Unintended results of placing speed bumps

THERE has been a lot of heated debate in the metro regarding the municipality’s plans to prioritise spending for traffic calming measures across the city.

But is the consensus wisdom about speed humps being such a good idea correct, even if safety is the primary concern?

On the one hand, humps slow traffic down and that probably saves lives, but they also bring some unintended consequences.

Many cars and trucks swerve around the humps, which arguably makes the road more dangerous than no humps at all.

Humps slow down the response times of emergency services.

Traffic may drive alternative routes to avoid humps, causing traffic flows to change and making other roads less safe.

And let’s face it, we all have the occasional blonde moment and forget about the hump when driving at 60km/h – that causes injury to passengers and damage to cars, it can cause accidents, it can raise delivery costs and the overall costs of doing business. Who pays all these costs? Increasingly, speed bumps are being used by residents and neighbourhood watch groups, not for safety reasons, but as a way of actively trying to keep drivers away, rather than welcoming them for business.

These groups of people are seeking to protect the privacy and comfortable communities in which they live with less of a concern for road safety.

The opposite view is that speed humps are the enemies of smooth transport, business and progress.

I urge councillor Rano Kayser, portfolio chairperson of roads and infrastructure, to consider the wider implications when deciding where to place speed humps.

Rather than spread them equally across all wards in the metro, humps should be targeted at those roads where statistics have proved that there is a “real” safety need for them. Kayser has a tough job. Progress and privacy are in rare supply these days, so whatever he does, everyone will be unhappy!

David Hamer, Kragga Kamma Park, Port Elizabeth