Speed humps - may damage immune system

[Bmblbzzz]

By the way, I've never seen an "asymmetric" speed hump like the one in the photo accompanying the article. Three questions:
Are they a London speciality?
Are they what people refer to as "sinusoidal" humps?
What happens if you drive over them the other direction, (perhaps on a bike while overtaking queuing or excessively braking traffic, or in an emergency vehicle)?

[bisikletci]

Work by scientists at Kings college London shows that pollution resulting from speed humps may damage the immune system:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/202 ... ould-help/

This will affect everybody - not just the people driving the cars. Could speed control be done in a better way e.g. by ANPR/ Average speed cameras? This would have the advantage of sanctions being applied to offenders and not to the law-abiding. Removing speed humps and putting in better alternatives: reduces pollution, increases fuel efficiency (for motor vehicles), and reduces damage to vehicles, reduces damage to riders and passengers.

As others have noted, the problem is not the speed humps per se, but the cycle of speeding up and then braking.

Short of banning cars, the best approach is to filter residential roads to block through motor traffic (also prevents motor traffic that does access the road from reaching any real speed).

Where that's not possible and you want to slow traffic, what you need is measures to ensure that cars never get up to speed in the first place. I'd suggest repeated speed humps, rather than just occasional ones with large gaps between them. Perhaps cameras might work but there seems to be enormous reluctance to install them/opposition to them and to fine-based measures generally, making them hard to implement.

BTW one alternative that I find does *not* work well at all here where I live (continental Europe - might be different in the UK) is placing parking bays or street furniture in a fashion to create a sort of slalom course for cars. While it's supposed to slow them down, I find many cars take them at speed, which is even more dangerous than driving at high speeds in a straight line - and they will repeatedly overtake me on my bike at the narrow pinch points created, which is frightening and dangerous.

[fullupandslowingdown]

Some councils seem determined to turn whole areas into conflict zones. I say conflict zones rather than speed managed because of the disparity between good drivers who would prefer to travel over suspension damaging humps at less than 15mph and those idiots who seem to enjoy the jolt that actually diminshes the faster they go. Hence slow drivers hold up the fast drivers who then harrass the slow drivers hence the conflict.
It would be infinitely better to have a uniform speed and no bumps and no pot holes too, but until we have much greater numbers of traffic police actually zapping the speeders, then non discriminatory passive anti speeding measures are here to stay.

[GoldTop]

Not only speed humps but the practice of parking in narrow urban roads thus creating single file traffic and all the stop starting that it creates. I live in West Glos and the half wits park anywhere, brow of hills, blind bends and one car length from a junction. Worst of all the useless local Council does nothing! If you are concerned about pollution this act is probably far worse than speed humps.
Rant over.


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly bog brush using hovercraft full of eels