Paved with good intentions

[unixronin]

Via cracked.com, Bitmines, and paulesyllabic¹, the five most popular safety laws that don’t actually work.

Highlights:

• “Traffic calming” costs more lives than it saves.  “One report from Boulder, Colorado suggests that for every life saved by traffic calming, as many as 85 people may die because emergency vehicles are delayed.  It found response times are typically extended by 14% by speed-reduction measures.  Another study conducted by the fire department in Austin, Texas showed an increase in the travel time of ambulances when transporting victims of up to 100%.”
• [1997 article]  A 1997 study found that in 1994-1995, crime (both violent and overall) decreased by three times as much in states without Three Strikes laws as in states with them.  In eight of the thirteen states that had three-strikes laws, crime actually increased during that period.
• Fully half of the 233 Amber Alerts issued in 2004 were for children who were in no danger.  48 of the 233 alerts — more than 20% — were for children who hadn’t even been abducted.
• Sex offender registries don’t distinguish between serial rapists and somebody who took a leak in public while drunk.  Besides, 95% of sexual assault victims, child or adult, already know their attacker anyway.

And I’m sure I don’t have to point out the utter stupidity behind zero-tolerance policies to anyone here... not to mention the rampant abuses.

[1]  Not necessarily in that order.  Or any order.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that, in the US at least, few municipalities seem to have the faintest idea how to actually construct a properly scaled speed bump. If the speed bumps are intended to enforce a speed limit of 20mph, you probably can't do more than 5mph over them without bottoming out your suspension.

Still, one of the funnier things I've ever seen was when we lived in Tracy, California, driving down to the grocery store and being passed at about 75mph (in a 40 limit) by some totally riced-out Honda covered in Type-R stickers and all the usual rice-racer crap, getting to the Safeway a couple of minutes later, pulling into the parking lot, and finding said ricer directly in front of the store ... immovably high-centered on a speed bump, with the front wheels easily two inches off the ground, and the occupants standing around it looking bewildered and embarrassed as they tried to figure out how to unstick the stupid-looking POS without tearing the underside out of the car.


(By the way ... if you haven't come across it before, go read the Honda wigger clown car story (http://www.tamparacing.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-244931.html). It's hilarious.)