Traffic-safety
experts are getting creative when it comes to foiling speeding drivers who zoom
dangerously through city neighborhoods.
Most towns don't have enough police officers to actually catch many
speeders, so they try to slow everyone down through what's called traffic
calming.
Some
communities put up additional traffic lights or signs to force drivers to slow
and stop more often. But this can lead
to long, infuriating backups of cars.
Traffic
circles or zig-zag obstacle courses are other calming devices. They break up straight stretches of road,
which are an open invitation to speeding.
The traffic islands have the desired effect, but drivers tend to crash
into their raised curbs and flower beds.
Many
towns have tried speed bumps, or raised ridges in the road. If you ignore them, they produce a
teeth-rattling bounce that can ruin shock absorbers and axles. The humps slow down, give a good jolt to,
and irritate safe drivers, too, including those in emergency vehicles.
The
latest, somewhat sneaky, speed-reducing innovation is . . . an optical
illusion! The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration is testing fake speed bumps! These are flat sheets of thermoplastic, laid across a street and
embedded with designs that, from a distance, look like three-dimensional
pyramids, sticking up from the pavement.
Who wouldn't slow down for that?
And they cost a fraction of real humps in the road.
But
there's one problem with these bumpy illusions: As the police traffic
coordinator in Phoenix, Ariz., told the Associated Press, They were great . . .
until people found out what they were!
Once they do, determined speeders pay them no more mind than they would a pretty landscape scene, painted on the street.