alt Hacker NewsIf this technology becomes common place, what is the future of speed bumps?
It seems as if speed bumps are a rather questionable approach to traffic calming, as larger vehicles (which should be a priority for calming) are less affected.
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I've never understood speed bumps as a concept. Almost every car has at least 4in of travel, so you can hit them at significant speed and not damage anything. In fact the faster you hit them or the more load you're carrying the better the suspension handles it because you open up the high speed compression valves. If there's no one around and it's an empty remote rural access road I'll often hit them at 30mph+ with no issue. Rolling over them at a slower speed where your shocks stay uncompressed forces your whole car to go up and then down again, instead of absorbing the energy in the shocks.
Speed bumps are already almost meaningless with modern suspensions. Next time you have a rental car hit a few at speed and you might be surprised how well an average car handles it.
They’re already too small for the idiot monster trucks everybody drives nowadays. Not sure this will change that.
We use chicanes (of a sort) and single lane bottlenecks in the UK. Forcing the vehicle to turn is a pretty easy way to get people to slow down and people complain less because it's friendlier on their suspension. In my home town there's one road that was clearly experimental? where the whole (one way) road gently zigzags for maybe 500m.