The videos I’ve seen all suggest that the motorists were deliberately breaking the law, and the faster smash the bollard is up for at least a second before the motorist hits it, so any suggestion that it was “hidden” is IMO out. Sure, the motorist was so focussed on breaking the law that they weren’t paying attention to the road, but that’s a problem in itself.

Perhaps my sympathy is limited because I ride a bike, and so am more likely to be killed not because *I* break the law, but because some moron in a motorcar does. The idea that the moron might suffer instead does not bother me anywhere near as much as the prospect of being killed.

It also seems like a correction to the current approach to motorists, where the fines and jail terms are grossly out of step with other, similar crimes. Kill someone with a knife because you were negligant, go to gaol. Do it with a car… lose your license for a year or two. Getting drunk and assaulting someone is much more serious than driving drunk. Kill someone in the assault and you’ve probably committed manslaughter. In a car? You might go to gaol, but you might not. Probably not.

Limiting vehicles entering a residential area has its own problems. Big trucks might reasonably be prohibited, but obviously blocking access by buses, moving vans, delivery vans, and personal SUVs is not desirable to anyone but (maybe) Greenpeace. (My own street here intermittently gets delivery vans. It has no bus route but does get the odd specially-chartered bus, mainly for a couple of mobility-disabled people living in the area. It also has no through connection to anywhere else, mind you. I myself have had takeout food delivered and, on rare occasions, more substantial and expensive goods. My having to go to the nearest post office to pick these up would have meant someone was missing the point of those services, particularly in the case of the takeout food.)

I once became familiar with a particular set of width restricting poles (a long time ago ) and used to accelerate from a sedate 20mph to a vigorous 40mph in order to best appreciate my ’skill’. The poles delimited a road that spanned a boundary between a residential area and a non-residential area. The road itself, whilst a typical narrowish lane, was otherwise free of peril.

I knew the road before the poles, and had always tended to take the lane sedately. The poles actually inspired me to increase my speed.

Another example is the automatic ticket barriers at railway stations - for pedestrian passengers. Even though I am in possession of a valid ticket I am sometimes inspired to tailgate (wait for someone else to approach the barriers, then switch ‘lanes’ to walk closely behind, closing at just the right time to be mere millimetres away from the person in front’s posterior, through the barrier with them and then immediately decellerate to pretend everything is normal - in case they later turn around having been tipped off by any inadvertent clothing/baggage contact).

I’ve also quickly straddled 4 foot high palisades to avoid 200yard walks to negotiate ticket barriers. Now they have got wise to this and are erecting signs that ‘require’ passengers to use ticket barriers even if they are in possession of a valid ticket.

At least there are still no signs that require passengers to insert their ticket into the machine and/or to enter one person at a time.

@Crosbie: The barriers intended merely to make a driver stop before proceeding (with no authentication needed) are an especially interesting method of control - I’d never thought of them in that way before.

Your point about ‘encouraging daredevil behaviour’ certainly rings true to me. I perhaps shouldn’t admit it, but having a very narrow car when I was younger (a Reliant Kitten) did used to encourage me to explore what I could get away with. Here, for example, somewhere just north of London Bridge, we drove down a narrow ‘cycles only’ alleyway blocked by a central (manually folding) bollard: the car was narrow enough to fit past the bollard:

I shouldn’t be proud of it, but in a way I am. It was night, there was no other traffic around, and at that time I don’t think there were any cameras.

@Ryan: That’s a very sensible suggestion. It wouldn’t severely injure anyone, or cause massive damage to the car (or to the bollards, assuming they were designed to collapse in a controlled way), but the CCTV (and paint or dye spray) would allow the identification of the driver, and be a sufficient deterrent to others.

The fact that there is CCTV covering the bollard installations anyway (hence the video clips) suggests that if there were sufficient motivation, every transgressor could be identified anyway, without any bollards or any damage to anyone or anyone’s vehicles. There used to be a ’short cut’ road near where I grew up which was nominally ‘buses only’, with cameras at both ends, although it soon became known among some locals that no-one ever watched the cameras so it was ’safe’ to use.

If it were me I’d use the same system & timing but utilize a CCTV camera (or a still that akes a photo on impact) and a breakaway bollard that is rigid enough to damage the bumper and coated with a high-marking paint (if such a treat exists - basically something that will easily transfer to any vehicle that comes into contact with it).

The prospect of the bollard would likely ward off the vast majority of people, but for the true idiot drivers they’d get a dent in their bumper, some distinct paint marks and a photo to help law enforcement deliver the pricey ticket in person at a later date.

Perfectly competent road-users may not have equal opportunity to learn otherwise obscure behaviour of such systems.

1) It’s taken me a while before I’ve learnt that some barriers have no intercom or access requirements, but are merely present to require a vehicle to stop before proceeding upon automatic raising of the barrier.

2) Locals can often whizz through traffic calming, width restricting poles, leaving newcomers to slam on the anchors as they recognise the peril only just in time.

3) Some traffic calming measures - especially width restricting poles - actually encourage daredevil behaviour for excitement and michievously luring lesser drivers into their unpleasant encounter.

Square road bumps that fit between the wheels are similar - they permit locals to exploit rabbit runs at full speed whilst slowing cautious visitors.

4) The rising poles, and their behaviour also favour locals while punishing cavalier strangers.

5) Speed cameras also train regulars, whose unexpected brake-lights confuse visitors.