Safe Speed Forums

I drove down a local residential road today. Hands in the air. I only had a 1 hour lunch break and needed to go into town and there was a mega queue at one roundabout, normally I would go straight across this roundabout but instead I cut through a residential road, onto the ring road and approached the town centre from a different angle that wasn't congested.

Anyway, this road has the usual speed "pillows" the ones that supposedly ambulances and people in big wide cars and 4x4s can drive over without slowing down, only difference is that they are a foot wider than usual so even the ambulances would get jolted. They also seem to be a lot taller, have a much greater angle of incline and instead of being curved they are constructed as if out of 5 flat surfaces resulting in hard edges and pointy corners.

Anyway I noticed that the grass verges beside these things were all mangled with tyre markings and after comparing a speed bump to the alternative it's pretty clear why.

It is a significantly nicer jolt to the car to put two wheels on a driveway, go up the sloped edge of the driveway, onto the grass (your other two wheels between the speed hump and the kerb) then drop down again using the next driveway. Even if you cock up and drop off the full height of the kerb it's a much less painful jolt than actually hitting one of these speed bumps dead centre.

I tried this purely in the interests of science, of course, it is not something I make a habbit of. I did, however, observe cars coming the other way doing the same thing, many of which were easilly doing 30+ mph. They gave me the impression that this was something they did every day and one of them actually parked up so probably lived there.

I have in the past seen people have to do this sort of thing incredibly slowly to protect their exhausts from some of the more badly designed speed bumps. My dad's totally standard old mini required this at my old school. This is not even in the same league as today's observation though.

So these things are causing people to hop on and off the pavement like a London Cyclist, creating a danger to pedestrians and destroying some grass verges (no big loss, they're rather tatty anyway) in order to reduce the damage to their cars and spines. How exactly is this a safety improvement?

Is this one hump in the middle of the road with gaps either side then the pavement?

There must be some way we can get councils to remove these things!

There are some near me where they have 2 "pillows" and the gap between them in the middle of the road is enough that if you aim right for the middle you hardly touch the humps. So I usually end up doing 35-40mph down the middle of the road to prove that they don't slow people down.

If only I had a bulldozer...

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Andrew.

Fifteen years ago, Algerian streets had speed humps and big wide sandy pavements.

Local drivers would swerve onto the pavement round them, causing pedestrians to scatter in all directions.....

Two pillows. About 1' gap between them. You cannot go down the middle.

There is another rat run that my GF uses regularly to get to work (industrial estate on the other side of the town centre) where you can do this quite sucessfully, though to do it properly requires some skilled swerving that tends to scare the crap out of pedestrians even though you are not going anywhere near them.

I rarely have to travel to my GFs work in rush hour, so I take the "approved" route, which is a good thing as when I take this route to I have to choose between back pain or earache ::)

So you used a road to drive on, I don't see any need to be so apologetic.

Before anyone gets on their high horse, I used to live on a rat run, I never had a problem with it.

I bet you would if you had the constant noise of *brake* *thud* *thud* *accelerate* of people traversing speed bumps, and the tyre wail of people negotiating the various obstacle courses that councils are so fond of these days. Many people seem to take pride in getting through those damn chicaines at the speed limit. I can't bring myself to actually blame them for doing so.

I admit to being a bit naughty at some humps which I've taken issue with. Having a powerful car with two 5inch ports for an exhaust means I can protest by accelerating hard (up to a safe speed - usually less than the limit) in first gear and staying in first in preparedness for the next hump.
I can easily exceed the speed limit between the humps, so what exactly do these things prove?

Well i find I get the least back pain by hitting the things correctly and at roughly 33mph. It hurts a lot more at 20. So I'm often tempted to speed up for the hump, then slow down again.

What you're doing is good though. If everyone did that, it would piss off the residents enough that they'd campaign to have the bloody things removed.

Either that or they'll want one end of the road closing off, so maybe not such a good idea.

At or above, to make sure the road would be safer without them.
I often get the urge to hold down the horn while going past these things but that would be better as a general protest by everyone who hated them.

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Andrew.

Thankfully there was no traffic calming but I did have "brake, thud, tinkle" half a dozen times while I lived there, I got quite good at replacing door mirrors.

Those damn speed bumps - 'causing' drivers to go up on the grass verges. And those damn traffic lights, causing drivers to go through them when they're red...
And those damn pavements, and barriers, protecting pedestrians.
Why can't we all just drive at 50mph down residential streets, when there might be children playing, or cats crossing the road? Who cares about them anyway?

If you lot could actually see how incredibly selfish, arrogant and impatient you all look, you would be amazed.
Get a life! Stop speeding!

Do you honestly think that anybody who has spent £1000's on a vehicle wants to "smack it" over lumps of concrete?


Now you are showing yourself for the meshugana that you are.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

I agree completely - Lets face it, berlin cushions act in a way that a car's suspension is not designed to deal with. Rather than a vertical movement of the suspension, the suspension is actually forced outwards due to the angle on the outside edge of the humps.

These things destroyed the bushes on my old Mondeo, and I go over them at about 15 mph.

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"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

Why can't I proceed at the speed limit (if safe to do so, of course) without having to slow down for/avoid man-made obstacles? The bumps nearest to me weren't painted for at least 2 days after they were built. Safe? I think not.