Summary
To make a law that will be respected, the law itself has to be respectable. This is why speed limits are meant to be set to what is called the 85th percentile, or the speed at which 85% of drivers will naturally go when conditions are good and traffic is free-flowing. This has been proven to produce the safest results, versus speed limits set artificially low, which creates a huge increase in otherwise safe motorists who are now lawbreakers. The construction zones I drove through, in the wee hours of the morning, were a classic example of this.
How do we deal with effective policing of construction zones? Well, school zone speed limits usually only apply when children are present, or likely to be around. Those long stretches could have easily have signs stating the limit is 80, as per that 85th percentile, but 50 when workers are present. In areas of activity, or changes in road surface, portable speed bumps cause drivers to slow down. The use of portable stoplights is usually effective.See the full content of this document
Extract
Construction Zone Limits Need Common Sense
A few weeks ago, I covered the 650 km between Whistler and Prince George here in British Columbia to be one of the speakers at a conference called Crossroads. The subtext w...
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