Slow Down or be Shot

Here is a little tidbit I would normally include in the Friday News Digest but thought was interesting enough to give it a little Thursday blurb.

Someone in a neighborhood in Durham, NC, has posted signs indicating that the cars of speeding drivers will be shot with paintball guns as they drive through the neighborhood.

While the notion is kind of funny - so long as nobody was hurt - it highlights a frustration voiced in neighborhoods all across America. Our neighborhoods do not feel safe because cars drive too fast through them. Cars drive too fast through them because the streets are designed to help them drive fast. No amount of police speed traps can change those underlying facts.

People drive fast because the roads are designed to allow them to drive fast. 

Only engineers can solve this problem. By engineering streets to neighborhood standards - not quasi-highway standards - engineers would slow vehicles and improve safety. This would make property owners have to drive a little slower (bummer), but would make them feel happier and more secure as they go about their lives in their neighborhoods (yahoo). 

In our small towns, we need to accommodate cars, but people should be our top priority. Invest in people, and you will grow a Strong Town.