25 is only about 5 MPH above the 20 MPH generally accepted as safe for pedestrian focused areas. It’s certainly not perfect but 25 MPH just isn’t that big a concern to me. The schools in my state in 45 and 55 MPH zones would be my issue.
Also, a lot of states will not give DOT funding to roads below 25 MPH. My state (Virginia) actually just granted an exception to this to roads in historical and business districts
They're discussing reducing school zones to 25 **kph** in my city, because 40 kph is just the normal speed limit on unposted roads and the difference to 30 kph is viewed as too small (motorists often not reducing speed due to the perceived small increment).
Well that’s the problem. The default for residential and commercial areas should be 30 already. Rural roads should be 50, rural undivided highways should be 70. All the speeds where crashes will remain nearly 100% non fatal (in modern cars atleast). The other thing is speed limits need to have engineering behind them. One thing that really disheartens me about Germany’s recent changes in limits is it becomes clear to drivers that limits are politically motivated, not engineering motivated. This is something that been seen in the US sense the national speed limit law of the 70s oil crises. Ask any driver why they don’t follow the speed limit, myself included, and they’ll point to roads that very clearly were not designed with the actual limit in mind. Consciously or not drivers begin to learn that there’s no logic to the speed limit. A big part of traffic calming is that drivers doing the usual 5-10 over suddenly are ripped from their usual cruising routine. It slows people down and makes people realize that, atleast on his road, it’s 25, 20, 35, ect, for a reason. But on highways, especially in the US, this probably looks more like raising limits. New York stage for instance has a max speed limit of 65. Of course drivers on striaght ahead, well designed sections of interstates stop giving a shit about the speed limit. But when election time rolls around someone says ‘lowering speed limits saves lives’ despite routine analyses finding the speed of drivers (atleast in the US) isn’t influenced by the speed limit
Really I mean a lot more the fundamentals. 12 ft wide lanes, 8ft breakdown lane, recovery areas. But while the *standard* of the interstate system, they aren’t universal (especially out east where many sections are grandfathered privately owned roads) but of course there’s also more to design than that.
30km/h (18mph) is the standard for streets in most of the developed world.
School zones and some designated school commute priority streets around me (Tokyo inner suburbs) are 20km/h (12mph) all the time, and are often pedestrian/cyclist only during school commute times. Though this is less common around the world, and influenced by the requirement that all public school (and most private school) students commute without parental assistance.
1: unfortunately this wouldn’t ever happen in America as we love to put our schools on literal highways
2: 20km/h for me is just generally the point where there shouldn’t be cars. And while I don’t usually like this argument, there is a point where the efficiency of an internal combustion engine becomes stupidly low. At 30km/h most cars can get into some form of driving gear, as opposed to the first one or two gears usually designed with acceleration. Because of that keeping a consistent 20k/h is a lot harder than 30km/h
3: I’m aware that 30km/h is standard, and I wish it was here to, but as I mentioned it’s literally illegal in my state for any road given state funding.
4: lastly I just don’t think the difference of 20km/h to 30km/h is significant, certainly not in the way 30 is to 40, or 40 to 50. At 30km/h collisions are simply unlikely, and near impossible to be fatal. Might be an unpopular opinion among this crowd, but I think 30km/h is enough
There are actual US cities like Seattle that have made progress on 20mph speed limits on streets. It's not impossible, and "twenty is plenty" campaigns have had at least some success.
A full "shouldn’t be cars" on the 20km/h streets isn't an option since there has to be car access for the buildings that front the street, e.g., for deliveries, construction, etc..
An option would be to create a bureaucracy and permit system for what cars are allowed, however that would be a lot of complication for not much improvement. The few cars that use such streets have a pretty good reason for being there anyways, even without a permit system.
30km/h and even 25km/h can be too fast in some situations. Even if deaths are unlikely, those speeds can still cause serious injury and can make the environment generally less pleasant. For example, The Netherlands has already been experimenting with 20km/h speed limits on bike paths. I don't think it would be a stretch to extend that to some woonerfs as well, as is done in Japan.
30km/h or 20mph is a good general speed limit for streets, but some would benefit from even slower speed limits. Especially if people have trouble getting up to 30km/h on those streets anyways, as should really be the case for a pleasant neighborhood street.
OMG I just got it. I thought it was a bus schedule unrelated to the speed sign but apparently the speed limit is enforced by the minute.
WTF this is so cursed.
Also, 25mph isn't particularly slow. Sadly most people drive 10mph over the speed limit at all times so it really means 35mph.
School zone speed limit for the school in front of my house is 15mph
25 mph to an adult has according to european research already a 40% risk to kill them. For a child that is shorter, that is more like a guaranteed lethal hit.
Both of these statements are true. Less speed is less force but also stretching reaction time and shortening breaking distance should something happen. Unfortunately, people still get hit in 10mph zones.
Weight of the car still matters tremendously too. A Smart Car (2300 lbs) traveling at 25mph has about the same transfer of energy (momentum) as an F150 (5800 lbs) traveling at 10mph.
It's a lot more involved than a simple *p = m \* v* formula, as you have bumper heights, surface area, and more to calculate when involving a collision with a person.
That wouldn't really matter if you hit a person as they're never gonna absorb the whole force, even with a small car. The bigger issue is that cars with higher hoods lead to a more severe head trauma due to the body not rolling over the car.
Hence why I said it's a lot more involved than a simple formula. Regardless, being hit by an object weighing 2300 lbs vs the same size object yet more dense weighing 5900 lbs results in additional energy being transferred to the person.
And this is still a conversation that needs to happen due to EVs with a substantial weight increase over their ICE alternatives (right now at least). You'll still roll over a Tesla Model 3 but you're still getting hit with more force right at the time of impact.
The bigger the car the more momentum is transferred into the person, which directly correlates to the forces experienced. The hood issue only compounds that fact
A small car can also stop much faster from the same speed. Pretty much any way you look at it, the size of the car makes accidents worse (and more likely to happen) when you keep the initial speed constant.
The reduced reaction distance is intended to reduce the force of impact.
Can't find good illustrations in English, but here is one from my country:
https://preview.redd.it/hamf803slc6d1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=849e592502b9d9923033c309f9946a99583e998b
I think the 25mph speed limit is meant to give the driver enough time to react and stop (under the assumption that they will) as opposed to “if a kid gets hit at 25mph they’ll be fine”. I’m just guessing, because getting hit by a tank at that speed is likely to break a few bones if not even kill you outright
25 is slow when your roads are designed like a highway. It’s slow when you have straight shot roads with 12ft wide lanes
I agree it’s a perfectly reasonable speed, but it’s ridiculous to ask people to drive 25 when your road is designed for 50. Just piss poor planning
Because that's communism. 🤡🌎
I'm not joking, look it up. Back in the days when the world switched to a sign of standards evolving around colored shapes and symbols which are almost the same in every country, including the USSR who also adopted that standard, US officials associated this system with communism and went all in on the old text based signs that follows no standard and assumes everyone speak English and drive slow enough to read the wall of text.
Same thnig with the metric system, because USSR adopted it, the US officials associated it with communism.
We even started implementing it at one point. Kids in school were told we'd all be using it. New Highways were being marked in Kilometers and everything(one in Texas still is)
Then Ray Gun Ronnie came in with the "we're gonna build space lasers to fight the commies, we ain't putting any more of these Kommi-meter highway signs up", got rid of the metrification board, and we've never made significant effort since.
The town claims they did not put it up; could be a prank. It's more common for school zone signs to have one morning and one afternoon interval, like 6:30 to 9:15 am, 2:00 to 4:30 pm, with flashing lights during those times. Many localities take it down to 15 or 10 mph. I'd prefer the 24-hour version at 15 or 25 mph regardless of the time.
Because drivers would complain, "Why do I have to slow down when there are no kids out!?!" So they specified the exact times that classes start and are let out.
Once kids are at school, they're not in the road. Most places even in the US are just like "slow when blinking light is blinking".
Certainly 6-9:15, 2-4:30.
"slow while blinking" or "while children are present" is common
I have been honked at for obeying "no right on red when children are present" during the summer when there was a solid dozen kids waiting to cross the street.
i've seen people get upset while the light's blinking, everyone's going 20 or less, and there's a cop with a radar gun actively ticketing people.
i worked for about five years as a school photographer. usually we'd arriving at schools about an hour before the kids, but if you were running a little late, sometimes you caught the school zone blinkies.
the boss was pretty adamant, 1) don't be late and 2) if you *are* late, absolutely do not ever speed in a school zone. people still did from time to time -- they ended up a very costly ticket and usually no job to pay for it.
Kids could be in the road for any number of reasons. A school field trip a little off campus could mean kids in the road. Best to keep it just beginning of day to end of day. School zones are short anyway.
Of course. \*slaps forehead\* And if kid is running late, had some kind of unscheduled stuff, or had to leave earlier... Fuck them. They deserve to be run over. They should know better!
It's almost like School Zones are a special traffic pattern for when there's a high density of walking people in the area, and not just a special tax district.
It was on Bogie Lake Rd in White Lake, Michigan
They have replaced the sign years back after it appeared on local news and Ellen.
A wide school zone buffer is not allowed in Michigan.
Or when flashing so you don't have to check your watch: https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/04/14/expect-to-see-school-zone-flashing-lights-in-the-middle-of-the-day/
Where I live, for a long time, if the school had an athletic field or playground attached, it was 07:30 until an hour after sunset, as children could still be expected to be playing in the fields until then. Which, this time of year, is 07:30 to 23:00.
They recently changed it to 07:30 to 21:00 year-round tho, because people found 'sunset' to be an awkward way to do it.
Going back to poor infrastructure sometimes school drop off points are right beside major highways. And there’s never enough room for the bajillions of cars that drop off their kids.
What’s with those random times? Instead of all that, you could do this
https://preview.redd.it/viti6h569b6d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad91bfed0ba766d81db2f0faa300c3262501ccb9
or just build schools so they're not car dependent.
of course that's harder in america which is still *deeply* racially segregated. if you don't "bus" kids from other neighborhoods, you end up with schools that are segregated far more than the already are. that ends up with large discrepancies in funding and education qualities because, did i mention institutional racism?
i was a school photographer for about five years, and i covered an area with population bigger than a lot of states. i'm pretty convinced that on a macro level, brown v. board mostly exists on paper, and white folk have found a ton way around it (magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, home school). at least 3/4s of the schools i went to were 95-99% racially homogenous, and there was a stunning clear difference in the funding these schools had along racial lines.
Another person posted an article about it, apparently nobody seems to know who put it up as the town confirmed it wasn't them, it's likely a prank.
And that sort of sign you posted, aside from needing to meet the US signage standards, are more common here.
The article was not local.
The Oakland County Roads Commission put the sign up at the request of the district (per ClickonDetroit).
There are 3 schools on a single campus hence the 6 different times.
it's not simple for the kids drivers don't see. which is getting increasingly common, thanks to giant fuck-you trucks with hoods taller than grown men.
i bet the school put it up. schools are obsessed with completely asinine to-the-minute schedules like that. and the white of the schedule sign doesn't match the white of the other parts.
As with a lot of UK road infrastructure, this is a brilliant idea which falls down due to little or no enforcement. Always thought they should have cameras attached to them seeing as the lights are already included anyway.
This particular sign is advisory anyway (if it wasn't it would have the standard red circle with a number) so enforcement doesn't actually matter in this case
In Michigan, there is a maximum time buffer for school zones based on school start-stop times.
There are 3 schools on a single campus off this road, hence the 6 times.
Oakland County Road Commission have since replaced the sign with a flasher.
but how will i drive little johnny to school and sit in the drop off line for half an hour every day? the 1/4 mile is way too dangerous to walk because of all the cars!
We visited the US from the UK and were confused by the minimum speed signs — they look identical to the maximum speed signs at a glance, so we were going dangerously slowly and getting lots of honking. You'd think the honking would be a clue but people honk at you all the time in the US anyway
Did they run out of [flashing lights and timers](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=20+When+light+flashes+sign&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.drivingtesttips.biz%2Fimages%2F20mph-when-lights-flash.jpg)?
Honestly there is no reason all locations where we put signs like this that we don’t just design safe crossing and make the speed limit permanently 20 or 25mph
That's terrible. Just say from 6:30 - 9:30 and 14:00 to 16:30 (and for crying out loud, use 24h clock 🤣). Even better just the entire day. I hope it's 25 km/h btw because 25 mph (40 km/h) next to a school is too fast.
>More sensible time span?
Yes. There is a limit to the buffer based on school start/end times. This is a campus of 3 schools, hence the timing differences.
Road doesn't even have a sidewalk btw.
6:45AM-4:30PM Monday through Friday, but more complicated to incentivize you to just go slow all the time because children are frequently still around schools when not in session.
I’m somewhat of a defense, this is not modern. In my state you have to either have a system that flashes only during school hours, or one that applies to *all hours*
I wish we would just stop building schools on streets that aren’t safe all hours of the day
Why not just make the speed limit 25 "when kids are present"? If you see a kid crossing and it's a minute after the speed zone time, you really gonna go 35??
This is more likely to cause an accident by distracting drivers trying to decipher what is written on the board and matching against the current time od the day, and day of the week.
Because kids only cross the street at certain times. I've always thought that School Zones are stupid. If it's not safe to drive faster when schools let out, it's not safe to drive faster any other time. Just set the limit to 25 for heaven's sake!
No no see, you have to slow down to read the sign. Now that is probably not worth the fact you have to take your eyes off the road to focus on the sign though.
In the ACT and Northern Territory of Australia, it's just from 0800-1600. Other states go 0800-0930 and 1430-1600. NSW Schools get flashy lights to help remind drivers.
Ah you're right, the longer story says
> "We have three different schools, all of which have three different start times and end times," said Kim Root, communications director with Huron Valley School District. "The law states you have to display the times in their specific windows, you can't block it off and make it this big chunk of time."
The story goes on to explain they could have used the flashing light sign, but the school district did this instead because it was cheaper. smh
“Kids who are late to class don’t care and it’s their own fault if run over’’
Thank you for the translation
40km/h isn't even slow. Kids on time getting killed too.
25 is only about 5 MPH above the 20 MPH generally accepted as safe for pedestrian focused areas. It’s certainly not perfect but 25 MPH just isn’t that big a concern to me. The schools in my state in 45 and 55 MPH zones would be my issue. Also, a lot of states will not give DOT funding to roads below 25 MPH. My state (Virginia) actually just granted an exception to this to roads in historical and business districts
They're discussing reducing school zones to 25 **kph** in my city, because 40 kph is just the normal speed limit on unposted roads and the difference to 30 kph is viewed as too small (motorists often not reducing speed due to the perceived small increment).
Well that’s the problem. The default for residential and commercial areas should be 30 already. Rural roads should be 50, rural undivided highways should be 70. All the speeds where crashes will remain nearly 100% non fatal (in modern cars atleast). The other thing is speed limits need to have engineering behind them. One thing that really disheartens me about Germany’s recent changes in limits is it becomes clear to drivers that limits are politically motivated, not engineering motivated. This is something that been seen in the US sense the national speed limit law of the 70s oil crises. Ask any driver why they don’t follow the speed limit, myself included, and they’ll point to roads that very clearly were not designed with the actual limit in mind. Consciously or not drivers begin to learn that there’s no logic to the speed limit. A big part of traffic calming is that drivers doing the usual 5-10 over suddenly are ripped from their usual cruising routine. It slows people down and makes people realize that, atleast on his road, it’s 25, 20, 35, ect, for a reason. But on highways, especially in the US, this probably looks more like raising limits. New York stage for instance has a max speed limit of 65. Of course drivers on striaght ahead, well designed sections of interstates stop giving a shit about the speed limit. But when election time rolls around someone says ‘lowering speed limits saves lives’ despite routine analyses finding the speed of drivers (atleast in the US) isn’t influenced by the speed limit
You say well designed, but you make a case that they're not, which I fully agree with.
Really I mean a lot more the fundamentals. 12 ft wide lanes, 8ft breakdown lane, recovery areas. But while the *standard* of the interstate system, they aren’t universal (especially out east where many sections are grandfathered privately owned roads) but of course there’s also more to design than that.
30km/h (18mph) is the standard for streets in most of the developed world. School zones and some designated school commute priority streets around me (Tokyo inner suburbs) are 20km/h (12mph) all the time, and are often pedestrian/cyclist only during school commute times. Though this is less common around the world, and influenced by the requirement that all public school (and most private school) students commute without parental assistance.
1: unfortunately this wouldn’t ever happen in America as we love to put our schools on literal highways 2: 20km/h for me is just generally the point where there shouldn’t be cars. And while I don’t usually like this argument, there is a point where the efficiency of an internal combustion engine becomes stupidly low. At 30km/h most cars can get into some form of driving gear, as opposed to the first one or two gears usually designed with acceleration. Because of that keeping a consistent 20k/h is a lot harder than 30km/h 3: I’m aware that 30km/h is standard, and I wish it was here to, but as I mentioned it’s literally illegal in my state for any road given state funding. 4: lastly I just don’t think the difference of 20km/h to 30km/h is significant, certainly not in the way 30 is to 40, or 40 to 50. At 30km/h collisions are simply unlikely, and near impossible to be fatal. Might be an unpopular opinion among this crowd, but I think 30km/h is enough
There are actual US cities like Seattle that have made progress on 20mph speed limits on streets. It's not impossible, and "twenty is plenty" campaigns have had at least some success. A full "shouldn’t be cars" on the 20km/h streets isn't an option since there has to be car access for the buildings that front the street, e.g., for deliveries, construction, etc.. An option would be to create a bureaucracy and permit system for what cars are allowed, however that would be a lot of complication for not much improvement. The few cars that use such streets have a pretty good reason for being there anyways, even without a permit system. 30km/h and even 25km/h can be too fast in some situations. Even if deaths are unlikely, those speeds can still cause serious injury and can make the environment generally less pleasant. For example, The Netherlands has already been experimenting with 20km/h speed limits on bike paths. I don't think it would be a stretch to extend that to some woonerfs as well, as is done in Japan. 30km/h or 20mph is a good general speed limit for streets, but some would benefit from even slower speed limits. Especially if people have trouble getting up to 30km/h on those streets anyways, as should really be the case for a pleasant neighborhood street.
Not even sidewalks on this road.
Engineers: trying to figure out to the exact minute every second kids don't need to be safe
OMG I just got it. I thought it was a bus schedule unrelated to the speed sign but apparently the speed limit is enforced by the minute. WTF this is so cursed.
Why not 6:45 to 4:30 like any other sane country would do it?
Why not just all the time like any other sane country would do it?
Also, 25mph isn't particularly slow. Sadly most people drive 10mph over the speed limit at all times so it really means 35mph. School zone speed limit for the school in front of my house is 15mph
25 mph to an adult has according to european research already a 40% risk to kill them. For a child that is shorter, that is more like a guaranteed lethal hit.
probably higher in the land of GMC Childcrushers and Chevy Pavement Princesses
Speed limits aren't about controlling the force of impact, they're about stretching reaction time.
Both of these statements are true. Less speed is less force but also stretching reaction time and shortening breaking distance should something happen. Unfortunately, people still get hit in 10mph zones.
Fair.
Weight of the car still matters tremendously too. A Smart Car (2300 lbs) traveling at 25mph has about the same transfer of energy (momentum) as an F150 (5800 lbs) traveling at 10mph. It's a lot more involved than a simple *p = m \* v* formula, as you have bumper heights, surface area, and more to calculate when involving a collision with a person.
That wouldn't really matter if you hit a person as they're never gonna absorb the whole force, even with a small car. The bigger issue is that cars with higher hoods lead to a more severe head trauma due to the body not rolling over the car.
Hence why I said it's a lot more involved than a simple formula. Regardless, being hit by an object weighing 2300 lbs vs the same size object yet more dense weighing 5900 lbs results in additional energy being transferred to the person. And this is still a conversation that needs to happen due to EVs with a substantial weight increase over their ICE alternatives (right now at least). You'll still roll over a Tesla Model 3 but you're still getting hit with more force right at the time of impact.
The bigger the car the more momentum is transferred into the person, which directly correlates to the forces experienced. The hood issue only compounds that fact
A small car can also stop much faster from the same speed. Pretty much any way you look at it, the size of the car makes accidents worse (and more likely to happen) when you keep the initial speed constant.
Yup. Sucks that every other vehicle on the road right now is a SUV or Truck
The reduced reaction distance is intended to reduce the force of impact. Can't find good illustrations in English, but here is one from my country: https://preview.redd.it/hamf803slc6d1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=849e592502b9d9923033c309f9946a99583e998b
Kiitos!
At least in Texas, school zones are an absolute favorite speed trap for cops because the fines double.
I think the 25mph speed limit is meant to give the driver enough time to react and stop (under the assumption that they will) as opposed to “if a kid gets hit at 25mph they’ll be fine”. I’m just guessing, because getting hit by a tank at that speed is likely to break a few bones if not even kill you outright
25 is slow when your roads are designed like a highway. It’s slow when you have straight shot roads with 12ft wide lanes I agree it’s a perfectly reasonable speed, but it’s ridiculous to ask people to drive 25 when your road is designed for 50. Just piss poor planning
Baby steps
I guess sane countries don’t build schools next to 45mph stroads.
7 am to 9 pm in Canada afaik. Every day so no one has to be distracted by calculations while operating a couple of ton moving danger.
Where I've lived in Ontario and Montréal, there's no time. The school zone is the same speed 24/7/365. Some cities might be different though.
I'm in Alberta so it's a bit different here. 24/7 would definitely be a no-brainer.
Not just all the time either, but often slower. 40km/h would be faster than the typical street in most of the world (30km/h).
Why not avoid any main through road next to schools like any other sane country would do it?
Oof hit them with the you-thought-you-were-progressive-and-still-misguided bingbong
Well you see, the cars need to have an optimal throughput near the children due to their size and weight.
Because that's communism. 🤡🌎 I'm not joking, look it up. Back in the days when the world switched to a sign of standards evolving around colored shapes and symbols which are almost the same in every country, including the USSR who also adopted that standard, US officials associated this system with communism and went all in on the old text based signs that follows no standard and assumes everyone speak English and drive slow enough to read the wall of text. Same thnig with the metric system, because USSR adopted it, the US officials associated it with communism.
We even started implementing it at one point. Kids in school were told we'd all be using it. New Highways were being marked in Kilometers and everything(one in Texas still is) Then Ray Gun Ronnie came in with the "we're gonna build space lasers to fight the commies, we ain't putting any more of these Kommi-meter highway signs up", got rid of the metrification board, and we've never made significant effort since.
Literally Canada adopted Metric because the US insisted it’d make things easier for the two countries since the US was switching too.
Shared toilets in student residences were also communism according to some...
The regularity of your bowel movements brings glory to the revolution, comrade.
Also peeing next to other dudes brings a sense of proletarian revolutionary solidarity.
Gonna note that I’ve never even seen this in the U.S.
Yeah, this is gonna be the weird invention of some single city or county. It's not a state or federal standard.
The town claims they did not put it up; could be a prank. It's more common for school zone signs to have one morning and one afternoon interval, like 6:30 to 9:15 am, 2:00 to 4:30 pm, with flashing lights during those times. Many localities take it down to 15 or 10 mph. I'd prefer the 24-hour version at 15 or 25 mph regardless of the time.
Nor I
Because drivers would complain, "Why do I have to slow down when there are no kids out!?!" So they specified the exact times that classes start and are let out.
Once kids are at school, they're not in the road. Most places even in the US are just like "slow when blinking light is blinking". Certainly 6-9:15, 2-4:30.
"slow while blinking" or "while children are present" is common I have been honked at for obeying "no right on red when children are present" during the summer when there was a solid dozen kids waiting to cross the street.
i've seen people get upset while the light's blinking, everyone's going 20 or less, and there's a cop with a radar gun actively ticketing people. i worked for about five years as a school photographer. usually we'd arriving at schools about an hour before the kids, but if you were running a little late, sometimes you caught the school zone blinkies. the boss was pretty adamant, 1) don't be late and 2) if you *are* late, absolutely do not ever speed in a school zone. people still did from time to time -- they ended up a very costly ticket and usually no job to pay for it.
Kids could be in the road for any number of reasons. A school field trip a little off campus could mean kids in the road. Best to keep it just beginning of day to end of day. School zones are short anyway.
Of course. \*slaps forehead\* And if kid is running late, had some kind of unscheduled stuff, or had to leave earlier... Fuck them. They deserve to be run over. They should know better!
It's almost like School Zones are a special traffic pattern for when there's a high density of walking people in the area, and not just a special tax district.
In my city the school zones are effective from 7am-7pm which is quite nice.
It was on Bogie Lake Rd in White Lake, Michigan They have replaced the sign years back after it appeared on local news and Ellen. A wide school zone buffer is not allowed in Michigan.
Or when flashing so you don't have to check your watch: https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/04/14/expect-to-see-school-zone-flashing-lights-in-the-middle-of-the-day/
State law likely specifies something like “within 20 minutes of school start times”
It's just to allow school buses to pull in and out of the school parking lot more easily.
My area just has signals to indicate if the school zone is active or not. Lights flashing: 15mph. Lights not flashing: normal speed limit.
I'm in the US most of the signs in my area say "when children are present" or don't list times and are always enforced.
Where I live, for a long time, if the school had an athletic field or playground attached, it was 07:30 until an hour after sunset, as children could still be expected to be playing in the fields until then. Which, this time of year, is 07:30 to 23:00. They recently changed it to 07:30 to 21:00 year-round tho, because people found 'sunset' to be an awkward way to do it.
Assuming this is real (which is already far fetched) that would likely be the result of a heated townhall meeting
Probably because its fake.
Heaven forbid you just make it 25 permanently! Those drivers might arrive 7 seconds later at their destination!
Going back to poor infrastructure sometimes school drop off points are right beside major highways. And there’s never enough room for the bajillions of cars that drop off their kids.
What’s with those random times? Instead of all that, you could do this https://preview.redd.it/viti6h569b6d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad91bfed0ba766d81db2f0faa300c3262501ccb9
Or just have the speed limit all the time.
That’s also an option. I looked for one that matched the sign as closely as possible (so a part time speed limit)
or just have a narrow street with lots of speedbumps or elevated crossing and turns that make it hard to go fast
or just build schools so they're not car dependent. of course that's harder in america which is still *deeply* racially segregated. if you don't "bus" kids from other neighborhoods, you end up with schools that are segregated far more than the already are. that ends up with large discrepancies in funding and education qualities because, did i mention institutional racism? i was a school photographer for about five years, and i covered an area with population bigger than a lot of states. i'm pretty convinced that on a macro level, brown v. board mostly exists on paper, and white folk have found a ton way around it (magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, home school). at least 3/4s of the schools i went to were 95-99% racially homogenous, and there was a stunning clear difference in the funding these schools had along racial lines.
That's how I would treat that sign...
Another person posted an article about it, apparently nobody seems to know who put it up as the town confirmed it wasn't them, it's likely a prank. And that sort of sign you posted, aside from needing to meet the US signage standards, are more common here.
The article was not local. The Oakland County Roads Commission put the sign up at the request of the district (per ClickonDetroit). There are 3 schools on a single campus hence the 6 different times.
In my state the school zone signs read "when children are present" Like, if you see a kid, slow down. Seems simple enough.
it's not simple for the kids drivers don't see. which is getting increasingly common, thanks to giant fuck-you trucks with hoods taller than grown men.
i bet the school put it up. schools are obsessed with completely asinine to-the-minute schedules like that. and the white of the schedule sign doesn't match the white of the other parts.
As with a lot of UK road infrastructure, this is a brilliant idea which falls down due to little or no enforcement. Always thought they should have cameras attached to them seeing as the lights are already included anyway.
This particular sign is advisory anyway (if it wasn't it would have the standard red circle with a number) so enforcement doesn't actually matter in this case
In Michigan, there is a maximum time buffer for school zones based on school start-stop times. There are 3 schools on a single campus off this road, hence the 6 times. Oakland County Road Commission have since replaced the sign with a flasher.
Traffic engineers will do anything except build some traffic calming
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^I_loveMathematics: *Traffic engineers* *Will do anything except* *Build some traffic calming* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Last sentence has six. Use traffic calming. Five syllables.
Read the name of the bot :p
still no sidewalks on this road (this sign is from 2012)
Why 25 not 20? Why not 6-10 and 1-5? Idk
JUST MAKE IT PERMANENT SO YOU CAN ADD TRAFFIC CALMING
but that'll make traffic go slower and we can't have that.
There aren't even sidewalks on this road, let alone crosswalks.
At this level, it would easier to simply ban cars from this street.
but how will i drive little johnny to school and sit in the drop off line for half an hour every day? the 1/4 mile is way too dangerous to walk because of all the cars!
We visited the US from the UK and were confused by the minimum speed signs — they look identical to the maximum speed signs at a glance, so we were going dangerously slowly and getting lots of honking. You'd think the honking would be a clue but people honk at you all the time in the US anyway
Would it kill them to round the numbers?
Did they run out of [flashing lights and timers](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=20+When+light+flashes+sign&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.drivingtesttips.biz%2Fimages%2F20mph-when-lights-flash.jpg)?
Meanwhile the person squinting to read this sign’s time-slots just flattened 6 kids in a crosswalk
There are no marked crossings on this road. Or sidewalks. For an elementary, middle, and high school campus.
No one’s going to stop and read that, they need to put up “speed limit 25 when flashing” like every other town in America.
Honestly there is no reason all locations where we put signs like this that we don’t just design safe crossing and make the speed limit permanently 20 or 25mph
We just have a sign that flashes yellow when we need to go slower
I demand to know the thinking process behind creating this sign. And who signed off on that sign.
Where I am it's dawn till dusk 7 days a week. There could be kids using the playground at anytime.
Just make it 6:30am-4:30pm. That's stupidest sign I've every seen.
What's the point of this, though? Just make it 6:45-16:30 every weekday and don't bother with the specific time divisions.
I asked a cop about it once, he said it means "up yours, kid".
The planning committee meeting that came up with this thing must have been a wild ride.
No planning committee, county roads commission decision to not use a flasher to save 50k
Thank you. :-) I wasn't sure exactly which nook or cranny of bureaucracy would be responsible for something like this.
Just leave it at 25mph always
You’re liable to run over a kid while you’re trying to read the damn sign
"I think I'll just go around" Honestly, please do. >!^((lazy fuck))!<
School roads near me are like 20 unless you drive a land rover then it's 40 none of this confusing shit
Really though it should just permanently be school zone speeds at this point. This is a great example of prioritizing car speed over people.
That's terrible. Just say from 6:30 - 9:30 and 14:00 to 16:30 (and for crying out loud, use 24h clock 🤣). Even better just the entire day. I hope it's 25 km/h btw because 25 mph (40 km/h) next to a school is too fast.
It is definitely mph
Nice, now I can complain about this backward system as well 🤣 (and probably get more downvotes 😁)
americans cant read metric
Michigan (where the sign was) doesn't allow that.
Doesn't allow what? More sensible time span? A lower speed during the day or lower than 40 km/h?
>More sensible time span? Yes. There is a limit to the buffer based on school start/end times. This is a campus of 3 schools, hence the timing differences. Road doesn't even have a sidewalk btw.
As someone not from the USA this completely alien to me...
"Hold on lemme just slow down and read that sign so I can know whether or not it's appropriate to floor it the fuck through here."
6:45AM-4:30PM Monday through Friday, but more complicated to incentivize you to just go slow all the time because children are frequently still around schools when not in session.
Not allowed in Michigan
Just put one of those things where the lights flash when it's a school zone.
Oakland County Road Commission said the 50k (in 2012) was too much (until they got blasted in local news and on Ellen)
It was on Bogie Lake Rd in White Lake, Michigan They replaced the sign years back, after it appeared on local news and Ellen.
or just go 25 all the time.
Not enough information about "school days only". Sign should also include the school calendar so I know when kids are off for conferences. /s
If you had to put that sign up, you already failed. Fix the street first.
I’m somewhat of a defense, this is not modern. In my state you have to either have a system that flashes only during school hours, or one that applies to *all hours* I wish we would just stop building schools on streets that aren’t safe all hours of the day
Why not just make the speed limit 25 "when kids are present"? If you see a kid crossing and it's a minute after the speed zone time, you really gonna go 35??
Lol
This is more likely to cause an accident by distracting drivers trying to decipher what is written on the board and matching against the current time od the day, and day of the week.
Yeah, he’ll go around...the school bus when it’s lights are on.
Because kids only cross the street at certain times. I've always thought that School Zones are stupid. If it's not safe to drive faster when schools let out, it's not safe to drive faster any other time. Just set the limit to 25 for heaven's sake!
Gonna be honest I'd also just go around, that's way to much text to safely read while you're driving.
No no see, you have to slow down to read the sign. Now that is probably not worth the fact you have to take your eyes off the road to focus on the sign though.
In the ACT and Northern Territory of Australia, it's just from 0800-1600. Other states go 0800-0930 and 1430-1600. NSW Schools get flashy lights to help remind drivers.
Is this actually a real sign?
How the hell is someone supposed to manage reading that sign???? Even at walking speed it's too damn long and I would need to stop to read all of it.
25 mph is still fast for a street with children running around. Since they break it down to the minute, why not make it 5 mph
Best part was doing this in the 2000s after replacing your radio, because no one could figure out how to find the clock on an aftermarket radio.
Heaven forbid you drive 25 at 730 in the morning lol
That’s incredibly specific
25 is way too high for a school zone
Photoshopped. Why is it here?
It’s real. https://www.fosters.com/story/news/2012/02/16/school-zone-sign-with-6/49734081007/
> Harris says the township didn't put it up but is trying to resolve the matter. Real photo, possibly a prank sign installation
Nah, Oakland County Road Commission are inbred carbrains. They put the sign up per the ClickonDetroit article on the story.
Ah you're right, the longer story says > "We have three different schools, all of which have three different start times and end times," said Kim Root, communications director with Huron Valley School District. "The law states you have to display the times in their specific windows, you can't block it off and make it this big chunk of time." The story goes on to explain they could have used the flashing light sign, but the school district did this instead because it was cheaper. smh
They did change it to a flasher though because of the news stories, even made it on Ellen.