Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)

I live next to a school, so there's a low speed limit (30 km/h). Still, people drive like race drivers and the city hasn't ever responded to the residents' hopes of introducing a speed camera.

I wanted to have some data on how many people speed, the max speed recorded, that sort of thing. Things the city should be doing after many complaints of dangerous driving and people being almost killed on zebra crossings.

I have a doorbell camera, and by analysing the footage using OpenCV and some code, I can track how fast people drive if you see how fast they move between two known points.

Average speed: 46 km/h :(

The guy at Not Just Bikes will tell you that enforcement will never work nor happen and that the only way to get people to slow down is to design the road so it doesn't feel safe to drive fast.

The road next to my house has a speed limit of 20mph but most cars go 45mph because it's a straight road 4 lanes but space for 6. No bumps, no curves, wide. Effectively it feels like you should be driving fast. If I go the speed limit in the center lane because I'm going to turn left people will get angry and speed around at 60mph pissed off

Agree, but also disagree.

Our neighboring town has a beautiful system in place. It tracks your average speed over +- 100m. If you speeded, you get a fine and even better: the light always turns red and you have to wait for a minute. If you run that red light, you get another (heftier) fine. If you drive normally, the light is always green.

It's beautiful. People actually drive slowly and safely there. And good, because that system is installed perfectly around the school and doesn't hinder anyone else. If they did this anywhere else you'd argue it's a moneygrab, but this is imo a great way to actually get people to drive slow in a school zone.

In contrast the only thing our town has done is install a bunch of big concrete flower boxes (?) that hinder your vision and causes conflicts on the road. The idea being that you'd have to slow down and that you're no longer on a straight wide road. It's absolutely only made things worse. You need to give way to others but you literally can't see them, or you need to pull weird manoeuvers to let them pass. And in the meantime cyclists need to swerve around them or are hidden behind those boxes. It's terrible.

Sounds great! Now if I could just get that installed in 100% of California

ATM we basically have lawless highways in California. Every time I go out I see outrageous traffic violations. People driving 15-20 mph over the speed limit on the freeway, weaving in and out of the carpool lane. People pulling into the left turn lane at a signal, then just crossing on a red light as soon as they think it's safe. People passing in the gutter (no lane). People cutting across 3-4 lanes of the freeway at ~70mph, across the painted barrier to exit a freeway.

I'd say the average of these incidences I see is 3 per drive and that doesn't include just you average weaver or tailgater. In other words, I take my car out for a 10-15 minute drive, (so 20-30 mins round trip) and see someone do something outrageous endangering other people's lives 3 times per drive on average.