we basically have photo billing for toll roads and toll bridges so there's precedence for it, I'm sure there's precedence for people who racked up enormous charges and "didn't know". Maybe you cap it to a certain number of infractions or dollar amount as you suggest, but it should be more than just 1. And the ticket should go out in the mail immediately on a semi-weekly mail run or perhaps even a daily run, not at the end of the month.

   

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