Drivers 'irritated' by speed limit rule as they're told to follow 11mph
Drivers have been left baffled by an "odd" speed limit as they're told to follow "11mph." On the "mildly irritating" Reddit subreddit, fans have been commenting on the erection of the bizarre speed limit rule sign, which tells drivers to adhere to 11mph.
A driver laughed: "It’s just to get your attention. It obviously worked." A second typed: "Hahaha, great point. More people should do this for residential areas / school zones; where kids, the elderly, animals or just people in general are out and about!"
"I've seen citations of studies that say when a non-round number is listed as a slow speed limit, people are more likely to observe it," another commented. "It's so you notice it. A 10 mph speed limit sign people will just see and subconsciously ignore. This gets your attention and you remember. It's shown to work," another wrote.
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"Do you question the expertise of the genius traffic department? They obviously spent a lot of science to get the right number!" another said. "At my high school they had the speed limit in the parking lot posted at 12 mph. Why not 15 or 10? Not even the school officer had an answer and he said he usually speeds anyway lol," another posted.
Another said: "After reading the comments about noticability, it is genius. I hadn't really thought about it but that's something you will remember.." Priya Raghubir, of the University of California, suggests the science that drivers might be more likely to adhere to speed limits they perceive as more precise, such as 24 or 26, rather than multiples of 5 or 10.
Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic, writes: "When we see a sign, if we see a sign at all – for we may have trained our brains to typically ignore them – we may question its applicability to us, or its general validity. But driving down a quite narrow street, or over a series of whizzing bars, you are less likely to think about it and more likely to just reflexively slow down."