• ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    I have never in my 20 years of driving seen one with more than two digits, and I (unfortunately) have driven by them with +100km/h before and they absolutely flash at you (without showing numbers). I am fairly reluctant to believe your statements given my own experience.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I’d doubt this is anything approaching universal, but where I am there definitely were three digit signs in the early aughts, which now appear to have all been replaced with two digit ones. I don’t know if this was for cost purposes or the proposed “high score” reason.

      There was one right in front of the police station in the town I lived in back in the day, which was a full dot matrix display and didn’t even have discrete digit slots. It could display other messages if it wasn’t in speed readout mode. I passed it at about a buck twenty one night and discovered that it topped out at 99. It’s the first one I recall seeing that didn’t have a third digit, but then they became the norm pretty shortly thereafter.

      The ones that are popping up like mushrooms around here now fit within the footprint of a normal speed limit sign and they have a dual color LED matrix that flashes a frowny face at you if you’re 0.01 MPH over the specified speed…