Ditto. It’s not the breathless hysteria about child abduction or (conversely) busybody neighbors calling the cops on unaccompanied minors that keep my kids inside. It’s the insane drivers in 4 ton lifted pickups and the town’s refusal to lower the speed limit, or even post “Children Playing” signs that does it.
Lowering the speed limit isn't going to get the guy in the glass packed souped up Honda who blows through the stop sign in front of my house multiple times a day to actually slow down. That's that dudes whole deal.
It's just going to give highly attentive people tickets that want to get to work at a reasonable speed like 30.
Speed limit signs are almost useless, especially if not enforced (preferably by speed cameras, preferably without announcing their location with signs).
The correct solution to get that guy to stop is to make the street less deadly by design. It should be narrowed, made more winding and have visual 'clutter' added like trees, flower planters, etc. It should be intensely uncomfortable to speed more than 5-ish mph, and people who choose to do so anyway need to meet a traffic calming measure and be on the phone to their body shop well before they speed up enough to endanger a life.
In our neighborhood, some streets have speeding problem. Some neighbors asked city to install speed bumps but the city refuses to do so those because then emergency vehicles will be slowed down too.
In our Canadian city, the speed bumps have breaks that allow wide-axle vehicles (buses, emergency vehicles) to pass with minimal braking[0]. Some large passenger vehicles can get through the same way, but for most vehicles it's a speed bump.
The issue with speed bumps is that it's just not a good traffic calming design. Why should a vehicle slow down to, say, 20 kmh at random spots when the limit is 40 kmh? Traffic tables[1] are much better, in that if they're properly installed, you don't need to slow down if you're already going the speed limit. They should be installed at pedestrian crossings to make the crossing level with the sidewalk (cars go up and down) instead of being level with the street (pedestrians go down, then up). The street should be narrowed at pedestrian crossings too, and at all intersections (no parking there anyway).
Hitting a kid at 30 is going to cause some harm. I don’t think that 30 is a good compromise.
They are rare where I live but street layouts which promote better driving would help. They have low/no kerbs and wind through planting etc to keep speed down.
However this messes up a commute to work, so unfortunately it’s not a perfect solution.
The likelihood of severe injury or death goes down dramatically with lower speeds. A reasonable speed is a variable concept, but certainly minor residential streets should never have speeds in excess of 40 kmh (25 mph). My city recently reduced the limit to 40 kmh on all such streets. Now they just have to go the other 95% of the work - physically designing the streets for their posted limits, so that the option of speeding is simply removed (unless you're okay with regularly spending money at a body shop).
30 MPH is not in no way a reasonable speed for side streets in a neighborhood that you want to be walkable and child-friendly. Save 30 mph for major arterials. If neighborhood side streets have 30 mph speed limits people are just going to blow through any stopsigns the city puts in to pretend it is pedestrian friendly, and they are going to kill people when they do so.
What will "Children playing" signs do? The concept always amused me. Does anyone seriously think a driver, having already made a decision to be a speeding asshole, will change their behaviour because of some lame, barely noticeable sign? It's even sadder to see those homemade ones people put up on the boulevards.
Your city failed to properly design streets and enforce traffic laws. This happened because, over many decades, the voters in your city wanted it to be so, and voted accordingly. Unless the attitudes of voters change, and/or people who want this to change but don't vote in municipal elections start voting, no amount of "think of the children" signs will ever make a dent in the situation. And, while we're at it, slapping a 40 kmh (or whatever American equivalent) sign on a wide straight "residential street" where you can comfortably do double that speed without risking a trip to the body shop is about as effective.
Physical re-design and effective (preferably automated) speed enforcement. Nothing else works, no point wasting steel and paint.
Are "children playing" even effective? Do you think the dangerous problem drivers are actually giving a shit about them? Similar for speed limit signs unless you have strict and regular enforcement. Although at least the prudent drivers would obey those.
