I recently attended a workshop about “mental speed bumps.” The idea is that the problem most likely arrises from just a handful of impatient drivers. Any permanent infrastructure solution would cost tens of thousands of dollars to put in place. That comes out to hundreds of dollars per bad driver. As the people in the video said, “at that cost we could just pay them to slow down.” Their suggestion is—rather than spend countless hours lobbying the city and writing grant applications—spend your time creating “mental speed bumps.”

The basic idea is to imagine yourself in the place of the people who are driving in an unsafe manner and ask yourself “why am I running this stop sign” and “what would prevent me from running it?”

Perhaps you don’t notice the stop sign until too late. In that case, why not work on coming up with a creative way to make the stop sign more worthy of notice. Party decorations? Shiny gold Christmas tree garland taped around the border of the stop sign?

Perhaps you notice the sign, but are driving too fast to come a complete stop in time. The video I watched said to “create intrigue” by introducing unusual elements to the street to make it look like a special occasion. If you are having a barbeque, why not host it in your front yard instead of backyard? You could coordinate with your neighbors to place flags or balloons or cardboard cutout people along the block. These are just ideas. Most of them are terrible and probably wouldn’t work, but when you consider the amount of time and effort that it would take to get the kind of infrastructure solution Mark is talking about, you could easily come up with a “mental speed bump” idea a million times better than mine, perhaps even good enough that it actually works!

Let me know how it goes.

I agree with your point on mental speed bumps.

Funding is limited to rebuild every street, but consider interventions like temporary curb extensions -- in some cities, these are left in place for many years until funding for permanent extensions can be found. These would not cost tens of thousands of dollars and could be just as effective as the real thing.

In street yield signs also seem to be effective, and would be inexpensive to roll out at locations along Spring. There are currently in street signs all along Orange Street and parts of Edgewood Avenue in Westville.

Finally, keep pushing for things like tabled intersections. They can be expensive but may not be as much as people think -- and the increased safety, reduced crashes and neighborhood quality of life they create can make them more than worth the investment. In Cambridge, MA, a city with similar demographics and climate to New Haven, the installation of raised intersections reduced the amount of speeding on several streets from about 60% of vehicles to around 10%.

There is only one stop sign in the middle of spring (besides the one on washington end), and there is an untrimmed tree that is way to close to it, driving westbound. The stop sign is blocked out by the tree almost entirely until it is almost too late to notice.
Unless people are anticipating this stop sign, there is a good chance that they simply will not see the stop sign at all.
I know that the sign is there, and lately, with that tree there, I have found that it still catches me off guard.