The origins of traffic calming are usually traced to the Netherlands and West Germany in the early 1970s. But traffic calming practices (without the name) were ubiquitous in US cities 100 years ago.
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The silent policeman (a concrete or iron fixture installed at strategic points in streets) was an effective traffic calmer. It imposed automatic speed enforcement: Drivers who did not slow down risked damaging their car.
In later decades such things were torn out in the name of vehicular capacity. A new generation of traffic engineers, trained by motordom, invited speeding and deterred walking. In time American traffic calming techniques were misremembered as quaintly incompetent amateurism – or forgotten entirely.
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https://www.roads.org.uk/articles/limit/not-so-fast