Overtaking and going fast in urban areas is not only dangerous, but also useless: a mathematical demonstration
6 months ago by HaraldvonBlauzahn to c/europe
cross-posted from: https://feddit.it/post/28637207
Those who use the bike know this very well: in the city, speeding motorists overtaking other cars, only get one thing: they arrive first to the next red.
With a simple model, the author estimated the probability that one car that overtakes another, will then be reached again at a later red light. Then he estimated the probability that the same thing will happen when there are multiple successive traffic lights, as usual in the cities.
The result is that as fast as an aggressive driver goes, the presence of multiple traffic lights makes it virtually certain that a slower driver will catch up
So, if someone aggressively overcomes you, when you reach him at the next traffic light, you can tell him that it is mathematically proven that he/she is an idiot.
In addition, this study has implications for the 30 km/h city, demonstrating how in urban areas the traffic lights determine the travel times, not the maximum speed reachable between one traffic light and the next.
The original scientific article is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/...
crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/...
Also, the idea that you’ve “saved time” is a bit silly.
Not to mention that all the extra money which you will need for a car, instead of using public transport or a bike, will require extra paid work time which in many (not all) cases will annihilate any time savings you might have had.
Not to mention that all the extra money which you will need for a car, instead of using public transport or a bike, will require extra paid work time which in many (not all) cases will annihilate any time savings you might have had.
I think the 2 hours I save every day using my car instead of the public transports are more valuable of what I need to spend to use the car.
The average travel speed of cars in cities is typically not more than about 35 km/h. Within a city, you are not likely to save that much time.
If you take into account the time table of the public transportation and that maybe you need to change two or more bus lines then yes, you can save that much time.
I partially agree with you though, in a city the public transportation is better but only if you use it during the rush hours (even if I need to be honest, here it is slowly getting better also during off hours) and if you can just hop on a bus|tram|metro and arrive to you destination. If you cannot, then it make no difference with a cars.
Also, the idea that you’ve “saved time” is a bit silly. It’s not like you can bank that time. You’re not going to start work two minutes earlier every day, and end up with ten minutes of “free time” at the end of the work week.
It is not related to the traffic, but yes, there are places where you can add up time to leave earlier at the end of the week (or have a couple more PTO days a month).
people aren't rational or thoughtful about it. they are emotional.
it feels good to feel fast, it feels bad to feel slow. regardless of the real time involved.
hence why it's more fun to drive a shitty car fast, than a fast car the same speed, because the shitty car feels way faster because cars designed for real speed feel slow at high speeds.
my dad was a genuinely awful driver. it was all about his feelings, never about actually getting anywhere safer or faster.
that said, sometimes you can save several minutes driving faster, but it's more about timing the light cycle than speed.
The worst is when they cut me off for their pointless first at red because I'm turning right and would do so legally but it's not a dedicated right turn lane so now I get to wait for green with this asshole who's going straight.
Hell half the time in a dedicated right lane they cut me off and illegally go straight. It's fucked. I'm just trying to drop off my kids, damnit.
anytime i see a baby on board sticker i keep my distance because they are almost always terrible and dangerous drivers.
I only overtake in the city when someone is driving like an idiot and I want to get away from them. Or if they're driving like they don't know where they're going and keep slowing down to read every road sign.
yes, people forget the best way to avoid danger is to be far away from it.
way too many drivers on the road are menances. i see all sorts of awful driving anytime i get in the car and i want to be either way behind, or way ahead of such people.
not to mention all the uber/delivery drivers who just slam stop in the middle of the road to pickup/drop off.
The red light timings sometimes incentivizes to go faster as with 55-60km/h you can have a green wave and don't need stop at any red light. for that it is totally worth it to drive faster. i hate when red light phase is longer than green phase. there are some really bad decisions on how red light timings work. Most do drive their path to work twice and know the timings and those do know when to drive faster/slower and will drive more aggressive to not wait at that one stupidly timed red light and have to wait and have like 25% more time to commute twice! (20->25min). It's nice to calculate it with statistics but the way to work and back is better known and a slower driver might cause you to need to wait at multiple red lights while you could have driven a bit faster (and not always faster like in my first sentence but driving as fast as is allowed) and did not have to wait at any of that stupid red lights. I'm all for speed limits and better bike lanes etc. but driving slow when it's stupid and stealing others precious time is fucking awful. What i also like are those that drive 60-70 constantly. Fuck man drive 100 if it is allowed and you can and drive 50 in the city but know, slow you down and than don't even drive slower for the safety of entices in the city.
Yes! We need a 30 km/h green wave.
In my city they timed the green waves for bicycles. It is glorious
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Traffic is like the flow of water, you can absolutely be the one fucking it up for everybody else, be it by crashing, reordering the wait, or by making traffic out of sync with engineered timers to optimize flow.
If speed or order or rate doesn't matter, then the science behind traffic engineers must be imaginary.
Be safe AND don't be a fucking asshole. We are all in this together.
if people understood we are in this together we would have invested more in public transit and walkability
Imagine if you played factorio...
and some stuff on a belt was just like "You know what would make us get there faster? If I moved slower than everything else and made it hard or impossible to pass."
And then another belt had an object that got irritated by always getting stuck behind the first one and tried to go super fast, but then crashed and outright stopped the belt.
Neither of these are good.
I hate it when people get in front of me just to slow me down. All the time.
Try driving an RV sometime. People have a moral obligation to pass you I guess, because you can be driving warp 8 and people will pass you angrily before slowing down.
I used to drive a full size van. On foggy days I can see better than most other cars due to me being much higher off the ground. A lot of times the person behind me thinks they can go faster because they can see my tail lights.
They will pass me and realize they can't see ANYTHING and then go much slower than I was when they were behind me.
Same on rainy days. The cars kick up water off the road and make a haze that I sit above in my van. I can see better so I can go faster...until they pass me.
And this is one reason more to limit speeds in cities to 30 kilometers per hour (20 mph).
30 is awful. I like 40 and 60 so much more. 30 might be still better than awful timed red lights.
30 is great for bikes. The safer people feel, the more will use bikes - Paris or Copenhagen are great examples, or smaller German cities like Münster and Oldenburg.
The more people go by bike, the less car traffic you will have. A bike lane of 2,50 meters width can transport 7500 vehicles per hour - that's equivalent to a mayor motorway. (A good example fir this is Copenhagens Cykleslangen which crosses the harbour to the South). As the comments here point out amply, the main obstacles for cars are other cars, so in a bike-friendly city, the cars that need to can travel with less obstructions. As well as ambulances, firefighters and so on (we have statistics from Paris that show the latter).
And an important consequential effect of freeing city streets for bikes is that scarce and comperatively expensive public transport capacity is freed for people which need to use it, because they either need to travel long distances, or are not healthy enough to use the bike.
Bikes and Cars do not work well together. You will never have car free cities, even in small towns in EU, if you can't drive around it with a faster road. Cities should not be build around important short and fast traffic roads, but that is how they are grown historical. Situation in rural areas is also very different to bigger cities. I would also say 30 is far from great for bikes. Most normal people drive slower and some drive faster. Speed is not the answer. Cars and bikes need different lanes. Everything longer than ~25km to work will be for cars or public transport. A good transition to having better transport will take a long time and reducing speeds to 30 is not a good solution.
Bikes and Cars do not work well together.
You apparently have not seen Copenhagen. And yes, going 100% car-free is difficult. But in cities, you can get rid of 95% of cars. Myself, I never had one in 40 years, having lived in many different places, not only cities.
30 is great. It's slow enough that you have time to react to someone jumping in the middle of the street just a bit ahead of your car. In a small city you'll get wherever you need to get within 15 minutes driving at 30.
In a big city you'll need more time, but then again, why would you ever want to live in a big city? And if you really need to live in a big city, why would you ever drive a car and not use public transport?
why would you ever want to live in a big city?
That's where my job is.
why would you ever drive a car and not use public transport?
So that my commute is 30 minutes instead of 2 hours.
I used to work in a big city. I moved to a smaller city. I get paid the same and spend less money. I don't need a car as I can walk everywhere. I have a better life now.
In a big city you’ll need more time, but then again, why would you ever want to live in a big city?
I know more than few people who would not leave the big city for any reason, saying there are more opportunities to have fun or more services.
And if you really need to live in a big city, why would you ever drive a car and not use public transport?
A simple answer is that using a car you maybe need less time to commute or go where you need. It is not that the public transport, if we consider the needed time, is always the fastest
People are always trying to get where they're going and so they are never where they are.
Sound like an anti-buddhist recipe for not really living and existing at all.
They think they're suffering in traffic when they're actually suffering everywhere.
If you travel halfway to your destination, then half of that, then half of that and so on, you will never get there because the police will arrest you for drink driving.
Zeno, go home, you're half drunk.
The same is true for overtaking in congested traffic on any type of road. There will be someone passing you on the highway by weaving through traffic, tailgating, honking, ... And then 5 minutes later you take your exit and that same nutter is standing still 3 cars ahead of you. Being an aggressive dick in traffic is totally not worth it.
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If your commute is 30 minutes, you'd need to drive twice as fast to do it in 15 minutes. So, in the 35MPH zone, you need to do 70, and in the 50MPH zone, you need to do 100--consistently. Which is clearly impossible. If you follow this logic through to a realistic conclusion, you end up at saving at most two or so minutes by speeding as much as you can. Congratulations, you got home two minutes earlier, what will you do with all that free time?
Also, the idea that you've "saved time" is a bit silly. It's not like you can bank that time. You're not going to start work two minutes earlier every day, and end up with ten minutes of "free time" at the end of the work week. You get to work two minutes earlier, or maybe two minutes less late, and you get home two minutes earlier, but that's the extent of the "savings". So what?
Do yourself and everyone else a favor, leave for work two minutes earlier and have a nice, easy commute. Stop being a dick, it's not your road, it's not your right, and it doesn't help you at all. Learn to control yourself, grow up, gain some emotional maturity, stop speeding around, you look like an idiot.
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