This is more 'unpopular phrasing' than unpopular opinion.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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Unpopular Opinion
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I don't try to complicate it.
I'm driving in a school zone? Just don't hit kids, that's not hard.
School speed limits at middle and high schools are ridiculus. If your child is old enough to be in middle school or high school, they're old enough to not run out into a road willy nilly.
I agree for high school, but middle schoolers are fucking stupid. All hormones and doing stupid shit to impress their friends. My problem is the lights flash at the wrong times. I'm driving by at 20mph on a 45mph road when there isn't a kid in sight. But when there are kids everywhere 45 is apparently fine.
I'd go further as to say the speed limit should be reinforced by traffic calming measures such as curved roads, speed bumps and cobblestone.
I agree but side streets should have low speed limits and schools should be only on side streets. Of maybe every intersection around a school should have lights. Someone said its people mad about going slower but for real they can be in some strange location and then the while students are present on school days or such is wierd. What they maybe should do is lower the speed limit decently before the school and have it apply all the time. weekdays and weekends and holidays and whatever. That way it would not be such a surprise.
Maybe this could also go in c/fuckcars
In absolute time spent, driving 20mph instead of 45mph for a few minutes is rather small. But people lose their mind, and don't care if it means putting kids in danger. People don't think like that.
I think the problem isn't so much the signage and limits as it is we built roads that encourage driving unsafe speeds. That and we built a world where everyone driving their own private vehicle is normal, and often the only practical option. But changing all of that is a lot harder than lowering speed limits.
Yeah why over complicate it
Is there a school somewhere where kids go and live near? Flat 20mph limit for a 1 mile radius around the school, then 30 mph for another mile radius around that.
Cars don't need to go at kid killing speeds anywhere near kids, regardless of if it's school hours or not
b-b-but the econommmyyyy
Thats pretty arbitrary. I don't think you need to be slowing down for kids around a school in the middle of the night. The thing about schools is they aren't like parks or something, kids aren't hanging around schools for fun. Before school opens and after after-school closes you are almost certain to NOT see a kid at a school.
Yeah you're right actually, anyone, not just kids, ending up getting run over by a car is a pretty bad outcome:
Cars should never need to go above 30mph anywhere they might possibly cross paths with a pedestrian.
It's not that cars should slow down, they should only be permitted to speed up if there's zero risk to someone outside the vehicle
Cars should never need to go above 30mph anywhere they might possibly cross paths with a pedestrian.
I promise you that if that became law, 95% of roads would be fenced off overnight.
Every school in the whole country has the same school days, and the same school times. You don't need to read every sign.
Most of them flash the reduced limit on a timer. They don't require any thought.
Definitely an unpopular opinion, so I'll give you the vote.
That said, of you can't be bothered to slow down to read the sign where kids can be, maybe you aren't ready to drive.
I prefer this over "when school children are present".
Like I still don't know what that means. Is it during pickup/dropoff? Is it all day on school days? Is it only if I see a kid? Do they have school on certain holidays?
I guess I'd prefer a 'when flashing' light instead.
Thank you for your contribution
That's not what OP is saying.
So I suggest instead of having these limits be conditional school speed limits, they should just be the normal limits all the time. It wouldn’t hurt people to slow down when kids aren’t present, so just make the speed limit reduced all the time on roads around the school.
They still want to slow down. That said you are correct that this means they wouldn't need to read the sign.
I agree, but in some states like where I live mow they have some weird school set ups. Speed limit is 55mph on the road if it isn't during school start/end. So while I think it'd be fine if people went 20 there all the time, there would likely be a lot of backlash from people saying 'i could to 60 there every day for the last 20 years on my way to and from work (it leads to a major interstate) and now you want me to go 20!
Honestly it is just a poor setup for the school. Should have built a road around the back where you directed all the traffic
You know, I was about to say that we should go back to no school zones like in the 80s since the speed limit was always just 30 around school zones anyway and people had to slow anyway when school let out because of all the traffic.
And I was wondering why school zones were created in the first place since there was no problem to fix. But now I remember that schools were once always in residential areas. But with school zones today, they can stick them on airport runways if they want to.
Yeah here it's like "how do we find 1000 kids and get them fastest to a place". (Not that I know how many kids they actually have now, my spouse said she had less than 100 in her graduating classes for elementary school, so that's not drop outs like in highschool).
Life is different everywhere. I saw a video of kids the traveling 2 hours of sketchy fall in bridges to get to a school in another country, and all I could think was, my father would say "all Hispanics are lazy, and no black parents know how to raise kids". Granted this is the same guy that went on a drunken rant about hating Jews back in ~2008.. but he was doing so well for awhile, actually voted for Obama once
They definitely have a good reason for existing so I'll have to disagree with you there but they definitely are often very confusing and difficult to follow. In my city they also are so dramatically lower that basically no one follows them.
A better solution which I'm sure most people would hate would be to ban cars from the area around schools with some minor exceptions.
I don't think that would work. How are you going to pick up your kids? They would have to walk to where cars are allowed to go, which defeats the purpose.
All new cars are connected to servers, all new cars use throttle by wire, many brake by wire.
So...we exactly where every car is and how fast it is going, and we can limit the speed of a car without morons ignoring signs and killing kids.
Slippery slope. Wonderful attack for dangerous hackers as well
I live 100m down the road from a primary (elementary for y'all) school.
I wish the road's normal limit was the reduced limit (30km/h) all the time.
Especially because everyone just adds 10 to every limit anyway.
Also, kids sometimes walk to school outside of the school zone.
I think it would be better if a larger area around the school just had a permanent speed limit that matched the school zone speed.
For those interested, Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt digs into this and many other things about traffic in the west. I've read it twice and plan to read it at least one more time.
Sometimes I won’t notice all of the print before I pass the sign, so I’ll just do the slower school speed limit and the driver behind me starts tailgaiting me because I’m going under the limit.
Why do you think they wouldn't tailgate you anyways.
Honestly good question.
And if your car has radar that shows you the speed limit it doesn’t recognize the times or the “when flashing” and then your car is probably telling lexisnexis you’re speeding when you aren’t
School zones and stopping for the school bus are probably the only traffic laws I truly and fully support.
Children are most vulnerable to being hit by cars near schools and in residential areas.