Car traffic

In front of the speed cameras speech in France, I do find here the kind of debate a society is made of nowadays. Rules are here, everybody knows them, so a fine is what’s earned in due knowledge from the user.

If I do remember well, it is 30 miles per hour ( closed to 50km/h) throughout towns in the UK, and quite a relevant speed limit that might not need to be lowered more given the improvements in car, security belts, bumpers, signals and so on. Now in town, 30 km/h is a limit that bothers me, perhaps too low for a car trip, hence I do park and rather walk. Won’t go speaking of the utterly fruitful business of car parking...

I once lived in a town across the channel, Bristol, celebrated in a newspaper as being the slowest town for cars in the whole UK. I won't speak of the road structures which is something done in a long time and might not correspond to modern traffic, hey, it s heritage, so I rather enjoy it, rather than complaining about it. One thing I did appreciate there, pedestrians need to push a button before crossing the street. It is proof of co-management of the traffic flow by the users themselves, why couldn’t we go further?

The fun theory advocated by VW here shows that civism is part of ourselves on the road. Like a photo, we do need to reveal it further and get traffic users to interact in the traffic management, indirectly or directly.

That leads me to this post. At a time where we do see management of energy as a pre requisite to live our lives for now and for the future, I would like to see here these principles being applied to car traffic management for the better.

Let me explain, smart grids are since a couple of years, being rolled out. Households are creating some energy, perhaps not using it all, and stocking an energy they might not use at the moment, hence this electricity is redirected via these smart devices to the network.

Car traffic is a network. And I am much more annoyed by stopping at a red lights for the sixth time in 500 meters. Energy-wise, it would save fuel, stress-wise, it would save nerves, hence mistakes while driving. So if we are going to a full throttle regulation on speed, and here I do believe more accidents are happening in town centers, rather than on highways. Equip red lights with a device to feel the flow of car traffic all around, and to harmonize it to 50 Km/h on a whole map. Ok this system wouldn’t work in very busy area, I am thinking of Place de l’etoile, still would be beneficial in some parts of towns here and there. Civism is part of us, we can find ways to reveal it to involve us for the better.

If you know a town where this system exists, please tell me.