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For the most part, you can't run over a pedestrian just to prove a point. It'd e different if kids were playing on a highway, then that's on them. Highways are for roads. But in a residential area, that's where you'd find kids and people, and many places in the US have speed limits of 25 mph in residential zones.
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Pedestrians cross roads too. They're less likely to be accidents if a car is going slower, and pedestrians can see people crossing sooner.
Pedestrians and bicycles have the right to use roads just like people in cars do. Cars must yield to pedestrians or bicycles.
In our current home, our road gets far more use from pedestrians and bicycles than from cars. At least twice a year we have as many as 5000 runners on our street in a single day. Our street never gets 5000 cars in a single day. Our street is more for pedestrian use than for car use (which is good because it is better suited for pedestrians than for cars anyway.
Yes, there are many roads which have restrictions placed on them for through traffic. There are signs posted that will say "local traffic only" or the more and often enforced ones of "no through traffic (insert the times of day here, often it is rush hour times)".
Places like DC have had these restrictions forever it seems, other places are now exploring the idea, or just implementing it due to apps like Waze now turning what use to be a quiet residential street, into a main road.
Areas of Miami are now having this issue, especially over the last five years as traffic has grown much, much worse. Neighborhoods are now exploring or taking actions on reducing people from cutting through and using the neighborhood as a main through road.
Public Works typically manages the infrastructure. Police usually have someone assigned to traffic as well.
I'm not talking about directing traffic at special events. Police have nothing to do with traffic design such as retiming lights, adding turn lanes, etc.
Public Works is too broad. Too easy for them to focus on non-traffic issues. Nobody knows the name of the Public Works director.
Yes, there are many roads which have restrictions placed on them for through traffic. There are signs posted that will say "local traffic only" or the more and often enforced ones of "no through traffic (insert the times of day here, often it is rush hour times)".
Places like DC have had these restrictions forever it seems, other places are now exploring the idea, or just implementing it due to apps like Waze now turning what use to be a quiet residential street, into a main road.
Areas of Miami are now having this issue, especially over the last five years as traffic has grown much, much worse. Neighborhoods are now exploring or taking actions on reducing people from cutting through and using the neighborhood as a main through road.
Yes, they can put the signs up, but I don't know that they can legally enforce them. Public roads are just that. Like I said with my detour story, they put the signs up saying local traffic only, but I ignored them as did many. I do not see how they can tell me I can't drive on a road in a county I live in and pay taxes in. It is not a private road. That issue with the detour was even in the local papers quite a bit cause the residents were up in arms, but I never saw anyone get pulled over (and the road is several miles long) and none of the articles actually stated people could be ticketed. Every day cars such as me drove by the barricades. How would they even know if I'm a "local" resident or going to visit a local resident or not? They can't just pull people over and ask them where they are going.
Do most people never take shortcuts to get around traffic bottlenecks? There's a shortcut that cuts through traffic lights near my area and most people don't know about it except for Uber drivers. I see the same folks on my neighborhood use the main street and never use this shortcut nearby.
Depends.
I've recently moved from an urban and older city (Chicago and outlying city neighborhoods) so in general their roads, highways, interstates are older and 'carved in stone' so there was never a need to go through residential areas and 'cut through' to avoid predictable bottlenecks and traffic jams.
To be successful at this though one needs to know the 'usual and customary' times of day when traffic will be sluggish; times that the various schools will have parents dropping their kids off, school busses dropping the students off and kids 'running amuck' when school starts and lets out and they are tasked with getting themselves home. Despite traffic lights and crossing guards which is in and of itself a bottleneck hazard.
Of course there are also the usual traffic patterns of any given area where the vehicular traffic, joggers in the road and cyclists are to be avoided as well. Railroad crossings, either freight and or commuter trains are yet another thing to be aware of and avoid.
Lastly the unpredictable and unavoidable vehicle and tractor trailer accidents and or a lost trucker getting stuck under an overpass because there was a lack of familiarity of the roads and subsequent judgement error of height allowances.
I am sure I have missed some issues but...others may have their own which are unique to their area.
To answer the question...previously I always used shortcuts to circumvent sitting at a standstill. Currently I am learning a new city and state so I will be learning new shortcuts to getting around the bottlenecks and traffic jams.
Yes, they can put the signs up, but I don't know that they can legally enforce them. Public roads are just that. Like I said with my detour story, they put the signs up saying local traffic only, but I ignored them as did many. I do not see how they can tell me I can't drive on a road in a county I live in and pay taxes in. It is not a private road. That issue with the detour was even in the local papers quite a bit cause the residents were up in arms, but I never saw anyone get pulled over (and the road is several miles long) and none of the articles actually stated people could be ticketed. Every day cars such as me drove by the barricades. How would they even know if I'm a "local" resident or going to visit a local resident or not? They can't just pull people over and ask them where they are going.
Yes, the government can put restrictions on roads and enforce them. They can install/designate lanes as "HOV" and enforce that. They can put lane direction restrictions, they can restrict certain weight vehicles, and they can designate times when roads can have through traffic or not, speed limits and minimums, width restrictions, etc, etc.
How to enforce? Depends on the neighborhood of course, in DC there are many roads with these restrictions, the police catch them and ticket them. They set up operations where they observe the car enter the neighborhood and pass through, they pull them over upon exiting the place. They also have "no (insert turn direction and times" signs, that a person cannot use it as a shortcut to bypass rush hour traffic unless they made an illegal turn. Residents and visitors use another route that is not impacted by rush hour so much and is useless as a shortcut.
In Arlington, VA, they also use to pull people over getting on I-66 in the rush hours because it was HOV restricted, if they saw only one person in the car, you would get pulled over and ticketed, they would have cops on the exit and entrance ramps.
I use them all the time, however my wife calls them my "long cuts" because they usually are longer in distance, just not as backed up. I would rather drive 45 minutes at 40 mph with some signal lights than 30 minutes on the freeway at 0-20 mph.
Yes, the government can put restrictions on roads and enforce them. They can install/designate lanes as "HOV" and enforce that. They can put lane direction restrictions, they can restrict certain weight vehicles, and they can designate times when roads can have through traffic or not, speed limits and minimums, width restrictions, etc, etc.
How to enforce? Depends on the neighborhood of course, in DC there are many roads with these restrictions, the police catch them and ticket them. They set up operations where they observe the car enter the neighborhood and pass through, they pull them over upon exiting the place. They also have "no (insert turn direction and times" signs, that a person cannot use it as a shortcut to bypass rush hour traffic unless they made an illegal turn. Residents and visitors use another route that is not impacted by rush hour so much and is useless as a shortcut.
In Arlington, VA, they also use to pull people over getting on I-66 in the rush hours because it was HOV restricted, if they saw only one person in the car, you would get pulled over and ticketed, they would have cops on the exit and entrance ramps.
HOV is different, they made laws surrounding that. The laws apply to everyone equally. That is not the same as saying “this is a public road, however only certain people are allowed to drive on this public road and others are not”. I really am not sure they can make such a law.
It is illegal to drive through mall parking lots. But unless you speed they probably won't stop you since you might be a customer.
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