Chamfered speed "bumps" - worst design ever? - Bilboman

These pesky inventions are appearing all over towns in Spain, often as a cheaper measure than fill-width humps. No doubt they enable buses and large emergency vehicles with wider axles to drive across them without impeding progress but for ordinary motorists they are a pain. Warning signs usually tell us to slow down to 30 or even 20 km/h on approach, but as the road speed is usually 50 before and after there is a lot of slowing down and speeding up, so brakes and suspension are subject to more wear and fuel is wasted.
Where conditions "permit", some drivers even take to swerving right round the bumps, regardless of solid white lines: a similar disregard to speed limits is quite widespread.
And as an avid follower of Honest John, I seem to be the only driver who drives over the wretched things on one side, rather than trying to straddle, which wears the inner shoulders of the tyres. My "asymmetrical straddling" action is a useful alert to the driver behind but occasionally causes some odd looks! I have even met pairs of these bumps in adjacent lanes, which forces me to straddle.
I am hoping against hope that some EU-wide legislation consigns these nasty things to the history books, but I really have no idea what could take their place as effective speed-reduction devices in built up areas.

Chamfered speed "bumps" - worst design ever? - oldroverboy.

We are currently in the middle east and here they even have speed bumps on the main roads. They are big enough to slow down even the 50 tonners..

Chamfered speed "bumps" - worst design ever? - Engineer Andy

I presume you mean the 'cushion-type' ones we see in the UK which throw out the tracking if you straddle them, or quickly knacker the suspension if you [only alternative, even at slow speeds] go over them with the wheels over the centre?

The worst type of 'speed humps' I've come across are the too-high semi-circular concrete ones with no warnings, including having them painted so you can see them well before you reach them. Unless you drive at walking pace (less than 5mph), then you will almost certainly do serious damage to your suspension, wheels/tyres or all three. I have had the 'pleasure' of not realising this in my old car (mid 90s Nissan Micra) going at (what I thought was a safe low speed of) 10mph (as directed by the signs), and being lucky to get away with no serious damage - another driver doing about the same speed was not so lucky and had to have his car towed to the local garage for a repair costing several £000s, all whilst on holiday.

The rubberised newer versions aren't quite as bad, but they'll still will give the car and you an almighty jolt unless you tippy-toe over them. Watch out for both types in older car parks and trading estates (many around on ones that have old concrete road surfaces).

Some UK councils have been forced to pay for damage to cars and remedial works to humps (on roads, not in car parks) where the slopes have been more steep or the hump height has been more than regulations say, as well as poorly-maintained ones - I've seen several in St. Albans where they are, in my view, too high and the road surface has sunk before them, often resulting in vehicles grounding themselves [not just sports cars] and possibly damaging suspension parts even though they are travelling at low speed. If I recall correctly, back in the days when NuLab were 'encouraging' councils to install road humps, Barnet council in London actually took most of theirs out because of the aforemntioned issues, as well as the cost of repairs and noise/actual pollution caused by vehicles (especially HGVs) continually slowing down/going over the humps/speeding up again. As far as I know, there are no more accidents in the borough than before.