A vehicle driving 30 miles per hour is 9 times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than a vehicle traveling 20 miles per hour. Credit: Sightline Institute

The car-versus-bicycle rhetoric may not be directly responsible for murdering people, but it may be preventing us from saving lives. The Daily Sightline is assailing local media’s talking heads at KING, KIRO, and KOMO for their recent coverage of a bill that would allow cities to lower speed limits on non-arterial roads (side streets) from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour. Here’s their take:

Between 2000 and 2009, 683 people were killed by cars while walking in Washington. Local control over residential speed limits would not have saved all of those people, but it might have saved some. Yet here’s local loudmouth Dori Monson today:

[Mayor] McGinn’s hatred of cars and drivers is bordering on pathological… I do know that he is doing everything possible to make Seattle one of the most car-unfriendly cities in the country.

A vehicle driving 30 miles per hour is 9 times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than a vehicle traveling 20 miles per hour.

  • Sightline Institute
  • A vehicle driving 30 miles per hour is 9 times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than a vehicle traveling 20 miles per hour.

For the record, there’s nothing partisan—much less “pathological”—about reducing red tape for cities that want to reduce traffic speeds to protect their citizens, especially when it’s children and the elderly who are disproportionately killed by speeding cars.

So here’s my own modest proposal: instead of ranting like lunatics about an imaginary “war on cars,” maybe Washington’s commentator class could spend some time with this interactive map of pedestrian fatalities in the state. And then study the city and county statistics. And then read Alan’s thorough and judicious case for why local speed limit-setting is a good idea.

Mayor Mike McGinn’s outspoken support may be a liability for this bill, sure, but the bill failed to pass in the state legislature last year even without his kiss of death. If the bill has a chance in 2012—a chance of passing—then media yappers need to drop the divisive braying about the victimhood of being behind the wheel. This isn’t about cars being pushed off the road or Seattle being hostile to cars (please, it’s not a racetrack). And it’s not about all cars going slower everywhere (just in neighborhoods). It’s about saving lives.

42 replies on “Please—It’s a City, Not a Racetrack”

  3. Nobody is actually going to drive that slowly. 20 mph feels absolutely glacial on anything but a skinny single-car-width residential street like Ballard or Fremont. Most people will ignore a 30 to 20mph drop unless they see a cop with a radar gun sitting at corner.

  5. @3 Is right. The answer is dedicating certain side streets as greenways or whatever the hell you are calling them. Time to separate car and bike traffic.

  7. I don’t see what the big deal is for the naysayers. I mean, either you’re stuck in bad traffic and aren’t going to be going 30 anyway, or the roads are open and you’ll still get wherever you’re going in a comparable time, especially considering traffic lights (you might get from light to light faster, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a faster overall trip).

  9. I don’t think it s a bad idea, I am just not convinced it would do much, since I’d think people would ignore it and drive like they always have. Especially those who would be inclined to hit some pedestrians.

  10. Looking at the list of “Most Dangerous Metro Areas” from the map link, it would seem that age of the driver might have something to do with the potential for an accident.
    1.Orlando-Kissimmee, FL
    2.Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
    3.Jacksonville, FL
    4.Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
    5.Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
    6.Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
    7.Memphis, TN-MS-AR
    8.Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ

    Five of the top 8 are in known retirement havens. Seattle is #46 on the list. Drivers worldwide are selfish assholes by nature, but maybe there is something else involved?

    Instead of dropping the speed limit, perhaps capping the driving age is appropriate?
    Or, better yet, stay fuck out of Florida!

  11. We need an Eyman Tax on people who drive too fast and blow thru Stop Signs, Red Traffic Lights, and Residential Neighborhoods that involves confiscation and resale of the offending vehicle, with proceeds used to build more bike lanes.

  15. @10–Most of those cities are also places with wide, multi-lane arterials, few to no sidewalks, and minimal crosswalks.

    (None of which is intended to refute your point about staying out of Florida, which I heartily recommend!)

  18. It only costs $300 to do an engineering study. If the transportation engineers find it makes sense, you can lower the speed limit. The purpose of this bill is to bypass the reality-based community and set speed limits politically. “New urbanist” ideologues have found that good traffic engineering data rarely agrees with their dogmatic belief system.

    When you see wingnuts wanting to do an end run around scientific findings from the EPA or FDA, we mock them for being nutballs. But if you’re a bike activist, then you all holy and righteous and shit for wanting to put up 10 mph speed limit signs based on media hysteria and which neighborhood activists squawk the loudest.

    The real problem is that nobody drives 25 because we have no police out there enforcing it. What makes you think anybody will obey a 15 mph or 10 mph limit? But we can’t hire more cops because we’re broke and we’re going to always be broke in a recession. Let’s just accept that fact and quit jerking ourselves off about putting up 1,000 useless “begin 10mph zone/end 10mph zone signs”.

    I don’t get why people like Dominic Holden have faith in traffic engineers who say survival rates are exponentially worse at 30 mph vs 20 mph, yet he has no faith in traffic engineers who say 10 mph speed zones don’t save lives. It’s the same reality-based reasoning. Who do you think came up with that data about pedestrian survival rates? Engineers, buddy.

    It’s like being a creationist who takes antibiotics. You either trust science or you don’t. Don’t pick and choose on a whim.

  19. If you travel 3 miles, assuming that you are stopped 5% of the time, the difference in travel time between averaging 30 mph and 20 mph in motion is about three minutes.

    From what I can tell of many (if not most) drivers, this constitutes an intolerable delay. I’m not sure changing the speed limits can fix that kind of pathology, but I suppose it’s worth a shot.

  20. How about a law that requires jay walkers in da’ CD and Rainier valley to actually jay walk faster? Might help since they never seem to look when they cross.

  21. @10 – Not to be that guy, but statistically, older drivers are the safest on the road.
    http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2…

    Actuaries don’t fuck around, there’s a reason your grandpa pays $11 a month for car insurance.

    Also, Driver’s Ed should have a unit called “Learning to Chill the Fuck Out: You’re only saving 5 Seconds.” They can teach it right after the chapters “What’s So Hard About Sitting in a Warm, Comfy Car?” and “Pedestrians: Why They’d Rather Not Cross in Front of Your Car (So Stop Gesturing at Them).”

  22. I regularly drive on an arterial-ish residential street to get to work every day, and I can get tailgated going nearly 40 mph. Yesterday, some motherfucker passed me in the oncoming lane because I was driving merely 37/38. Little did he know that that was the speed of traffic in front of me. Fucking moron.

    If drivers can’t stand going less than 45 on a street populated with single-family homes, I’m skeptical that lowering the speed limit on paper will truly help. Traffic calming is more effective than the vague threat of a speeding ticket.

  24. There’s also an area on Queen Anne that has a 10 mph speed limit. It’s where Queen Anne Ave N has a couple of very tight turns before it veers east toward the Aurora turnaround. At those tight turns, the speed limit is 10 mph. At least twice, I’ve seen drivers cross the double yellow line at those tight turns (so tight they can’t see oncoming traffic) in order to get around vehicles that were obeying the posted speed limit. One of those motherfuckers almost ran into my car straight on while he was meanwhile flipping off the law-obeying driver.

    Overly stringent speed limits without traffic calming ignore human behavior and put us all at risk because of it.

  25. @10 — Hmmm. Phoenix Int’l Raceway … Ontario Motor Speedway … Las Vegas Motor Speedway … Memphis Int’l Raceway … Orlando Speedworld … East Bay Raceway Park … JAX Raceways … Homestead-Miami Speedway … can’t quite put my finger on it, but there may be a pattern here.

  27. I’m really tired of this argument, and slowing down the traffic speed by 30% for 200,000 drivers to possibly save the lives of 30 people every year just doesn’t pencil out. Shit happens, and people die everyday. 350 people in the USA will slip in the bathtub and drown this year, should we ban bathtubs? maybe adjust new bathtubs so no more than 1/2 inch of water can be held inside?

    I guess I am tired of being told everyone has to change so there is an illusion safety. If there is one thing that is an absolute constant, it is this: You. Will. Die. It’s going to happen, no matter how much you try to protect yourself.

  28. Install cellular monitoring systems in cars that read GPS to see what your speed is supposed to be. If you exceed speed momentarily within let’s say 10 to 15 mph or so for a given reasonable duration — 5, 10 seconds in any given minute? — that’s fine. Maybe you’re passing cars, or avoiding obstacles. But if you go let’s say 5 mph over the speed limit and hold it there, the system automatically dials home on cellular and bang!

    You get a ticket. Keep it up and the car will say to you, “You have 5 minutes to pull over, or the car will turn off.” If it’s 5+ minutes and you’re still driving, the system starts reducing your maximum speed, until you hit–wait for it–0, and it calls 911 to report your position.

    Give it an emergency “off” switch, for, duh, emergencies. But if you flip it off, it also signals the cops that — wait for it — there must a HOLY SHIT emergency because someone HAS to speed. This speed panic button live streams your GPS to the cops then so they can find and help you. Are you being pursued by criminals or rapists? Hit the red button, hit warp speed for safety, cops find you to help out. Or arrest you, if you’re a dickhead.

    This gizmo, if you use it, could give you a nice discount on your car insurance. Imagine if it was a standard thing.

  29. This system, also for bonus points, could be used to shutdown stolen cars. I report it stolen, it starts spamming photos ATM-style every 5 seconds, locks the doors and windows, calls the cops with it’s real time position, and starts reducing maximum speed by say 1% every second.

  30. And it occurs to me too, that it could be used by cops in an emergency to stop high speed pursuits. I run from the cops. They run my plates. Office calls it in, and the cars buttons up and closes down temporarily. Safety win!

    Extra achievement-unlocking bonus points for my awesome ideas: they will make Randroid dumb asses howl like banshees in libertarian heat.

  31. Joe, if your imagined robot controller would suck me to completion while I awaited my ticket, I might have to think about getting a car.

  32. I don’t care about lives, cars or bikes. I care about transportation. Moving people around a growing city and metro area efficiently. Safety is a given within that goal.

    McGinn’s involvement always means the discussion goes right to bikes versus cars, because he’s never shown himself to be focused on the needs of the city. He just seems to have decided on his own that bikes are the answer to everything.

    Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t; but that disucssion hasn’t been had, because Mayor McSchwinn decided to abdicate his role as mayor in favor of being King of the Ten Speeds. Until he’s out, we’re never going to have a useful discussion on this topic ever.

  33. @21 no, that’s using a lump-in effect that lumps in lots of 16-24 yo drivers who are literally the worst drivers in the world. Followed closely by moms with cell phones and screaming kids.

    Dads just ignore the cell and the screaming kids, for some reason.

  34. @28 is right and we could probably raise speed limits in most places with 100% enforcement. Huge savings in safety and police salary.

    @18 I think most creationists do take antibiotics.

  35. You know what would save even more pedestrian lives? Eliminating pedestrian right of way and making it illegal for pedestrians to step in front of moving traffic.

    But alas, that would mean pedestrians might be slightly delayed in getting where they are going.

  36. Echoing what 18 said, it’s really about enforcement. You can drive just about any fucking speed limit you want in this town because cops aren’t enforcing the limit. The is the first city i’ve lived in where a cop with a radar gun is like seeing a hooker with all her/his holes sewn shut. Start having them enforce the current limits rather than wasting money on signs destined to be ignored.

  37. @21, A big part of the reason your gramps are paying little in insurance is that they aren’t driving much. No more commute to work, no more driving little Susie to practice and recitals, etc.
    When gramps DOES drive, he is much more likely to be in an accident due to decreased reaction time than his younger still commuting, still errand running comparison. The younger comparison may be 50% less likely to have a collision per mile driven, but probably drives 400% or more than gramps does.
    The most dangerous drivers per mile are new drivers (regardless of age) and the elderly. The safest drivers are those in the middle who are the ones who log the most miles so have more opportunities for collisions despite being better at avoid them once they’re in that situation.
    Fun with statistics and reality! (As opposed to AARP spin.)

  38. @38 has a point. Commutes also tend to happen when the sun can either shine in your eyes or make it harder to see traffic lights.

    AARP is a great insurance sales agency.

  40. Yeah, I’ll be thinking about how “car-unfriendly” this place is the next time I have to dodge some jerk speeding down the road on my way to school.

  41. What @3 and @5 said. I commute by bike, and I’m fortunate enough to do so on routes separated from cars. Even if 99% compliance with a 10 mph speed limit could be achieved, it only takes one asshole to make my kids reliant on my life insurance policy for their college education. I ain’t gonna take that chance.

    That’s why all these “road diets” and “sharrows” are such shit. Give bicylists some space where the cars AREN’T.

    (And we don’t want to ride in bus lanes, either. The bus drivers are nice, but it’s a pain in the ass to be in a dance with a bus. They patiently follow behind you. After they finally get around you, they stop. You pass them, and the do-si-do starts all over again.)

  42. The haters have a point: changing the speed limit alone won’t make a difference in the prevailing speed of traffic. Absent speed cameras on every block (which aren’t usually set right at the speed limit anyway but give a fudge factor of 10 mph), the only way to slow down traffic is by physically changing the road: adding parking (which is usually allowed on non-arterials anyway), expanding medians, or building things like curb bulbs, speed humps, or raised pavements at crosswalks. And that costs money.

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