Speed Bumps
I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, about to open my car door, when I look into my left mirror and see an automobile coming straight at me. At the last second, the car swerves.
Over the past six thousand years, man has perfected the art of road making. San Francisco, a city of hills and fine road-making machinery, knows that art.
Why, then, has it allowed its planners to place dangerous speed bumps — skateboarder moguls — on its streets, causing vehicles to swerve? One hundred thousand automobiles swerving twenty times a day equals two million swerves in a single day. Someone is going to get hurt. There are 994,000 vehicles registered in San Francisco.
It would have been cheaper to dig potholes — damage to front-end wheel alignment is the same.
What about pedestrians who cross in the middle of the block, who believe motorists are slowing down for them when, in fact, they’re slowing to avoid the bumps? Those unseen pedestrians are going to get hit.
This writer drives right over those bumps. Risk of losing control of the car is less than from swerving.
Read “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” where author Jane Jacobs explains that cities evolved naturally, without planning. San Francisco: stop planning. Remove those bumps.