A Bay Area reporter is scared because a safety improvement program worked.
I’ve read dozens of similar stories. This one is from the Golden Gate Bridge where a movable median barrier was installed to prevent head-on crashes. Traffic is safer and people are now driving faster on the divided highway.
Win-win, right? Get there safer and sooner.
Not if you’re one of those people who takes speed limit signs seriously. Because somebody left the old 45 mph signs up, almost every driver on the new bridge is a speeder. And speeders are bad.
That’s missing the point. It’s a clear case of a speed limit problem, not a speeding problem.
Speed limits in California are supposed to be set based on the prevailing speed of traffic (up to 65 mph). Otherwise it’s a speed trap. And speed traps are bad.
If there was an engineering study justifying the lower limit, it was obsolete the day they installed the median barriers. The signs should be removed, leaving the state 65 mph limit in effect, and a speed study started to see if the limit should be changed.
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