Study: Could dropping intown speed limits save pedestrian, e-scooter rider lives?

Following a spate of e-scooter-related injuries and fatalities, mobility advocates have called for, among other changes, dampened speed limits in the City of Atlanta.

And it seems some city officials have heeded that suggestion—at least enough to study whether doing so would be a feasible means of making intown streets safer for all.

On Wednesday, Atlanta City Councilman Andre Dickens proposed legislation to the council’s transportation committee that requests the Department of City Planning conduct a study on how speed limits impact street safety, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The transportation committee unanimously approved the legislation, sending it to the full council.

After three e-scooter riders died in collisions with motorists within just three months in city limits, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition demanded Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms expedite an infrastructure improvement plan that caters to alternative modes of transportation and reduce the speed limit on city streets to 25 mph.

The organization, according to a blog post last month by ABC leader Rebecca Serna, also called on Bottoms to back “our efforts at the state level to allow local governments to reduce speed limits to 20 mph on residential streets.”

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After all, the logic goes, the slower cars are moving, the less likely they are to kill a pedestrian in a collision.

Dickens’s legislation, which could go to a full council vote Monday, would entail researching how adding more sidewalks and better lighting in certain areas could prevent collisions.

That might also mean putting new speed detection devices around the city to audit drivers, according to the AJC.

If the Atlanta City Council votes to approved Dickens’s proposal Monday, the planning department would have two months to conduct the study and report back to the transportation committee.