Imposing a 30 km/h Speed Limit in Residential Areas

... then it is the maximum speed limit. It's a regulation.

Black on yellow signs are suggested maximums. These are warning signs, not rules.

But absolutely, drivers are required to consider the conditions, including the road width. Oftentimes a lower speed (that will allow the driver to stop within the range of his vision) simply makes more sense, and most drivers realize this - believe it or don't.

The people who think there's no problem with creating a 30 km/h zone throughout a municipality don't seem to realize that it makes all those carefully considered school and playground 30 km/h zones irrelevant, they'll have to switch a lot of the signage. After all, you can't require drivers to slow to 30 km/h if that's already the limit in effect 24/7, can you? But that's just what you've done as an enforcing authority when you create a blanket municipal speed limit of 30 km/h, so the school and playground limit regulatory signs should be replaced with mere warning signs about potential kids in the area.

People need to think through this stuff, I believe. Maybe what they're already doing is on the right track, regarding speed limits. And that includes quite a few residential areas in the City of Vancouver, that are nowhere near schools or playgrounds. It's an awful lot of signs, but reflects the conditions in each neighbourhood.

Yes a lower speed limit on streets other than arterials should reduce accident severity. Now many drivers currently slow down to 30 km/hr or so in school zones because that's where police enforcement is focussed. Buit if 30 km/hr limits are extended to all streets other than arterials, it is daydreaming to think we would get the huge increase in policing required to enforce a 30 km/hr limit everywhere it applied. In the absence of enforcement, a 40km/hr limit would be perceived by more people as reasonable than a 30 km/hr limit, and would therefore be much more likely to be observed.  On city blocks with parking on both sides and only enough room for one vehicle to go through at a time, the typical speed is already down to 40 km/hr. Before putting in blanket 30 km/hr restrictions, BC and its municipalities need to do some reseach to find out how the 40 km/hr limit works in other areas, e.g on some Toronto streets, compared with 30 km/hr. If we must have a blanket limit that's less than 50 km/hr, let's have trail periods for 40 first and then 30 to seee if a reduction from 40 to 30 actually makes a significant difference in behaviour.

Supervise a pendulum to ensure it stays on course. Doesn't mean that its necessary or virtuous, or changes anything in any way. But once the society believes that the pendulum moves solely because it is being supervised, someone will get paid tax money to supervise it.
 

This is something I have been waiting for since my first complaints to the City of Kelowna in 2007. A speed of 30km/hr is a nice safe speed for traffic anywhere where residents enter/exit driveways or where traffic calming measures were needed. As it is, I have vehicles travelling 30-50 kms/hr over the speed limit on my street, and any vehicle that loses control at 80-100kms/hr will surely do some damage, and always a risk of death to an unsuspecting resident. This amendment is absolutely necessary to ensure safety in the crazy world we live in, where new vehicles can reach highway speeds in just a few seconds, and many drivers do so, just because they can.

Aggressive speed mongers who's sense of entitlement is beyond the rules - they don't apply to them.

This very same stuff happens on my residential street daily and multiple times, some of the violators are from the neighbourhood and the remaining are the bad parent-drivers who are in route to the school that is a ½ mile away.  It's very bad some days.

I have often thought to sit at the curb with a bucket of rocks to wing at the speed mongers as they go by, wouldn't take them long to slow down, turn around and confront me, amazingly, while they were speeding to where ever they were going because they were 'late' to begin with.   The other item I would like to possess is a spike belt.  I'd love to sit in the dark and 'wait' for that annoying kid in his oversized noisy pickup with an N sign on the tailgate, throw that baby across the road and when he's passed roll it up and disappear.  What karma that would bring.

My point, in all this lowering of speed in residential areas is a wonderful concept except any and all laws/rules of the road are only as good as the enforcement.  There really is nothing wrong with 50kmh, its the enforcement of that speed that is neglected.  The speed mongers will continue to violate the lower limits just as they blatantly do with the current ones.  The only ones who will abide by the limit are the same ones who already do.  If enforcement and severe penalty is not a consequence then there is little advantage to lowering the speed.

Hurray!  I finally found an ally who also HATES that horn honking lunatic!  The ones who have a stutter problem..... they hit the FOB 3-4x while walking away.    Urggggg.   I always use my door lock and my FOB "notification" has been turned off since the purchase of the vehicle.  I often wonder if some of these horn-honking fanatics even understand they can turn that honking off!   I am more inclined to believe that they wish to be 'noticed' or 'visable' to all others in an effort to be centre of attention.

And yeah, I'm convinced us law-abiding, common-sense, "normal" people are being driven out and the wing-nuts remain manning the fort.  Scary thought.

Talking about scary thoughts, I am just hoping that people complaining about "brain-washed idiots", "fanatics", or "wing-nuts", or who "HATE" lunatics, or who are "law-abiding normal people being driven crazy" ...  are able to set their angry feelings completely aside when driving. When I was younger I tended to let such stuff get to me, and I know I was a worse driver when I did. Driving while under the influence of an emotional state is a significant cause of accidents

i live in the Cariboo, and the road to my house runs along a lake - it's very windy, gravel, narrow and has trees obscuring everything.   recently the property at the end of the lake has started doing construction and all their workers race down this road like they are on fire.    there are people riding horses, lots of wildlife heading to the lake to drink, bike riders, ATVs (even though they're not supposed to) and people just walking or collecting berries or mushroom.   one day someone will come around a corner and there will be someone there.  on a gravel road, you just won't be able to stop.    so the question is, what is the speed limit on a rural gravel road?

I live in the Lower Mainland, and most of the residential areas are not marked with speed limit signs, but this is well undersood by the public in my area.