For city streets, it doesn't matter what speed people _want_ to drive. You need to be able to come to a stop when kids playing ball on the sidewalk run out in front of your car chasing the ball.
Of course, most of the time, there is nothing out of the ordinary happening, and so people happily drive 45 in residential zones. The one time something out of the ordinary happens, you have dead pedestrians. Hundreds of them a year in NYC alone.
So, what you are telling me is that we need to put fences on all sidewalks except at the crossings to prevent pedestrians from doing something stupid that could get them killed? That would save hundreds of lives a year, right? Much easier than getting millions of drivers to comply with speed limits they don't agree with, right?
Everything has a cost, and it's very easy to blow that off if you don't have to pay it.
And, before you suggest that no one would ever put up a fence like that, California actually does occasionally. Generally where pedestrians try to cross a 12-freakin'-lane-superhighway on foot.
These are city streets. They can't put up fences because the UPS guy couldn't unload, your trash couldn't be picked up, you couldn't get to the sidewalk after parking your car, etc.
> These are city streets. They can't put up fences because the UPS guy couldn't unload, your trash couldn't be picked up, you couldn't get to the sidewalk after parking your car, etc.
Exactly. There is a cost, and you're not willing to pay it. Fair enough.
However, that also holds for speed limits. There are costs. In this instance the costs probably appear as clogged courts. If you make traffic regulations too stringent or too punitive, everybody starts to fight them in court.
Of course, most of the time, there is nothing out of the ordinary happening, and so people happily drive 45 in residential zones. The one time something out of the ordinary happens, you have dead pedestrians. Hundreds of them a year in NYC alone.