Majority of speed limits are in residential areas set up by the neighbour who complains, as the poster above just proudly did [1]. So the speed starts at 50kph set up by experts when the suburb is created, and 20 years later a random subset of streets is down to 20kph, because somebody somewhere lived there and was bored enough with their life to pester the city hall.
And while that may sound cynical and hostile, it is literally what happened in my last 2 neighbourhoods. There was no expertise, no statistics, no evaluation. Just complaints and no political will to ever refuse or re-examine.
On hwys in my area, experts and studies have repeatedly over years suggested increases are feasible. But it keeps getting delayed. Here's the reality - those who want to go faster will silently go faster. Those who want to go slower will very loudly insist that everybody goes slower. And bureaucratd will be bureaucrats and take the low risk route.
Same thing happened where I live. In my case these people didn't just lower the speed limits, they littered the streets with speed bumps and "raised pedestrian crossings" which are just speed bumps with pedestrian crossings on top.
Oh boo to the fake holier than thou virtue signalling :->
We will never have meaningful discussion if we pretend that the only safe speed is 0kph and we all need to stay home and anybody driving is a dangerous maniac. Because if you take the categorical stance that e.g. 40kph is reasonable and all people who want to do 50kph are dangerous drivers who must be stopped, be aware that somebody else thinks 30kph is reasonable and you are a ridiculously dangerous stunt driver for suggesting 40.
It's the old "everybody who drivers slower than me is a moron, everybody who drives faster is a maniac". Have the self awareness that your preferred speed is not the only way to be.
There are many dangerous driving aspects other than going 105kph on a 6 lane straight modern hwy.
Oh please. I don't even drive. Ever. And a big part of that is not dealing with race driver wannabes.
I absolutely think 50 kph is a bit high for small inner city streets. There could be children, animals, old people. Shit happens. Driving slowly lowers the risk. Also, fuck car sound. I hate it. I hate pointless driving, which happens to be most of it anyway.
Based on your handle, I'd say you are from Serbia or Hrvatska. Or something like that. It's been almost 20 years since my last visit. Here in Bulgaria there is a massive contingent of extremely dangerous fucks with 20+ year old cars. The type with "blood type audi" and such. Fuck these people. They shouldn't be breathing, let alone driving and breeding
Yeah sure. We should all be forced to drive at 10 km/h at all times because some dumbass might randomly jaywalk instead of staying on the sidewalk where he belongs. We should all be subjected to speed bumps every 50 meters until the end of time just because some morons with motorcycles raced down some street once and the people didn't like it. Some person stepped foot on the road? Gotta bring an entire queue of vehicles at 40-60 km/h to 0 km/h to accomodate the one person who couldn't wait a few seconds for cars to pass.
Majority of speed limits are in residential areas set up by the neighbour who complains, as the poster above just proudly did [1]. So the speed starts at 50kph set up by experts when the suburb is created, and 20 years later a random subset of streets is down to 20kph, because somebody somewhere lived there and was bored enough with their life to pester the city hall.
And while that may sound cynical and hostile, it is literally what happened in my last 2 neighbourhoods. There was no expertise, no statistics, no evaluation. Just complaints and no political will to ever refuse or re-examine.
On hwys in my area, experts and studies have repeatedly over years suggested increases are feasible. But it keeps getting delayed. Here's the reality - those who want to go faster will silently go faster. Those who want to go slower will very loudly insist that everybody goes slower. And bureaucratd will be bureaucrats and take the low risk route.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37440983