That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing. My response to him was that he oughtn't let his kids play in the street. He started ranting, so I pulled away, and he shouted after me "SLOW DOWN YOU ASSHOLE!!".
When I got home, upset by this, I went back and looked at my logs. I also use an app called Torque that logs all the data from my car's OBDII port, and GPS data as well. So I was able to verify that at no point was I going more that 5mph below the posted limit, and from the point where those kids were visible, I was going far slower than that.
My conclusion from just one datapoint is that people are irrational about what they allow their kids to do (play in the road) while expecting other people to accept and mitigate the potential risk; and also that people have little ability to estimate vehicle speed accurately.
Still - a pretty bad overreaction from the "Dad" :(
Furthermore, like was mentioned by previous posters and the article, there are further legal traffic laws that can be implemented to protect side streets from incurring unreasonable or unsafe traffic (e.g. no thru traffic, rush hour restrictions, lower speed limits, additional stop signs or even speed bumps, etc). By all means, local governments should be using these laws and regulations to ensure neighborhood streets are as safe as possible. However, even with minimal traffic, kids playing in a street will always be a risk. If the street does not have adequate safety measures AND enforcement then as a parent you should not allow your child to play in or near the street without accepting the risk.
It is a public street that was designed to service the neighborhood and the traffic traveling to the neighborhood. It is not a highway.
It is easy to share a pie between two people. It is very hard to share a pie between 400 people. In the US roads ARE NOT designed as a shared space between people and cars. If you play in the road you could very well die due to one person on a phone when they shouldn't be.
Stay alive, keep off the road.
That's the problem. Kids cannot safely play in the street in many "safe" neighborhoods in the US. They should be able to, but they can't. Americans practically worship cars. The roads are treated like sacred land. Safety and happiness are set aside for the sake of motoring.
Why should they be able to? Mass + velocity = splat. You can't deny the physics.
The Americans worshiping cars boat sailed like 70 years ago, it is too late to do anything significant about that in a short period of time without spending trillions. Unless you think replacing most of our infrastructure and moving massive numbers of people is a good idea.
And the roads are treated like scared land. They are the arteries and veins of our economy and life.
His son was hit and killed while crossing the street a few years ago.
Why is it that when it comes to driving safety, the first and paramount factor that people jump to is speed? To be sure, speed can make some accidents more likely, and probably worsen the results of many accidents. But I don't see that it's a more important factor than inattention, failure to respect traffic signs or lane discipline, failure to signal properly, poor training, poor automobile maintenance. Of these, inattention (viz cell phone usage, but not other contributors such as interacting with passengers) is the only other one I ever see addressed.
Why doesn't society tell people "keep to the right lane" or "signal your turns"? I'm willing to bet that your neighbor never yells at motorists "stop arguing with the kids in the backseat".
It's funny, because I live in California, and I find myself wanting to yell these things a people all the time.
And in at least some states you can be ticketed for improper lane use and failure to signal.
I hate these people. They never have any idea how fast you're actually driving. In my experience, the person complaining is deflecting blame. The only times this has happened to me is the result of someone's dog running in front of my car because they couldn't be bothered to control it (or let their kids walk a 100lb dog next to a road).
Speed on residential roads is definitely a problem, but yelling at the people who aren't speeding isn't going to solve the problem.
Instead of creating gigantic roads that give drivers a false sense of confidence, employ smaller roads that encourage people to drive more slowly and use the same space to create safe paths and trails for pedestrians, cyclists and joggers to enjoy.
It's beyond bizarre that the roads in most subdivisions are so broad, and yet by design so lightly used. The amount of space in a typical subdivision devoted to roads and setbacks is staggering.
Study after study shows that the wider the lanes and roads are the faster the traffic will go. Making a street feel like you should drive slowly causes people to drive slowly.
For example, the average suburban cul-de-sac has a wider road than a country highway where you're expected to go at least twice as fast. It's two lanes plus a generous curb-side allowance for parking that, in another twist of irony, a lot of homeowners associations don't even allow.
I've lived in grid-based neighborhoods and apart from a few hours a day when things are unusually busy it's no worse than a street I lived on that connected to nowhere. A little traffic now and then isn't going to kill you, and nobody I knew growing up ever got rubbed out by a car. You quickly learn to respect traffic and avoid it.
Those things are all done safely on grids. Your example does not work to the logical end you want it to.
That singular optimal route funnels traffic away from my kids riding bikes, playing street hockey, drawing chalk cities, or anything else their little minds can come up with. It's why houses on a 'quiet street' are coveted, and sell for more than the same house on a busy street.
To call a design like that 'absurd' you'd have to completely ignore all of the reasons people want to pay more for it...