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Road Sign Question

WLG1952

WLG1952

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A goofy question to be sure, but hear me out.

You have a major highway that gets a lot of use. Tons of traffic. Let's call it Bunker Highway. It's been called that for almost a hundred years. This highway is prone to many accidents involving cars, and jay walking pedestrians.

If the powers to be were to change the name from Bunker Highway, to Bunker Road, would the name change cause drivers to slow down?

Here's the reasoning behind the name change. The word "highway" causes drivers to drive faster. By changing the name to "road" drivers would slow down, on their own.

What's your thoughts? Me, I think it's a waste of time, and money. The change would costs $$million$$ due to almost a 1000 signs needing to be changed.
 
What a waste of $$$, speed stays the same
 
If it looks like a highway, and drives like a highway, then its a highway

way class GIF
 
I worked in and/or managed a 911 center for 32.5 years and what I can say is the name will likely not matter. As an example, in the winter when roads in Minnesota are pretty much unusable during a snowstorm/blizzard we announce the roads are closed and put up barricades saying the roads are closed. People drive around the barricades to try to use the roads, get stuck and call for our help. When asked why they drove around the barricades when the barricade said road closed, many of them say, " I've always used this road." Unless you make it physically impossible for them to get onto the road they will try to travel on it. Likewise if they are used to driving at high speed they will continue to drive at high speed no matter what the hwy/road is called.
 
Will be a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
 
Just a waste of money, IMO. Road, highway, avenue, doesn’t matter. The posted speed limit and amount of lanes on the road kinda control some of that speed to me?
 
A couple of years ago My state of Massachusetts decided to make all the State colleges into Universities. Seems pretty stupid and wasteful and no one thinks the degree is worth any more.
 
Changing the name won't change the speed people drive at.
 
Won’t change it at all. It would be way more beneficial to reconfigure the road itself ( remove a lane, add trees and islands to the middle and side, protected raised bike lane etc.) which isn’t as expensive as big auto would have you believe.
Plus it would make it so much more user friendly for everyone (bikes, pedestrians etc.)
 
Wanna know what'll actually slow cars down? Police presence. Whether it's cop cars sitting on the side of the road or in the median, or vehicles patrolling the road, that's the only thing that works in my experience.

That, or a bunch of old slow drivers going the speed limit. Maybe the city should take the money for the road name change and pay drivers to go the speed limit in all lanes. All in formation at the same time. Slow traffic to a crawl...
 
We spent a chitton of money installing radar signs the flashed "slow down" and your speed beneath the recommended speed for some very sharp turning exit ramps off the freeway. Every damn one of them had been knocked over by a car at least once within 6 months. People are morons. If that wont slow them down, how could changing the name of a street possibly matter?
 
Photo Radar. Money is the only language people truly understand.
 
What I would like to know is why we park in a driveway, and drive on a parkway.
 
You want to slow down cars, do what a few states seem to enjoy, darn traffic circles. Our county added two traffic circles, sure it slows the cars down, but, nobody understands the rules of a traffic circle. Its like a big game of chicken to see who yields first. The cars in the circle have the right of way, but the cars entering could careless. Waste of money, but at least we haven't had any fatalities at the circles yet..
 
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Scorp said:
Wanna know what'll actually slow cars down? Police presence. Whether it's cop cars sitting on the side of the road or in the median, or vehicles patrolling the road, that's the only thing that works in my experience.

That, or a bunch of old slow drivers going the speed limit. Maybe the city should take the money for the road name change and pay drivers to go the speed limit in all lanes. All in formation at the same time. Slow traffic to a crawl...
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Then they’d want a solution to the rise in road rage incidents 😂
 
They need a junker patrol car that's moved around from time to time and maybe a couple speed cameras. That'd slow traffic at least fur a while.
 
mav52 said:
You want to slow down cars, do what a few states seem to enjoy, darn traffic circles. Our county added two traffic circles, sure it slows the cars down, but, nobody understands the rules of a traffic circle. Its like a big game of chicken to see who yields first. The cars in the circle have the right of way, but the cars entering could careless. Waste of money, but at least we haven't had any fatalities at the circles yet..
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They actually speed up traffic and believe it or not, any collisions have far less impact than a typical stop & go intersection. Helps to avoid t-bone type crashes.

But yeah, most knuckleheads can’t figure out how simple merging works.
 
Actually, renaming it "Road" might serve to actually speed up traffic. As posters mentioned above, the only thing people can be depended on to pay attention to is money, and if you change the name then they might think: "Oh, the HIGHWAY PATROL is out patrolling HIGHWAYS, have you ever heard of the ROAD Patrol? Step on it!". :)

Also, as someone else mentioned, what you probably could do is get something like a small-scale "Ghost Army" (great documentary, BTW) and have cardboard cutouts of police cars and troopers holding radar guns placed strategically along the way. Low cost and should work somewhat to reduce speeding.
 
Bosco... said:
They actually speed up traffic and believe it or not, any collisions have far less impact than a typical stop & go intersection. Helps to avoid t-bone type crashes.

But yeah, most knuckleheads can’t figure out how simple merging works.
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Yes. As long as the traffic circles are large enough for the traffic flow they are incredibly efficient (and safe as you noted)
Though I’d love to see the numbers on “insurance reported incidents”
 
mav52 said:
You want to slow down cars, do what a few states seem to enjoy, darn traffic circles. Our county added two traffic circles, sure it slows the cars down, but, nobody understands the rules of a traffic circle. Its like a big game of chicken to see who yields first. The cars in the circle have the right of way, but the cars entering could careless. Waste of money, but at least we haven't had any fatalities at the circles yet..
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I hate traffic circles with a passion. My city isn't using them yet, and I hope they never do.

I think renaming the road is a waste of time and won't have any effect, most people won't even pay attention to it. It also causes huge headaches for any residents and/or businesses with addresses on the road, because they all have to change their addresses with everybody they deal with. Most effective way? Photo radar enforcement. As much as I dislike it, there's no questioning its effectiveness. Compliance is huge once the word gets out, and it's less resource-intensive than posting law enforcement officers there to do radar/lidar enforcement.
 
MWard said:
Just a waste of money, IMO. Road, highway, avenue, doesn’t matter. The posted speed limit and amount of lanes on the road kinda control some of that speed to me?
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The design of the road, including not only number of lanes, but width of lanes, is way more impactful for speed control than speed limit signs ever will be.

You will go slower on a 4 lane road with a trees on each side right behind a curb and 10’ lanes than a 4 lane road with 12’ lanes and a four foot paved edge of road and then another 15’ of graded smooth grass like alongside a highway.
 
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