A blog for better streets and public spaces in Portland, Maine.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Reckless driving may be legal, but that doesn't make it OK

The current speed limit on Franklin Arterial, Marginal Way, and a number of other in-town Portland streets is 35 miles per hour:



2 comments:

Don said...

Ow... That is disturbing. Very disturbing.

A little number that I figured out recently... Speed in MPH is really meaningless to a pedestrian, or in any urban situation. The measure that matters to people on foot is fps. Feet per second.

All you need to remember is 1.466.
That's the equivalent of 1 mph expressed in fps. Round up to 1.5 for close enough.
e.g. multiply by 30, and in one second a car will travel 45 feet. A pedestrian at 3mph can travel 4.5 feet in the same time. Not even the width of a car.

Anonymous said...

There's another ad in the same UK series, equally graphic, that makes the same point in terms of survival rates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvja-PA5Egc&feature=related