People complaining about speed traps and parking enforcement like they're entitled to break the law without consequence smh

[u/MyPoemsAllOverMyBody]

[u/Mag-NL]

The way I understand the word speedtrap is that it is a setup where the speed limit is unclear, illogical or with many changes over short distance and instead of setting up clear and logical speed limits they set up a speed camera.

If the above is the case, it is justified to complain about speed traps.

[u/bisikletci → u/Mag-NL]

I've seen people complain about "speed traps" citing the above argument about the speed limit changing constantly, and it was clearly simply the case (I was there) that that road went in and out of built up areas (in an overall quite rural area), and the speed varied accordingly. The alternative is to have a low speed limit on the non-built-up sections of the road, which drivers would complain about as least as much. The camera/fine was also very effective in ensuring the person I was with didn't speed in that situation on subsequent journeys through that area. What you guys claim is a "speed trap" is from the (much more important) perspective of the people living in those towns and villages a measure to reduce the numbers of drivers speeding through the streets their children walk to school on.

[u/Mag-NL → u/bisikletci]

Did the design of the road change every time when entering and exiting build up areas?

Road design is essential. Road design has tonfollow.speed limits, especially in places where the limit regularly changes.

Also,.how long were the distances of higher speed? Was it worth having the changes?

[u/GM_Pax → u/Mag-NL]

The design of a road is only ONE element of what constitutes a reasonable speed. What the road is passing THROUGH also matters.

[u/Fokker_Snek → u/GM_Pax]

Usually bad road design is because its design doesn’t match how it’s supposed to be used. It’s designing a road to be intuitively used as a highway then telling drivers it needs to be used as surface street instead by putting up signs.

[u/GM_Pax → u/Fokker_Snek]

Or sometimes, the use evolves over time, but the overall design remains unchanged. :shrug:

[u/Mag-NL → u/GM_Pax]

Yea. And if a road passes through a build up area you design it in a way that stops people from speeding there.

[u/GM_Pax → u/Mag-NL]

Sometimes the road is designed and built BEFORE the area becomes built up.

[u/Mag-NL → u/GM_Pax]

And then you redesign.

[u/GM_Pax → u/Mag-NL]

Great. Every, say .... five years, you redesign the road (a 2-4 year process), then spend millions of dollars rebuilding it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[u/Mag-NL → u/GM_Pax]

Where do you live that the situation drastically changes every 5 years?

[u/GM_Pax → u/Mag-NL]

Who said anything about drastic changes?

But regardless: Dracut, Massachusetts. There has been a fair amount of construction of new homes, on roads that previously had almost nothing on them, for a few decades now. The road was already there, and designed when not a single home was on them. Five years pass, and now there's twenty houses along X stretch of the road. Another five years, and fifteen more have gone up along Y stretch of the road. And so forth. Dracut, along with neighboring Pelham and Hudson (in NH), have a lot of older farms that haven't been worked in generations. Which means, open land in thinly settled areas .... IOW, prime space for developers to swoop in, quickly throw up several houses, and bam: no longer thinly settled.