Are Speed Limits set Lower than Drivers Are Expected to Drive?

I wrote a post back in July about Who Sets the Speed Limits and How, but I just came across some news about a strange twist to this procedure up in Winnipeg, Canada. I won't go through everything from my previous post (as I expect you have no doubt memorized it by now), the basics are that speed limits are set based on the speed that 85% of people drive at on a given road.

So civil engineers set up a traffic radar gun that records speeds over a given period of time, and then consider the speeds over the length of a road. Sharp curves, hills and more can cause the speed limit to be lowered, but it's generally not too difficult to set speed limits.

This procedure was done in Winnipeg about 10 years ago on a number of roads, but city councilors decided that the speed proposed by the engineers was too high, and lowered it by 10kph. Their reasoning was, allegedly, because if they set the speed limit at 50kph most people would drive at 60kph, and so they'd be driving at the suggested speed limit.

I understand the reasoning, but I don't really agree with it, and it has been causing some problems recently.

Specifically, there have been a ton of traffic tickets issued by police officers strictly enforcing the unnaturally low speed limit on certain roads. If the speed limit is too low even safe drivers will find their speed unconsciously drift up. So though they're driving at a safe speed, cops armed with police radar guns are going to find a greater number of people are exceeding the posted speed limit.

There has been some uproar to have the speed limit raised, although I think it might be a good idea to at the very least put up a speed trailer for now, as it will remind drivers to keep their speed down. The Decatur OnSite 200 Radar Speed Display would be a perfect solution here, as it would not only help keep driver's speed down, but it also has tracking software to allow civil engineers to take another look at average road speeds to see if there's some room to increase the speed limit.

It stinks that some random bureaucrat could screw up roads for so many people based on faulty logic, but at least there are plenty of speed detection tools to allow the mistakes to be corrected.

Labels: speed limits