Why Speed Bumps are Useless
Some thoughts I often have about speed bumps in their many variations.To mention a few kinds of speed bump, there's the standard smoothed lump of tarmac laid across the street,the kind that have a sharp incline followed by a flat and then a sharp drop, the short sharp "sleeping policeman" which are often made of plastic and bolted to the road, and the camel humps (two humps side by side in the road).
These "Traffic Calming" measures, along with speed cameras have to be some of the worst road safety ideas I've ever seen. As I've read in another article on this subject, bumps greatly impair the response time of the emergency services, allowing many more deaths than they are allegedly intended to prevent, they DO cause a lot of damage to the car of EVERY road user who has no other choice but to go over them no matter what speed they are doing, in fact the designers of these huge lumps of tarmac in the road don't appear to have put much thought into the invention at all because those people who are lucky enough to be able to afford naturally low cars like ferraris or lamborghinis have to leave their beautiful cars parked up since they can't get over the speed bumps that are popping up everywhere.
Then you have the owners of classic cars with less forgiving suspension, like myself. Did the people who invented/designed and implemented these monstrosities for the road ever try driving over one in a classic mini? I would expect not, or they'd have thrown the design in the bin!
I agree with some of the other articles I've read relating to the subject, speed bumps are useless! If the authorities want to make the roads safer, they should take a look at the German traffic system, where people are in a sense, rewarded for good driving and there is no speed limit on the autobahns providing you're sensible.
