Improperly designed traffic calming devices on America's streets discriminates against the disabled in our country. In many cities across this nation municipal authorities are using traffic calming devices in ways in which they were never intended.
Uncontrolled Traffic calming is causing injury and pain litigation for disabled people in America. Too often severely disabled Americans are being denied access to roads around their homes and in their neighborhoods. Those Americans who have spinal and or hip disabilities as well as older Americans who are fail of health are being abused by the misuse of traffic calming devices.
There is no justification for significant delays to emergency rescue vehicles, lower response times means more lives saved and reduction in property losses. Delays of emergency services caused by slowing for traffic calming devices and the higher response times that these delays cause means more deaths in our country. There is no excuse for higher response times and painful discrimination against the disabled.
Bicycle riders in America are fighting back against the dangerous conditions and discrimination that traffic calming causes.
The Federal government in Washington needs to apply and enforce the ADA-Americans with Disabilities Act in regards to this issue. Please snail mail letters of protest to the US ACCESS BOARD, and the Dept. of Justice. To government officals/politicans one snail-mail letter is equal to 1000 voters of a like mind, one e-mail will have little effect.
Click here for a DOJ complaint form-Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Discrimination Complaint Form. Send this form to the Dept. of Justice(and a copy to the US ACCESS Board regarding the ADAAG Section 14- Public Rights of Way)
Look here for - DOJ regs 35.104 Definition(scroll aprox. 75% of the way down the webpage.) Within this section of DOJ regulations a "Facility" is defined as a "road."- SUMMARY: This rule implements subtitle A of title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Pub. L. 101-336, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by public entities.) In your complaint letter to the DOJ you may mention that specific details with regards to public rights of way will be defined by the US ACCESS BOARD in the AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES - or the ADAAG manual.

The Need for Traffic Calming Reform!
In the 70's traffic calming became popular in Europe and now in American TC is being used in these...
Correctly applied ways:
Misuse of Traffic Calming:

• To incourage drivers of vehicles to respect neighborhoods and travel at slower speeds
• Have traditional and/or newer traffic calming been tried? Any previous effort make at lowering the speed limit, media campaigns, warning signs, lights, a stop sign or two? Did the city immedately go to TC devices which use vertical or horizontal "thrusts" like bumps, humps, cushions, pillows, tables, chicanes, traffic circles, and or rumble strips. Why not use TC programs that use chokers, parking on the street to narrow the road, or narrow the road with curb extensions. Why not use mobile Smart trailers that display drivers speed on large displays, or as in Boulder Co. start a Photo Radar program, or a program of neighborhood video groups which record the speeders in the act. Many cities conduct and gather volumes of times and dated data on speeding in Traffic Calming projects, pin pointing speeding locations and times, with simple tube counters on the roads in question. Has the Public Works and Transportation Dept. in charge of the traffic calming project in your community shared the detailed-times when speeding occurs and where it occurs with local law enforcement authorities, why not?
• To create more space for people to walk and ride bicycles
• Traffic circles, chicanes, bumps or humps, pillows, rumble strips and cushions, all narrow the roadway, actually leaving less pavement for cars and bikes to share. This puts the bike riders or walkers closer to cars and at greater risk, actually using the bike rider or walker as a moving traffic calming device. Rumble Strips, Humps, bumps, Cushions and Pillows also lessen the amount of pavement for bikes to safely use.
• To reduce the number of cars through the area
• TC is not suppose to be used to address hazardous intersections or be used to restructure the street system. TC is not suppose to be used to increase property taxes and begin neighborhood "gentrification" projects to literally "evict" low income neighbors from their land by "taxing" them out of their neighborhoods. Using local politics neighborhood Associations/Developers and Traffic Engineers are trying to use TC to creat maze-like gated neighborhoods and/or warrens for the poor and lower classes, or create "enclaves" for better paid residents. City officals and neighborhood associations are using Federal funding for TC projects to discriminate against and deny the disabled and elderly access to their neighbor streets, and in many cases their ability to keep or own land in the central city cores.