Look at these charts. Speeding rural areas kill! Also, take a guess at what time SUVs became popular in urban areas. https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/roadway-and-environment/f...
At best, they're a passive aggressive way of exerting government control over citizens. At worst, they're a revenue-increasing mafia-protection-like tool.
If you actually want to protect pedestrians, you build physical "traffic calming" obstacles like speed bumps or chicanes [1]. Switzerland is full of these, and they're very effective. There's really no good reason to have speed cameras (although red light cameras might be a better idea), especially on the motorway (Germany manages without motorway speed limits, so clearly they're not necessary to have a functioning society).
Australia is full of them in sneaky places. It makes the driving experience quite stressful. The speed limits are sometimes ridiculously low and it’s like playing a game.
Speed bumps/breakers are way more effective at slowing cars down. If you don’t slow, you get a big fat jolt and damage your shocks.
I like driving in US much better.
The hole in the hedge from the cars going through it has almost grown in!
My personal pet idea for pedestrian areas, especially in suburbs, would be to close off one entrance to a road, making them a dead end, stopping them from being short cuts. Not much difference to the people living there, they can still park and access. But now there will be no through traffic.
It work well, but it puts a lot of political pressure on the mayor for a while, until the people who used to go through the city adjust to the new plan. It often gets reverted after a small while.
They're still very unpopular.
Accident figures peak.
Council installs "safety" camera and lowers speed limit.
Next year figures revert to mean. Council: "Aha! The lower limit and camera has cut accidents, we'll make it permanent".
Net result: speed camera in middle of nowhere, on a dual carriageway, in isolated section of 40mph limit. Often on a bend.
Goodbye 85th percentile rule in yet another spot. I can see why that's unpopular. Yet the spots that really should have cameras near schools, or in other spots around town, generally don't.
In many places (including Ireland, where I live) the same roads where people drive are where you walk your dog or ride a bike - with no footpath. The 85th percentile guideline doesn't help them.
Remember that roads were for walking (by humans, horses, etc) and drivers turned up and stole them.
On dual carriageways, which is about the only location I ever feel annoyed by speed cameras, it's a fairly reasonable basis for setting limits. That's the situation you find reductions of limit, with associated speed camera, that are simply unexplainable from road conditions, and lack of sources of danger, risks such as built up areas etc.
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.65301,-2.0079976,12.25z
That's the M6 toll, a road the folks who control such things would like you to pay them money to drive on. Note that it runs beside the perfectly straight 4 lane A5, which predated it, and, simultaneous to the toll road opening had its speed limit reduced to like 30 miles an hour and speed cameras installed every 200 yards along the entire length.
Hard to imagine the whole thing became that much of an accident hot spot right at that moment.
100%. However, the majority of cameras are placed on deserted countryside main roads and non-pedestrianised motorways/interstate type roads. More camera locations should be prioritised for protecting pedestrians.