Welcome to the Roadscapes Wednesday segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Roadscapes Wednesday will feature roads and infrastructure related topics. Geek Alabama Editor / Publisher Nathan Young is often called the “road geek” for a good reason, Nathan loves roads and loves talking about roads!
In 1995, Portland’s transportation office and Fire Bureau drove five emergency vehicles, including an ambulance, over neighborhood speed humps with a stopwatch running. In the worst case, a single hump cost 9.4 seconds.
But those same humps measurably cut pedestrian injuries, which is why cities keep building them. In Toronto, pedestrian collisions dropped about 22% across 409 streets after humps were installed.
So how do you slow down a sedan without slowing down a fire engine? Engineers have spent about thirty years trying to answer that, and the answer depends on how far apart a vehicle’s wheels are.
In this video, we look at how speed humps work, why a few seconds can matter, and the wheel-gap trick behind the speed cushion. We also look at where it falls short, especially for ambulances and for the SUVs and pickups that can straddle the gaps too.
Categories: Roadscapes Stuff
