Officials in West Vancouver, Canada, apparently aren't satisfied with the driver-slowing properties of traditional speed bumps.
Well, can you blame them? They don’t really work.
On Tuesday, the town unveiled a new way to persuade motorists to ease off the gas pedal in the vicinity of the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School: …
I find that redundant. School Pauline Johnson Elementary School. Stupid Canadian naming scheme.
a 2-D image of a child playing, creating the illusion that the approaching driver will soon blast into a child.
Blast into a child? A little harsh, don’t you think? I mean, if you continue reading, the speed limit is 18 mph, hardly the speed at which you “blast” into something.
Seriously though, the kid shouldn’t be out in the street anyway. A driver shouldn’t have to slow down for a kid who shouldn’t be chasing her ball into the street. If she’s that stupid, perhaps she deserves to get hit. I’m just sayin’…
According to Discover magazine, the pavement painting appears to rise up as the driver gets closer to it, reaching full 3-D realism at around 100 feet: "Its designers created the image to give drivers who travel at the street's recommended 18 miles per hour (30 km per hour) enough time to stop before hitting Pavement Patty …”
Pavement Patty – I don’t know why, but that sounds like the name of a Garbage Pail Kid or something.
“-- acknowledging the spectacle before they continue to safely roll over her."
Spectacle is right. I mean, come on, she’s not even freakin’ cute. What difference does it make if we rid the world of one more ugly person?
Alright, that was harsh, ugly people need love too, just like stupid people, but seriously.You have to wonder if the designers of the "speed bump of the future" …
Speed bump of the future? Really? I think not. Hardly futuristic. No, the speed bump of the future would be something more along the lines of a sensor that reads your license plate and then pops up a hologram of whatever is near and dear to you – your mom, your spouse, your kid, your dog, etc. – that you need to avoid hitting. Not some 2D Garbage Pail Kid.
…considered that drivers might become conditioned to disregard Pavement Patty and her imaginary cohorts, creating something similar to a "boy who cried wolf" effect. Couldn't such conditioning reduce drivers' caution if a real child should cross their path?
Absolutely. I agree with this assumption, and I thought of this before I even got to this point in the article. What about those sickos who hate kids? (You know who I’m talking about.) I mean, that’s like making the speed bump resemble an opossum – my father-in-law would intentionally speed up, or veer out of his intended path, only to hit it.
If Pavlov taught us nothing, it’s that we’ll get used to something and react accordingly. It’s just a question of which Pavlovian conditioning will take effect: we always see a kid so we slow down? Or we see a kid, realize it’s a speed bump intended to screw with our minds, so we don’t bother?
"People tune out. It takes an attitude shift for people to change," Dunne said. "Pedestrians need an attitude shift too. They have to realize that just because they are in a crosswalk doesn't mean they are safe. In fact, most get hit while using crosswalks."
Translation = jaywalking is safer than using the designated crosswalks. Glad I know this now.
As for drivers who become can't process optical illusions, Dunne argued that they have no business on the road in the first place. "It's a static image," he said. "If a driver can't respond to this appropriately, that person shouldn't be driving, and that's a whole different problem."
Yeah, well, there are a lot of people who shouldn’t be driving who do. Period. You can’t change that – static image or not.
I propose this in lieu of speed bumps: Okay, so you know how they have those speed limit signs that tell you your speed? Have one of those set up about 50 feet ahead of the area. If you aren’t doing the speed limit or less by the time you get there, tire spikes will go up. Period. End of story. Will stop speeders, guarantee it.
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By the way - does anyone find as much irony in the fact I posted this just hours after getting a speeding ticket, as I do?
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