traffic-calming device
n. A device installed on or near a roadway to force motorists to slow down.
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Examples
1999
The traffic planner, Guy Rousseau, suggested that a network of traffic-calming devices be used to keep drivers from speeding through neighborhoods and make the side streets less attractive as alternative routes. Instead of speed humps, he recommended traffic islands and narrow lanes to slow motorists.
—David Pendered, “Traffic worries neighbors,” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 11, 1999
1998
So-called traffic-calming devices may increase your risks. More cities and gated communities these days are using speed bumps, traffic circles, waffled intersections and the like to slow speeders. But officials say they've also slowed fire engines, ambulances and other emergency vehicles.
—“Speed bumps have their downside too,” Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada), November 28, 1998
1991 (earliest)
Road building cannot keep up with the growth in traffic, a major transport report claimed today. Inappropriate responses to that growth constituted a "threat to economic efficiency and a decent standard of living". The report, Transport: The New Realism, said a new approach was needed, tilting the balance away from trying to cater for more and more traffic towards more economically and environmentally friendly alternatives. It said there was now "no possibility of increasing road supply at a level which matches the growth rate of demand". Suggested remedies included:
Improvement in quality and scale of public transport;
Use of traffic calming devices such as road humps.
—Peter Woodman, “Road building 'cannot cope with traffic growth',” Press Association, March 14, 1991
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