Zebra tries to drive the city at 30 kilometers per hour

As previously reported, on October 2, the Ministry of Transport hosted the think tank of the Road Traffic Safety Council. It talked about allowed driving speed reduction in built-up areas to 30 kilometers an hour. The show “Zebra” explains how it would be.

Annija Novikova, Deputy Director of the Department of the Ministry of Transport, at the think tank meeting of the Road Traffic Safety Council, expressed the opinion that reducing the permitted speed would also protect pedestrians and cyclists who would be less exposed to traffic accidents. Not only road safety would be improved, but also air quality in the city, as fuel consumption would be lower.

Ziedonis Lazda, an expert of the Road Traffic Safety Directorate, explained that if the traffic speed limitation in populated areas up to 30 kilometers per hour were introduced, it should not be introduced in the whole city, but in specific parts of the city; it should adapt the infrastructure – not just road signs, but highlighted intersections, bottlenecks, appropriate road surface, etc.

At the think tank meeting of the Road Traffic Safety Council, there were also opinions that limiting the speed of traffic in populated areas to 30 kilometers per hour would not be an effective solution for reducing the number of traffic accidents.

The show “Zebra” tried what it’s like to drive so slow, so I decided to experiment. Driving from the Riga Motor Museum through Šmerlis along the “Alfa” to the Daile Theater, the host of the program Pauls Timrots tried to observe the speed of 30 kilometers per hour at a distance of eight kilometers, and Ģirts Timrots – at the allowed speed of 50 kilometers per hour.

Paul Timrot believes that when driving faster, a person is more careful and focused on the road than when driving so slowly. When driving at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour, the driver becomes bored or distracted and loses vigilance without paying as much attention to the road. In this experiment, the drivers reached their destination in five minutes. Find out more by watching the Zebra story.

Source: skaties.lv/Zebra

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