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I used to live on a road which was used as a rat run between two main drags. The noise, particularly early in the morning during the rush hour and at teatime, was a continuous rumble that could be heard in any part of the house and which I never got used to. Later at night the overall volume decreased, but the boy racers would take over, razzing up and down the road in their souped-up sheds.
We shared this rat run status with two other local roads, and some of the residents got together to put pressure on local councillors to take action. After about two years they agreed to install various traffic calming measures including road humps.
Well, as others will know we'd merely exchanged one problem for another. For the first few weeks after the humps went down there was less traffic, but a hardcore of folks who were determined not to be diverted from their preferred route carried on driving as before, despite the humps, and almost certainly gradually ripped their sumps and silencers to shreds. Gradually a greater volume of traffic returned, and instead of the constant hum of traffic we had the speeding up, revving down then revving up again as cars slowed, crossed the humps then accelarated away. Five or six humps on our road, five or six chances for cars to go through that cacophonous, infuriating rigmarole.
So no, road humps are not the answer; far from it, though I think that if used sparingly with other measures they MIGHT have worked for us. We asked for a chicane on the junction between our road and the main drag, but were told by the council that because lorries parked at the top of the road to deliver to local shops, the Road Haulage Association would object. Which may well have been borrox.
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