If you ask a lot of driving enthusiasts, they'll tell you that speed bumps are annoying across the board. Most community organizations, however, would argue the opposite. And as with so many other things, the most effective and mutually tolerable path lies somewhere in the middle. But that middle ground is a big area. Some speed bumps are more tolerable – or more effective – than others, but striking a balance between safely slo
How can a speed bump be green? Simple. If it does its job right and rewards low speed driving and punishes speeding, it can reduce gas consumption and exhaust emissions. That's exactly what these new smart speed bumps aim to do. Sprung from the fertile minds of designers Jae-yun Kim and Jong-Su Lee, they use an inner damper to detect vehicle speed and if it is slow enough, the bump flattens. If the car is going too fast it remains upright and does what any good speed bump should. It punishes the
We happen to know of a housing development in Southern California that recently had its central road repaved. Out went the crumbling asphalt and nasty old speed bumps, and in went shiny new black pavement... and an additional helping of nasty new speed bumps. The paving company had actually doubled the number of bumps, presumably in an attempt to slow down traffic through this residential area. What actually resulted was cars now speeding up even quicker and slowing even faster between the bumps
Britain's Automobile Association has found another bump in the road to environmental kindness: speed bumps and really low speed limits. They took a car that got 58-mpg running a constant 30-MPH, and ran it over speedbumps at the Millbrook Proving Ground, slowing down and speeding up for each bump. What they discovered was that mileage dropped to 31-mpg and carbon dioxide emissions went up. The findings correlate with those of the country's Transport Research Laboratory, which reported that "carb
