That's a brilliant use of materials generally used for science demonstrations. Maybe I will replace the ones near my house in the dark of the night...
That's ingenious.
Under "Pet Peeve" in my high school yearbook, I wrote "Speed Bumps".
There is a university near work that we frequent for emergency calls. Their speedbumps routinely fracture leaf springs and crack frames on firetrucks, even at crawling speed. They also send a shock wave through our spines. We need these.
How long before someone cuts it open and drains or squeezes the fluid out?
02Pilot said:How long before someone cuts it open and drains or squeezes the fluid out?
Or tries to huff or smoke it?
That would solve a lot of the problems that I have with speed bumps.
I remember they added speed bumps at the high school I went to because apparently students were driving like shiny happy people leaving school. I laughed a bit because the part they forgot is that this was 2013 in rural Kentucky. The offenders were driving lifted trucks and were idiots. So as such they didn't really care about the unreasonably large speed bumps they put in. Literally every one else had a problem with them though.
I like it but I wonder how long they would last. The only thing that's flexible and lasts long is a metal spring. I also wonder how they'd handle scraping from cars with low ground clearance.
GameboyRMH said:I like it but I wonder how long they would last. The only thing that's flexible and lasts long is a metal spring. I also wonder how they'd handle scraping from cars with low ground clearance.
Rubber lasts pretty well. It's probably in something like a firehose, they're pretty robust.
If you come in slowly, there shouldn't be much force involved with scraping. Which makes it good for both lowered cars and the speedbump.
I'd love to see a video of a car nailing it at speed.
In reply to Chadeux:
We had a similar situation on a job site. There was a small business park with like 3 houses at the entrance. Well one of the people who lived there, who was a revolutionary war veteran, complained and pissed and moaned about all the traffic from the stores and restaurants. So the city put in a speed table about 8 inches tall and 18 wide.
2 months later, same angry old man had a new complaint about all the car parts winding up in his yard. Nobody cared about the speed table, just barreled over it.
So he paid to have it removed and now we are stuck with some of the dumbest and worse setup red lights I've ever seen.
I like this. I too am concerned about durability.
Assuming they are durable, tune them so you can drive over them with little impact at 25mph, then put them every couple hundred feet in residential neighborhoods please.
Sometimes someone does something that is so simple and brilliant you just can't understand why it wasn't done years before. These speed bumps and windows in the rear doors of a minivan are the top two on that list.
Bravo good sir, bravo.
ProDarwin said:I like this. I too am concerned about durability.
Assuming they are durable, tune them so you can drive over them with little impact at 25mph, then put them every couple hundred feet in residential neighborhoods please.
One thing to think about- when you hit the fluid hard- it's the one that becomes a solid, and will take the load- not the rubber.
The tubing will take wear when the fluid is displaced- when car goes slowly.
Well, other than just normal abrasive wear.
I wonder how it reacts to different temperatures? Spain has a pretty moderate climate. It seems like the fluid would probably become more viscous (harder) as temps got colder. And obviously, a snowplow would be capable of doing some serious damage to these in places that have actual winter. Would they hold up the same to hot, desert climates, or would you be able to drive through them at slightly higher speeds?
Am I the only one who is disappointed that the video did not show someone trying to drive over at high speed? 
It doesn't look as permanent as an asphalt or concrete bump, so I'll bet you could just put it away for winter.
Now I want to go get a big bucket of corn starch and an old firehose and play with this.
02Pilot said:How long before someone cuts it open and drains or squeezes the fluid out?
My 16 year old version would have figured that the install truck would still be in site by the time I started in with the cordless drill.
My new improved 58 year old self thought of it as soon as I read the tittle, but would never act on the thought.
Maybe.
It's a pretty cool idea, but they probably wouldn't work well in Minnesota, what with the cold winters and snowplows. There are a number of streets in my neighborhood with speed bumps that are fairly mild so driving over them is not a problem, but there's a parking lot close to my office that has speed bumps that have to be driven over at 0.001 mph to avoid killing my car - they may as well have nailed down some 4x4s.
I must admit that the high school i graduated from had 4 speedbumps added after i graduated. The road to the student parking lot was 3/8 of a mile, and dead straight until the turn off ro... enterance.
My high score was 86 in a 10.
These speedbumps look appealing, though tbe video still showed a good bit of suspension upset going over.
That's a great idea. The only real problem I see is that those of us with, um, scientific curiosity (you know, the folks who want to see what happens when the double digit speed signs reach 100) will be hitting them at speed just to see what happens.
Another thought: how do these work in locales where spiked snows are legal (which I'm quite sure is not an issue in Spain)?
Most speed bumps can be cleared easily above 25 mph. You need to time the acceleration right. Just before you hit it a little acceleration will raise the front of the car giving nearly full suspension travel to absorb the impact. I do it all the time. Drives my wife nuts.
You could install a metal "cap" over the fluid bag and under the rubber top layer to keep kids/adults from cutting into the nougat center. Metal cap could be hinged at the leading edge of the bump and would still allow the designed function to...function. I'm just happy there's someone out there engineering new traffic calming innovations that don't punish law-abiding drivers.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Regular speed bumps, the steep kind, don't play nice with plows either. This is different, sure, but you can't plow over one of those 5" tall bumps with the 60 degree approach and departure without disconnecting them from the ground in the process.
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