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12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Bad for Safety and Should Be Replaced (2014)

174 points by panic 10y ago

gok 10y ago
"If we make driving less safe people will drive safer"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- a3n 10y ago
  "A crowded society is a polite society."
- kuschku 10y ago
  That's actually one of the most basic principles of traffic design. Roads built in the Netherlands and Germany are designed so that you absolutely can't drive safely at speeds higher than the supposed speeds - it feels unsafe, and you just don't. For example, in areas before schools, you usually limit the road to one lane, and switch which side that is every 50 meters, requiring cars to drive slalom, which in turn requires cars to slow down (or crash into concrete). You don't make it actually unsafe (there's enough space that it won't ever cause any fatal accident), it just has to feel unsafe. EDIT: More examples: Another example are the emergency lanes and outer lane markings on the Autobahn: they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again. Another example would be speed bumps.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    I've seen a similar principle in the Alps. Every town is preceded by a really sharp turn. Works much better than any speed limit sign.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Yes, this is part of what is not just good, but great design. It just works, thanks to subconscious influence. If we'd spend more of our resources on designing such systems that any human instantly gets, I'd assume humanity would be a lot better off.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again. These are present in the US too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip#Continuous_shoulder_rumble_strips_.28CSRS.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip#Continuous_should...
- dasil003 10y ago
  Yes. This is absolutely true. People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights. So I'm not clear what your point is. A better way to frame it is do we want to optimize everything for automobile travel speed and convenience? That's what the US has done for the last 100 years, and the result is poor public transit, unwalkable neighborhoods, urban cycling as extreme sport, and an epidemic of road rage.
  - bcook 10y ago
    You're implying that slippery, curvy roads are safer?
    - mhalle 10y ago
      No. The implication is that driver behavior adapts to road conditions, and that slippery curvy roads demand higher attention and care to navigate. In many instances, improved driver attention compensates for the increased risks of dangerous road conditions: more "dangerous" roads may not have proportionally increased accident rates or fatalities. In the extreme case where a road appears life-threatening, a driver with that knowledge chooses not to drive. The most dangerous conditions occur if the road appears safe but has unforeseen or transient hazards.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Rather than making roads visibly more dangerous, there are better options. One I heard long ago on a motorcycle forum is: get rid of seat belts, mount the driver in a plexiglass bubble in front of the front bumper, and put a bloody great spike in the middle of the steering wheel. I wonder why that idea hasn't caught on?
  - 75j 10y ago
    > People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights. I don't follow. Driving on a snowy mountain road is still incredibly dangerous though, even after I've adapted my behavior.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Yes. It will. And it does. Massachusetts roads are infamously lined with trees, rocks, and all sorts of other barriers that make it a very bad idea to drive carelessly. Drive like an idiot and you'll send a body shop owner's kid to college. However, that steep price for careless drivers makes life a lot safer for those of us biking or walking in MA.
  - foobarian 10y ago
    I don't know where this is coming from; I've been in MA for a long time and never any road obstacles like the above. Now having said that driving backroads is not easy to do fast simply because they are windy and narrow. I guess if you compare to someplace like Arizona where if you spin out you just end up in sand instead of hitting a tree, sure, but why single out MA instead of just anyplace with trees? :)
    - ocschwar 10y ago
      I am not kidding about this: there are places in the Midwest where people have been required to remove trees from their front yards in order to make things safer for drivers who might drift off roads.
      - Declanomous 10y ago
        My grandmother lived o a very wide but otherwise normal street in South Bend, IN. She had a row of GIANT oaks in front of her house. There were at least 3 crashes I heard about that killed drivers. People would drive down the street way too fast, hit a slight bump about 40-50 feet down the street from her house and lose control. The city offered to cut down the trees after 4 teenagers died a while back. She declined though, because they would end up in her living room if they didn't hit the tree. That being said, there's only one tree left, cause that last accident killed the tree they hit.
      - tbihl 10y ago
        That's to make the safety zone larger. You know, so drivers can safely drive off the road. https://youtu.be/P9BUyWVg1xI https://youtu.be/P9BUyWVg1xI
- hexane360 10y ago
  Yep. Traffic fatalities increased after clearing the sides of intersections to remove obstacles. If your field of vision is covered with trees, you drive much slower. If you feel like you're driving on an open road, you drive much faster. Obviously there are some cases where the increase in safety outweighs the increase in recklessness, but not all cases.
  - mhalle 10y ago
    This relation is often true, but not always. For instance, if a driver can't see past an obstruction and needs to pull into a crosswalk to look for oncoming traffic, he or she may neglect to look for a crossing pedestrian because of a prioritization of risk. Progressive traffic engineering is required to balance these competing interests and safety needs on a case-by-case basis.
AstroJetson 10y ago
The author was on a roll, and then he decided to bring Florida DOT and Florida drivers into the article. For anyone that's driven in or through Florida you've seen first hand some of the worst traffic engineering in the US. FDOT excels at creating weird intersections, dangerous on and off ramps, etc. Likewise Florida drivers along the east coast are some of the worst I've seen. Even with 12' lanes they seldom get up to the speed limit. Driving in Jacksonville during rush hour is not for the faint of heart. Miami traffic is own special version rapid lane switching without signals that is the hallmark of Boston. Except in Miami, lane changes can take 1/4 of a mile and blinker can stay on for miles afterwards. Should have offered up another place to try the idea out, I'd suggest Dallas. Those drivers would be happy with 8 and a half foot lanes, I've seen them shove giant Dodge and Ford pickups in to smaller spaces at 60MPH.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  "Those drivers would be happy with 8 and a half foot lanes, I've seen them shove giant Dodge and Ford pickups in to smaller spaces at 60MPH." Why wouldn't they fit there? I've watched many Texans "happily" park their F-350 dual wheels in compact spots (http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/mandatory/legacy/2014/10/man_file_1054848_truck-parked-in-compact-spots.jpg http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/mandatory/legacy/2014... and https://ardent-camper-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/image/1003/Dovahkiin-Parking.jpg https://ardent-camper-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/im... just to name two)
- hexane360 10y ago
  The article agrees with you. "It is striking to hear this news from FDOT, the agency that may preside over the greatest pedestrian massacre in U.S. history. Four out of the five deadliest American cities for walking are currently in Florida. This is by design: in no other state has the DOT had such a powerful influence on the design of urban streets."
- jfaat 10y ago
  I've lived in Boston, Jacksonville, and Miami and i think you're right on point. Miami has a special intersection (pun!) of retirees, newer immigrants, tourists, and young people (not saying any of these groups are bad drivers as a rule, but they certainly have a wide array of driving styles); combined with poor infrastructure design it's a deadly mix. I have friends who've moved from Miami to LA, and they all agree the traffic in South Florida is worse.
ars 10y ago
In summary: Make lanes narrower to annoy drivers into driving slower. (Although 12 foot does seem excessive to me.)
- toast0 10y ago
  I think narrowing lanes/roadways to slow down drivers is probably one of the least annoying ways to do it, while remaining effective. Posting low limits isn't very effective without enforcement which is annoying. Speed bumps can be effective but are annoying. Poor road conditions or shifting lanes are effective but annoying, but effectiveness depends on traffic: When there's no traffic, I may straddle lanes if they're going back and forth all the time. As a driver it's also annoying to be driving on a road where the safe speed is much lower than the apparent safe speed, because I have to keep slowing down. I don't really intend to go 40 mph on streets with houses, but when they have wide, well paved lanes, sometimes it happens.
  - tbihl 10y ago
    Absolutely. The road's design language should communicate these things to drivers. Knowing 65 vs 70 may require signs, but you should be clearly informed by overhanging trees, narrow lanes, and activity when you are in a busy area. It also builds aversion to law enforcement, who have to stand in for proper design by charging people large fines. I don't think it's a stretch to assume some link between police enforcing seemingly malicious and arbitrary rules, and growing public mistrust of police.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  Annoy? Maybe scare-the-sh*t-out-of is more like it. The interstate 74 suspension bridge over the Mississippi river where I live was built in 1935 and upgraded in 1970. It's 2 lanes, no shoulders, and speed limit 50. Getting next to a semi truck on that thing is never fun.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    They recently finished replacing the box girder bridge over the Tennessee near where I live. 2 lanes (one way, for the last couple decades), no shoulder, 55mph limit, 14' clearance. Log trucks got both lanes, if you were fond of your life. I'll miss it.
revelation 10y ago
Traffic "engineers" don't deserve the name. I'm certain not one of them has ever taken a bike and tried to travel on their own design. Their allegiance is to parking spaces and car throughput, in that order.
- koenigdavidmj 10y ago
  Meet Seattle'a traffic engineer: https://twitter.com/dongho_chang https://twitter.com/dongho_chang Scroll through his Twitter a bit and you'll probably find him taking pictures of interesting things and possible safety concerns he encounters as he bikes through his own city.
  - riffic 10y ago
    the exception, not the rule.
briandear 10y ago
I highly disagree. This article assumes perfect driving conditions it also suggests that people drive faster with wider lanes -- then the problem is a function of speed limit and not lane width and also assumes that pedestrian safety is somehow affected solely because of lane width. If pedestrians are getting hit by cars one of two things has happened: the pedestrian jaywalked or a driver didn't stop when required -- both cases which have nothing to do with lane width. I live in rural France with narrow roads and it's incredibly stressful to be driving with nearly no margin of error preventing a head on collision. What about a stalled vehicle on the road? Debris? I get it, the author doesn't like cars, but making lanes narrower to improve safety is counterintuitive. if the problem is excessive speed, then traffic enforcement is the problem. This is like reducing the size of your front door to make it harder for thieves to steal your couch.
- thinkmassive 10y ago
  These are all valid and factual observations, so I have no idea why you're being downvoted. When Waze alerts me about roadkill I'm usually annoyed, because I only want to be alerted about actual obstructions in the road, but that's because it's trivial to veer within my lane to avoid a small critter. There are many possible solutions to make people slow down (enforcement, speed limiters) but intentionally decreasing safety should not be one of them.
- toast0 10y ago
  If you build a road through downtown the same way you build a superhighway, people are going to drive on it at superhighway speeds, which is unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers because downtown has more intersections and interactions between modes of travel and directions of travel. You can try to fix that by posting a low limit and ticketing. However, that only works while enforcement is high. It's much simpler to build the road to encourage appropriate speed, which means narrowing the lanes. You can still have a wide shoulder for avoidance of debris or stalled vehicles: It helps to have it well marked so drivers don't feel it's part of their lane. It's not jaywalking to cross the street at unmarked intersections, but it can be dangerous when drivers are traveling faster than speeds where humans are good at estimating, or where there is poor visibility due to turns in the road or vegetation or whatever. Also, since the author is writing about Florida, age and humidity are factors. For highways where high speed is appropriate, wide lanes are too.
trevyn 10y ago
I'm confused, why are we designing streets for human drivers? :)
- riffic 10y ago
  Humans still drive, if you haven't noticed.
- tomschlick 10y ago
  Because while AI driving will no doubt be popular over the next 50 years, its not right now and won't be ubiquitous for another 20 or so.
- parasitius 10y ago
  Gotta love that Obama-"we". No douchebag you aren't a traffic engineer you are not designing shit
thinkmassive 10y ago
In 50 years, when autonomous vehicles have become a reality, all the 4x 12' lane roads can be converted to 6x 8' lane roads. Everyone wins!
soneca 10y ago
I know I am not controlling for road conditions, car conditions, traffic signals conditions and culture of respect to traffic laws, but... in Brazil, IIRC, the lanes are 10 feet (3 meters) and we are world champions for road fatalities per vehicle-km (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) It does not disproof the OP, but it is good evidence that lanes width is not the most important factor. But I honestly don't know if all other more important factors are fairly good in the USA. edit: I was checking brazilian regulations and it lane width is defined on a rage from ~8 to 12 feet, depending on the "class" of the road (from small, unused roads in small towns, passing through regular traffic heavy urban roads to interestual highways with heavy trucks).
- Reason077 10y ago
  Even 10 feet sounds ridiculously generous by UK standards! Only on motorways would you normally find 12 foot lanes (and even then, they're not always so wide). I suspect many unfamiliar American drivers would be horrified by UK roads and wouldn't consider them "safe" - yet accidents and road deaths, per mile driven, are significantly lower.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    As an American who got to drive over central Ireland on a vacation and my wife spent half of the time covering her eyes as big farm trucks passed by with just an inch or two of space on my side and an ancient looking stone wall just inches from her side. We weren't even in a big vehicle, it was just a tiny Ford. It certainly didn't feel any safer, and I couldn't help but to notice all of the sideswipe marks on various vehicles when we drove through towns.
    - Thlom 10y ago
      Sounds like the west coast of Norway, just replace the farm truck with a semi trailer and the stone wall with a mountain or a 200 meter straight drop.
eveningcoffee 10y ago
If you care about pedestrians, add more pedestrian controlled pedestrian crossings. Train pedestrians to use them correctly.
- riffic 10y ago
  Are you talking about beg buttons?
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    I am talking about pedestrian crossing traffic lights, that can be called by pedestrians to turn green. Appears that these are indeed called beg buttons.
    - mamon 10y ago
      They are called like that because they don't actually do anything. They are there just to calm down impatient pederastians by giving them illusion of control ;)
      - vonmoltke 10y ago
        Not universally true. I have seem some crossings in Texas and elsewhere where the light is solely for pedestrian crossing and will change (after a short delay) on command. On intersections that are sensor-controlled they will also change the light if there is no cross traffic to change it for you. That said, on intersections where the lights are purely timed or where there are always cars waiting in both directions, it pretty much is a "beg button". At that point, there is no way to allow on-demand pedestrian crossing without making the roads useless to cars. In fact, some places like NYC don't even have buttons because they are pointless and possibly counterproductive.
      - jhbadger 10y ago
        That's largely a myth, at least in the US. Everywhere I've lived really needs a button or the "Walk" cycle is skipped to give longer turning times for cars. But because of the myth, you get infrequent pedestrians who believe in the myth and just wait until somebody on either side actually pushes the button.
fanzhang 10y ago
The evidence here doesn't seem that strong -- just manuals that hint that "10-foot lanes are as okay as 12-foot lanes" and the odd (non-randomized or large scale) study here and there. I'm also curious whether a good part of the author's conclusion is driven by his like of bicycles and pedestrians. I live in a city, and almost exclusively walk and bike, so I'd be on his side. But a key part of his argument seems to rest on it potentially being able to free up more bike lanes, about it being faster for pedestrians to cross the street. If part of the motivation is that towns need to be more pedestrian and cyclist friendly (potentially at the cost of cars) that's fine, though I would appreciate it being explicitly pointed out. Right now it's a bit confounded.
LukaAl 10y ago
I'm reading a lot of comment from people complaining that this article is wrong and we shouldn't make roads less safe. Question: what are you talking about? A 10-foot road is wide enough for a car or truck to drive safely at urban speed limits. The maximum vehicle width under Federal law is 102 inches, or 8 feet and a half. And this is for trucks. Cars are around 80 inches. This means over a foot per side for cars and more than half a foot for trucks. If it is not enough for you at city speeds, please give up your driver license, you are not good, and you shouldn't drive. Yes, I agree, I don't want to drive 50 miles an hour next to a truck on a 10-foot wide lane, but that's not a city or a suburban speed, that's highway speed. On the opposite, no problem at driving at 15 or even 25 MPH on a 10 feet lane. Yes, probably I need to give up texting and driving, and I need to be focused on the road. Guess what: I need to do it anyway. Honestly speaking, I have enough of our politicians of disregarding scientific studies and expert analysis, but this is somewhat accepted. But a community like Hacker News should have the smartest people, not the dumbest ones that fail to understand reality.
- randallsquared 10y ago
  > This means over a foot per side for cars and more than half a foot for trucks. I drove in a place like this (Dominica) for a while ~15 years ago. It was rare to see cars that hadn't been dinged up by minor encounters with other cars... If your mirror struck a pole or another car, well, that's why they're on hinges, right? Right? > I don't want to drive 50 miles an hour next to a truck on a 10-foot wide lane, but that's not a city or a suburban speed, that's highway speed. 80 MPH is a highway speed. 50 MPH is definitely normal suburban speed; non-cul-de-sac suburban roads are often posted at 45.
  - to3m 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta... suggests that 50mph would be unsually high for a residential street. As for the rear view mirror hinges: what on earth did you think they were there for, if not for saving your mirrors when they get whacked?! (A somewhat common optional extra for cars is folding rear view mirrors. Some probably fold away automatically, I'm sure; mine make you press a button first. But my car is old. I bet the automatic folding is more common these days; modern wing mirrors often have integrated indicators, and that's going to increase the cost of replacement. (Sole purpose of the folding feature? Saving your car's wing mirrors from getting hit when you park on a narrow street.)
sickbeard 10y ago
Sounds like bro-science to me
elihu 10y ago
I expect a lot of resistance to this idea, no matter it's actual impact on safety, from drivers. I know that driving in narrow lanes makes me nervous, and I feel better driving in wider lanes. If narrower lanes will make driving slightly more unpleasant and stressful for most drivers, they're likely to be opposed to it.
- Zigurd 10y ago
  People bought big SUVs to feel safer, but it's an illusion. 10 foot lanes would do much to contain this trend. They would also stop texting and pay attention.
mdip 10y ago
I had a difficult time agreeing with very much of the author's arguments made in this article. In particular, the opening argument "What's the number one most important thing that we have to fight for? ... Well that's easy: 10-foot lanes instead of 12-foot lanes.", which caused me to read the rest of the article. This argument was, at best, poorly supported and at worst, an attempt to inflate the argument and keep me reading the remainder of the article. To back up this statement, he cited two studies and states that there's few good studies. The lack of studies is, in itself, a big problem. Making large changes on little data invites unintended consequences -- much like those he's stating were caused by the original change to 12-foot lanes[0]. This would be OK if the studies had a very strong supporting conclusion about current circumstances facing drivers, today, but the studies' conclusions are weak. One states that "10 feet or more [rather than 12 feet] resulted in accident rates that were either reduced or unchanged" and the other indicated "analyses conducted were generally either not statistically significant or indicated that narrower lanes were associated with lower rather than higher crash frequencies." He later draws a few conclusions about drivers "feeling more safe" in 12-foot lanes, causing more risky driving (supported only by anecdote). He stretches quite a bit with the anecdote about how when we merge onto a freeway with their really wide lanes, we set the cruise control 5MPH higher than the speed limit and relax more because the 12-foot lanes give us the illusion of additional safety. This is presented as a "Common Sense" anecdote, but I'd be willing to bet there's more data that people feel safer on highways because traffic all moves around the same speed, there are no traditional intersections, and no sudden stops except in cases of high traffic volumes (where it's anticipated) and accidents. I've never even noticed that highway lanes are wider, but I can picture it now. He then goes on to compare things that are not comparable -- residential roads that are 12-foot wide with traffic going in both directions -- those streets are safer because there's almost no traffic to compete with and people are usually driving far slower than they are on county roads. I support the last part of the article, about adding bike lanes, but that argument suffers from the same weaknesses. Though I suspect adding marked bike lanes improves roadway safety for cyclists, I can't point to data showing that and the author did not provide it. In addition, his original argument that reducing lanes to 10-foot is "The #1 most important thing" isn't covered by this unless road engineers -- in designing roadways at 10 feet -- automatically include bike lanes as a result. We have a strong drivers lobby in the state that I live -- Michigan. In areas where shrinking the lanes would leave a half or more of another lane, you're more likely to see the road widened that extra half-lane to increase capacity for vehicles, not cyclists. That would make intersections like 12-mile and Telegraph[1] more dangerous with yet another lane of traffic that might not notice a pedestrian. As much as I'm sure this is something the author feels strongly about, the facts provided don't add up to the conclusion he drew and if I'm being particularly uncharitable, after reading this article, I felt like I'd been taken in click-bait fashion. Before reading the article, I thought interesting, here's an issue I didn't know about and apparently I might want to care about it and after reading, unfortunately, I concluded almost the opposite -- that we shouldn't change anything until we have solid data proving that 12-foot lanes are a problem. [0] One that comes to mind is how does this change affect the safety of self-driving vehicles that we're likely to see in a few years? [1] About a decade ago, this intersection was in the top 20 or so of most dangerous in the United States. It's still high on the list in Michigan, so either a bunch of new intersections became more dangerous or when they reconstructed the intersection, they improved safety. I'm not sure, but I worked near there and the reconstruction, which moved the sidewalk closer to the road, made it a lot easier to notice pedestrians preparing to cross the street when turning.
valine 10y ago
Making driving more dangerous forces drivers to focus harder, and focusing harder makes drivers less likely to screw up. The thing the article fails to address is the stress this adds to everyone's commute. The stress of a daily commute can have a serious impact on a person's health. Deliberately increasing the stress associated with driving without considering the ramifications is irresponsible imo. http://time.com/9912/10-things-your-commute-does-to-your-body/ http://time.com/9912/10-things-your-commute-does-to-your-bod...
- slaman 10y ago
  I agree with you up to the stress bit. Until we have reliable autonomous driving we should be fully alert while piloting heavy objects through shared space at high velocities. It adds to your cognitive load sure, but so does killing an equally distracted pedestrian.
- mcguire 10y ago
  "Making driving more dangerous forces drivers to focus harder, and focusing harder makes drivers less likely to screw up." The inescapable conclusion is that we should get rid of seat belts, mount the driver in a plexiglass bubble in front of the front bumper, and put a bloody great spike in the middle of the steering wheel. Any takers?
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    I had an other smart acquaintance who believed replacing airbags with spikes would make people safer. Ridiculous. That's like saying that decreasing did production will make people use food smarter and starve less. It'll improve the efficiency of food usage, but fewer people won't starve. Steering wheel spikes will improve driver habits, but people won't be safer overall.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Typo: decreasing food production
  - 10y ago
phkahler 10y ago
I've said it before. Putting sidewalks right next to vehicle traffic is stupid. I suggested to a friend that putting walkways through the back yards in a suburban neighborhood would be a better idea. You'd also have half as many because they'd run between two properties. He said oh yeah, they do it that way in... I think it was Texas?
- tbihl 10y ago
  That planning decision articulates to the drivers and pedestrians that the cars will encounter few or no hazards, and that the pedestrians are not welcome near roadways. It also supports things like large safety areas (25 ft) on either side of the road that allow drivers to be minimally injured if their cars leave the road. It tells everyone, "cars have margin of error to wander out of their space" and, following from that, "pedestrians shouldn't feel overly confident about not encountering cars in pedestrian space." That's a pretty good way to do highways. The alternative is the reverse, where pedestrians wander, and drivers know not to get too comfortable even in their own spaces. This arrangement supports commerce and community and vitality. You can't have it both ways. You're either moving cars, or you're building places. Both have their place, but they are separate places.
- bluthru 10y ago
  Neighborhood A: You stroll down the sidewalk under a canopy of trees and wave to your neighbors on their porch. Neighborhood B: You walk behind people's houses completely isolated from everything.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  They've started doing exactly that in a couple of the newer developments here in Gilroy (California). The roads within the development are significantly narrower, but there are now bike lanes separated from the traffic by actual curbs instead of just a painted line, and the sidewalks are a bit wider, too. The biggest walkability boost is that all cul-de-sacs now have walkways at the top of the 'bubble', so that foot and bicycle traffic can pass straight on through. Also, roundabouts have replaced stoplights. On the more negative side, the other feature of these development is the size of the lots vs. the size of the homes on them. The houses are close enough that you could probably reach out a window and hand something to your neighbor without much effort, and while each house does have a (small) garage, there is very limited on-street parking. I have mixed feelings about whether it will succeed, simply because the locations chosen for these developments are many miles away from the nearest stores, so anyone who lives there is going to need to drive most of the time anyway. Some of this is just the chicken/egg problem, some of it unchangeable without completely flattening and rebuilding the city. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I personally am glad not to live in such a place, as it as cramped as any city dwelling, but without the positives that dense cities provide.
paulsutter 10y ago
Human drivers are bad for safety[1] and should be replaced. Good news is that we're already on track to solve the real problem. [1] 1.25 million deaths per year: http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/
ihoz 10y ago
Completely anecdotal, but I agree with this article 100% I spent the first 6 years of my (oldest) kid's lives in the immediate bordering towns of Madison, WI. Nice, straight, flat, wide lanes. The people tore through those streets; I did as well, before I had kids. We moved a few years ago and now live outside of Boston. Narrow, winding streets that are easily 1/2 as wide as WI. I feel much safer with my kids in this neighborhood than in WI. And it's for every reason listed in this article.
Rapzid 10y ago
So.. New Zealand has 3.25m wide lanes typically. If you are interested in studies about how variables such as this and speed affect yearly fatality outcomes, NZ Transport may be a good place to start. With ACC and public health in general safety and reducing healthcare costs(read: traffic accidents) is a huge concern. That being said, anyone driving from back to Auckland from the snow at 120kph+ knows that you don't drive slower due to the narrow lanes and crazy windy roads as much as you drive to the tolerances ;) Just like in US mountain areas you may be timid at first and get smoked by and annoy the locals, but you will soon learn to push the envelope.
mahyarm 10y ago
But with 12 foot lanes, you can adjust the lanes after the fact to 10 foot lanes and put bike lanes everywhere!
- mrob 10y ago
  2 feet is inadequate for a bike lane. I just measured the width of my bicycle and it's 23.5 inches, so even if I rode perfectly central I'd have only a quarter inch clearance each side. And my bike is not unusually wide.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    But if it's a 2 lane road (4 total), then you'll have 4 feet for the bike lane.
mantas 10y ago
Over there in Europe, we have mixed approach which IMO is great - Highways (including city bypasses etc highway-like roads, not only posted highways) are plenty wide. Like, dual-carriage can easily fit 3 or even 4 trucks next to each other. - Major fast traffic city streets (no pedestrians, good visibility, preferably crossings are 2-level or controlled) Are wide-ish to drive comfortably, 3 trucks could barely fit on dual-carriage, but 3 cars - easily - City streets (pedestrians highly possible, cars coming in/out of drives, no speed-up/slow-down lanes, uncontrolled crossings) are just wide enough to drive comfortable at 50km/h. May have speed control features. - Residential streets. Narrow streets. Parked cars on the sides. Driving at > 30km/h is not comfortable. 2 trucks could hardly pass. Lots of speed control features. In addition to that, we usually have traffic features that warn of upcoming speed limit. For example, small towns frequently got an artificial S turn or shallow speed bump-. You can easily pass it at 50-ish km/h. Sometimes it's possible at 30 or 70. Which is usually the speed limit for upcoming stretch of the road. I love this approach. The road itself should tell it's limit. Safe-looking roads that are actually not safe suck. Point in case, we recently had some 2-wide-lanes-one-way streets converted to 2-narrow-lanes + bus lane. I was sceptical at first, but in general traffic calmed down, less assholes, less speeding. This approach sucks if there're no enough highway(-ish) roads and bypasses though. It's a torture to do a long drive through small cities. On the other hand, it's safer to residents of those cities if people passing through don't speed 2x the limit..
tempestn 10y ago
All kinds of things can go wrong when the lanes are too wide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwinnODU0yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwinnODU0yo
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
I'll keep this bit: we, as a society, are more than willing to sacrifice lives for automobility Perhaps that's the point we need to reconsider, the cause-not-symptom behind the effect that the OP associates with a simple metric (which, to me, sounds a bit superstitious: why precisely 10 foot lanes, and not 9.5 or 10.5 ones?)
heisenbit 10y ago
In a neighborhood I drive through every day the city cut off with a painted divider roughly 4 feet on each side off the road for bikes. I think as a result the speed I drive has decreased somewhat. Drivers adjust speed according to visual clues. The speed limit is only one factor and probably not even the most important one.

174 points by panic 10y ago

gok 10y ago

"If we make driving less safe people will drive safer"

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
a3n 10y ago
"A crowded society is a polite society."
kuschku 10y ago
That's actually one of the most basic principles of traffic design. Roads built in the Netherlands and Germany are designed so that you absolutely can't drive safely at speeds higher than the supposed speeds - it feels unsafe, and you just don't. For example, in areas before schools, you usually limit the road to one lane, and switch which side that is every 50 meters, requiring cars to drive slalom, which in turn requires cars to slow down (or crash into concrete). You don't make it actually unsafe (there's enough space that it won't ever cause any fatal accident), it just has to feel unsafe. EDIT: More examples: Another example are the emergency lanes and outer lane markings on the Autobahn: they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again. Another example would be speed bumps.
- Swizec 10y ago
  I've seen a similar principle in the Alps. Every town is preceded by a really sharp turn. Works much better than any speed limit sign.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Yes, this is part of what is not just good, but great design. It just works, thanks to subconscious influence. If we'd spend more of our resources on designing such systems that any human instantly gets, I'd assume humanity would be a lot better off.
- userbinator 10y ago
  they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again. These are present in the US too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip#Continuous_shoulder_rumble_strips_.28CSRS.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip#Continuous_should...
dasil003 10y ago
Yes. This is absolutely true. People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights. So I'm not clear what your point is. A better way to frame it is do we want to optimize everything for automobile travel speed and convenience? That's what the US has done for the last 100 years, and the result is poor public transit, unwalkable neighborhoods, urban cycling as extreme sport, and an epidemic of road rage.
- bcook 10y ago
  You're implying that slippery, curvy roads are safer?
  - mhalle 10y ago
    No. The implication is that driver behavior adapts to road conditions, and that slippery curvy roads demand higher attention and care to navigate. In many instances, improved driver attention compensates for the increased risks of dangerous road conditions: more "dangerous" roads may not have proportionally increased accident rates or fatalities. In the extreme case where a road appears life-threatening, a driver with that knowledge chooses not to drive. The most dangerous conditions occur if the road appears safe but has unforeseen or transient hazards.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Rather than making roads visibly more dangerous, there are better options. One I heard long ago on a motorcycle forum is: get rid of seat belts, mount the driver in a plexiglass bubble in front of the front bumper, and put a bloody great spike in the middle of the steering wheel. I wonder why that idea hasn't caught on?
- 75j 10y ago
  > People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights. I don't follow. Driving on a snowy mountain road is still incredibly dangerous though, even after I've adapted my behavior.
ocschwar 10y ago
Yes. It will. And it does. Massachusetts roads are infamously lined with trees, rocks, and all sorts of other barriers that make it a very bad idea to drive carelessly. Drive like an idiot and you'll send a body shop owner's kid to college. However, that steep price for careless drivers makes life a lot safer for those of us biking or walking in MA.
- foobarian 10y ago
  I don't know where this is coming from; I've been in MA for a long time and never any road obstacles like the above. Now having said that driving backroads is not easy to do fast simply because they are windy and narrow. I guess if you compare to someplace like Arizona where if you spin out you just end up in sand instead of hitting a tree, sure, but why single out MA instead of just anyplace with trees? :)
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    I am not kidding about this: there are places in the Midwest where people have been required to remove trees from their front yards in order to make things safer for drivers who might drift off roads.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      My grandmother lived o a very wide but otherwise normal street in South Bend, IN. She had a row of GIANT oaks in front of her house. There were at least 3 crashes I heard about that killed drivers. People would drive down the street way too fast, hit a slight bump about 40-50 feet down the street from her house and lose control. The city offered to cut down the trees after 4 teenagers died a while back. She declined though, because they would end up in her living room if they didn't hit the tree. That being said, there's only one tree left, cause that last accident killed the tree they hit.
    - tbihl 10y ago
      That's to make the safety zone larger. You know, so drivers can safely drive off the road. https://youtu.be/P9BUyWVg1xI https://youtu.be/P9BUyWVg1xI
hexane360 10y ago
Yep. Traffic fatalities increased after clearing the sides of intersections to remove obstacles. If your field of vision is covered with trees, you drive much slower. If you feel like you're driving on an open road, you drive much faster. Obviously there are some cases where the increase in safety outweighs the increase in recklessness, but not all cases.
- mhalle 10y ago
  This relation is often true, but not always. For instance, if a driver can't see past an obstruction and needs to pull into a crosswalk to look for oncoming traffic, he or she may neglect to look for a crossing pedestrian because of a prioritization of risk. Progressive traffic engineering is required to balance these competing interests and safety needs on a case-by-case basis.

AstroJetson 10y ago

The author was on a roll, and then he decided to bring Florida DOT and Florida drivers into the article. For anyone that's driven in or through Florida you've seen first hand some of the worst traffic engineering in the US. FDOT excels at creating weird intersections, dangerous on and off ramps, etc. Likewise Florida drivers along the east coast are some of the worst I've seen. Even with 12' lanes they seldom get up to the speed limit. Driving in Jacksonville during rush hour is not for the faint of heart. Miami traffic is own special version rapid lane switching without signals that is the hallmark of Boston. Except in Miami, lane changes can take 1/4 of a mile and blinker can stay on for miles afterwards. Should have offered up another place to try the idea out, I'd suggest Dallas. Those drivers would be happy with 8 and a half foot lanes, I've seen them shove giant Dodge and Ford pickups in to smaller spaces at 60MPH.

FireBeyond 10y ago
"Those drivers would be happy with 8 and a half foot lanes, I've seen them shove giant Dodge and Ford pickups in to smaller spaces at 60MPH." Why wouldn't they fit there? I've watched many Texans "happily" park their F-350 dual wheels in compact spots (http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/mandatory/legacy/2014/10/man_file_1054848_truck-parked-in-compact-spots.jpg http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/mandatory/legacy/2014... and https://ardent-camper-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/image/1003/Dovahkiin-Parking.jpg https://ardent-camper-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/im... just to name two)
hexane360 10y ago
The article agrees with you. "It is striking to hear this news from FDOT, the agency that may preside over the greatest pedestrian massacre in U.S. history. Four out of the five deadliest American cities for walking are currently in Florida. This is by design: in no other state has the DOT had such a powerful influence on the design of urban streets."
jfaat 10y ago
I've lived in Boston, Jacksonville, and Miami and i think you're right on point. Miami has a special intersection (pun!) of retirees, newer immigrants, tourists, and young people (not saying any of these groups are bad drivers as a rule, but they certainly have a wide array of driving styles); combined with poor infrastructure design it's a deadly mix. I have friends who've moved from Miami to LA, and they all agree the traffic in South Florida is worse.

ars 10y ago

In summary: Make lanes narrower to annoy drivers into driving slower. (Although 12 foot does seem excessive to me.)

toast0 10y ago
I think narrowing lanes/roadways to slow down drivers is probably one of the least annoying ways to do it, while remaining effective. Posting low limits isn't very effective without enforcement which is annoying. Speed bumps can be effective but are annoying. Poor road conditions or shifting lanes are effective but annoying, but effectiveness depends on traffic: When there's no traffic, I may straddle lanes if they're going back and forth all the time. As a driver it's also annoying to be driving on a road where the safe speed is much lower than the apparent safe speed, because I have to keep slowing down. I don't really intend to go 40 mph on streets with houses, but when they have wide, well paved lanes, sometimes it happens.
- tbihl 10y ago
  Absolutely. The road's design language should communicate these things to drivers. Knowing 65 vs 70 may require signs, but you should be clearly informed by overhanging trees, narrow lanes, and activity when you are in a busy area. It also builds aversion to law enforcement, who have to stand in for proper design by charging people large fines. I don't think it's a stretch to assume some link between police enforcing seemingly malicious and arbitrary rules, and growing public mistrust of police.
ourmandave 10y ago
Annoy? Maybe scare-the-sh*t-out-of is more like it. The interstate 74 suspension bridge over the Mississippi river where I live was built in 1935 and upgraded in 1970. It's 2 lanes, no shoulders, and speed limit 50. Getting next to a semi truck on that thing is never fun.
- mcguire 10y ago
  They recently finished replacing the box girder bridge over the Tennessee near where I live. 2 lanes (one way, for the last couple decades), no shoulder, 55mph limit, 14' clearance. Log trucks got both lanes, if you were fond of your life. I'll miss it.

revelation 10y ago

Traffic "engineers" don't deserve the name. I'm certain not one of them has ever taken a bike and tried to travel on their own design. Their allegiance is to parking spaces and car throughput, in that order.

koenigdavidmj 10y ago
Meet Seattle'a traffic engineer: https://twitter.com/dongho_chang https://twitter.com/dongho_chang Scroll through his Twitter a bit and you'll probably find him taking pictures of interesting things and possible safety concerns he encounters as he bikes through his own city.
- riffic 10y ago
  the exception, not the rule.

briandear 10y ago

I highly disagree. This article assumes perfect driving conditions it also suggests that people drive faster with wider lanes -- then the problem is a function of speed limit and not lane width and also assumes that pedestrian safety is somehow affected solely because of lane width. If pedestrians are getting hit by cars one of two things has happened: the pedestrian jaywalked or a driver didn't stop when required -- both cases which have nothing to do with lane width. I live in rural France with narrow roads and it's incredibly stressful to be driving with nearly no margin of error preventing a head on collision. What about a stalled vehicle on the road? Debris? I get it, the author doesn't like cars, but making lanes narrower to improve safety is counterintuitive. if the problem is excessive speed, then traffic enforcement is the problem. This is like reducing the size of your front door to make it harder for thieves to steal your couch.

thinkmassive 10y ago
These are all valid and factual observations, so I have no idea why you're being downvoted. When Waze alerts me about roadkill I'm usually annoyed, because I only want to be alerted about actual obstructions in the road, but that's because it's trivial to veer within my lane to avoid a small critter. There are many possible solutions to make people slow down (enforcement, speed limiters) but intentionally decreasing safety should not be one of them.
toast0 10y ago
If you build a road through downtown the same way you build a superhighway, people are going to drive on it at superhighway speeds, which is unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers because downtown has more intersections and interactions between modes of travel and directions of travel. You can try to fix that by posting a low limit and ticketing. However, that only works while enforcement is high. It's much simpler to build the road to encourage appropriate speed, which means narrowing the lanes. You can still have a wide shoulder for avoidance of debris or stalled vehicles: It helps to have it well marked so drivers don't feel it's part of their lane. It's not jaywalking to cross the street at unmarked intersections, but it can be dangerous when drivers are traveling faster than speeds where humans are good at estimating, or where there is poor visibility due to turns in the road or vegetation or whatever. Also, since the author is writing about Florida, age and humidity are factors. For highways where high speed is appropriate, wide lanes are too.

trevyn 10y ago

I'm confused, why are we designing streets for human drivers? :)

riffic 10y ago
Humans still drive, if you haven't noticed.
tomschlick 10y ago
Because while AI driving will no doubt be popular over the next 50 years, its not right now and won't be ubiquitous for another 20 or so.
parasitius 10y ago
Gotta love that Obama-"we". No douchebag you aren't a traffic engineer you are not designing shit

thinkmassive 10y ago

In 50 years, when autonomous vehicles have become a reality, all the 4x 12' lane roads can be converted to 6x 8' lane roads. Everyone wins!

soneca 10y ago

I know I am not controlling for road conditions, car conditions, traffic signals conditions and culture of respect to traffic laws, but... in Brazil, IIRC, the lanes are 10 feet (3 meters) and we are world champions for road fatalities per vehicle-km (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) It does not disproof the OP, but it is good evidence that lanes width is not the most important factor. But I honestly don't know if all other more important factors are fairly good in the USA. edit: I was checking brazilian regulations and it lane width is defined on a rage from ~8 to 12 feet, depending on the "class" of the road (from small, unused roads in small towns, passing through regular traffic heavy urban roads to interestual highways with heavy trucks).

Reason077 10y ago
Even 10 feet sounds ridiculously generous by UK standards! Only on motorways would you normally find 12 foot lanes (and even then, they're not always so wide). I suspect many unfamiliar American drivers would be horrified by UK roads and wouldn't consider them "safe" - yet accidents and road deaths, per mile driven, are significantly lower.
- jandrese 10y ago
  As an American who got to drive over central Ireland on a vacation and my wife spent half of the time covering her eyes as big farm trucks passed by with just an inch or two of space on my side and an ancient looking stone wall just inches from her side. We weren't even in a big vehicle, it was just a tiny Ford. It certainly didn't feel any safer, and I couldn't help but to notice all of the sideswipe marks on various vehicles when we drove through towns.
  - Thlom 10y ago
    Sounds like the west coast of Norway, just replace the farm truck with a semi trailer and the stone wall with a mountain or a 200 meter straight drop.

eveningcoffee 10y ago

If you care about pedestrians, add more pedestrian controlled pedestrian crossings. Train pedestrians to use them correctly.

riffic 10y ago
Are you talking about beg buttons?
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  I am talking about pedestrian crossing traffic lights, that can be called by pedestrians to turn green. Appears that these are indeed called beg buttons.
  - mamon 10y ago
    They are called like that because they don't actually do anything. They are there just to calm down impatient pederastians by giving them illusion of control ;)
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      Not universally true. I have seem some crossings in Texas and elsewhere where the light is solely for pedestrian crossing and will change (after a short delay) on command. On intersections that are sensor-controlled they will also change the light if there is no cross traffic to change it for you. That said, on intersections where the lights are purely timed or where there are always cars waiting in both directions, it pretty much is a "beg button". At that point, there is no way to allow on-demand pedestrian crossing without making the roads useless to cars. In fact, some places like NYC don't even have buttons because they are pointless and possibly counterproductive.
    - jhbadger 10y ago
      That's largely a myth, at least in the US. Everywhere I've lived really needs a button or the "Walk" cycle is skipped to give longer turning times for cars. But because of the myth, you get infrequent pedestrians who believe in the myth and just wait until somebody on either side actually pushes the button.

fanzhang 10y ago

The evidence here doesn't seem that strong -- just manuals that hint that "10-foot lanes are as okay as 12-foot lanes" and the odd (non-randomized or large scale) study here and there. I'm also curious whether a good part of the author's conclusion is driven by his like of bicycles and pedestrians. I live in a city, and almost exclusively walk and bike, so I'd be on his side. But a key part of his argument seems to rest on it potentially being able to free up more bike lanes, about it being faster for pedestrians to cross the street. If part of the motivation is that towns need to be more pedestrian and cyclist friendly (potentially at the cost of cars) that's fine, though I would appreciate it being explicitly pointed out. Right now it's a bit confounded.

LukaAl 10y ago

I'm reading a lot of comment from people complaining that this article is wrong and we shouldn't make roads less safe. Question: what are you talking about? A 10-foot road is wide enough for a car or truck to drive safely at urban speed limits. The maximum vehicle width under Federal law is 102 inches, or 8 feet and a half. And this is for trucks. Cars are around 80 inches. This means over a foot per side for cars and more than half a foot for trucks. If it is not enough for you at city speeds, please give up your driver license, you are not good, and you shouldn't drive. Yes, I agree, I don't want to drive 50 miles an hour next to a truck on a 10-foot wide lane, but that's not a city or a suburban speed, that's highway speed. On the opposite, no problem at driving at 15 or even 25 MPH on a 10 feet lane. Yes, probably I need to give up texting and driving, and I need to be focused on the road. Guess what: I need to do it anyway. Honestly speaking, I have enough of our politicians of disregarding scientific studies and expert analysis, but this is somewhat accepted. But a community like Hacker News should have the smartest people, not the dumbest ones that fail to understand reality.

randallsquared 10y ago
> This means over a foot per side for cars and more than half a foot for trucks. I drove in a place like this (Dominica) for a while ~15 years ago. It was rare to see cars that hadn't been dinged up by minor encounters with other cars... If your mirror struck a pole or another car, well, that's why they're on hinges, right? Right? > I don't want to drive 50 miles an hour next to a truck on a 10-foot wide lane, but that's not a city or a suburban speed, that's highway speed. 80 MPH is a highway speed. 50 MPH is definitely normal suburban speed; non-cul-de-sac suburban roads are often posted at 45.
- to3m 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta... suggests that 50mph would be unsually high for a residential street. As for the rear view mirror hinges: what on earth did you think they were there for, if not for saving your mirrors when they get whacked?! (A somewhat common optional extra for cars is folding rear view mirrors. Some probably fold away automatically, I'm sure; mine make you press a button first. But my car is old. I bet the automatic folding is more common these days; modern wing mirrors often have integrated indicators, and that's going to increase the cost of replacement. (Sole purpose of the folding feature? Saving your car's wing mirrors from getting hit when you park on a narrow street.)

sickbeard 10y ago

Sounds like bro-science to me

elihu 10y ago

I expect a lot of resistance to this idea, no matter it's actual impact on safety, from drivers. I know that driving in narrow lanes makes me nervous, and I feel better driving in wider lanes. If narrower lanes will make driving slightly more unpleasant and stressful for most drivers, they're likely to be opposed to it.

Zigurd 10y ago
People bought big SUVs to feel safer, but it's an illusion. 10 foot lanes would do much to contain this trend. They would also stop texting and pay attention.

mdip 10y ago

I had a difficult time agreeing with very much of the author's arguments made in this article. In particular, the opening argument "What's the number one most important thing that we have to fight for? ... Well that's easy: 10-foot lanes instead of 12-foot lanes.", which caused me to read the rest of the article. This argument was, at best, poorly supported and at worst, an attempt to inflate the argument and keep me reading the remainder of the article. To back up this statement, he cited two studies and states that there's few good studies. The lack of studies is, in itself, a big problem. Making large changes on little data invites unintended consequences -- much like those he's stating were caused by the original change to 12-foot lanes[0]. This would be OK if the studies had a very strong supporting conclusion about current circumstances facing drivers, today, but the studies' conclusions are weak. One states that "10 feet or more [rather than 12 feet] resulted in accident rates that were either reduced or unchanged" and the other indicated "analyses conducted were generally either not statistically significant or indicated that narrower lanes were associated with lower rather than higher crash frequencies." He later draws a few conclusions about drivers "feeling more safe" in 12-foot lanes, causing more risky driving (supported only by anecdote). He stretches quite a bit with the anecdote about how when we merge onto a freeway with their really wide lanes, we set the cruise control 5MPH higher than the speed limit and relax more because the 12-foot lanes give us the illusion of additional safety. This is presented as a "Common Sense" anecdote, but I'd be willing to bet there's more data that people feel safer on highways because traffic all moves around the same speed, there are no traditional intersections, and no sudden stops except in cases of high traffic volumes (where it's anticipated) and accidents. I've never even noticed that highway lanes are wider, but I can picture it now. He then goes on to compare things that are not comparable -- residential roads that are 12-foot wide with traffic going in both directions -- those streets are safer because there's almost no traffic to compete with and people are usually driving far slower than they are on county roads. I support the last part of the article, about adding bike lanes, but that argument suffers from the same weaknesses. Though I suspect adding marked bike lanes improves roadway safety for cyclists, I can't point to data showing that and the author did not provide it. In addition, his original argument that reducing lanes to 10-foot is "The #1 most important thing" isn't covered by this unless road engineers -- in designing roadways at 10 feet -- automatically include bike lanes as a result. We have a strong drivers lobby in the state that I live -- Michigan. In areas where shrinking the lanes would leave a half or more of another lane, you're more likely to see the road widened that extra half-lane to increase capacity for vehicles, not cyclists. That would make intersections like 12-mile and Telegraph[1] more dangerous with yet another lane of traffic that might not notice a pedestrian. As much as I'm sure this is something the author feels strongly about, the facts provided don't add up to the conclusion he drew and if I'm being particularly uncharitable, after reading this article, I felt like I'd been taken in click-bait fashion. Before reading the article, I thought interesting, here's an issue I didn't know about and apparently I might want to care about it and after reading, unfortunately, I concluded almost the opposite -- that we shouldn't change anything until we have solid data proving that 12-foot lanes are a problem. [0] One that comes to mind is how does this change affect the safety of self-driving vehicles that we're likely to see in a few years? [1] About a decade ago, this intersection was in the top 20 or so of most dangerous in the United States. It's still high on the list in Michigan, so either a bunch of new intersections became more dangerous or when they reconstructed the intersection, they improved safety. I'm not sure, but I worked near there and the reconstruction, which moved the sidewalk closer to the road, made it a lot easier to notice pedestrians preparing to cross the street when turning.

valine 10y ago

Making driving more dangerous forces drivers to focus harder, and focusing harder makes drivers less likely to screw up. The thing the article fails to address is the stress this adds to everyone's commute. The stress of a daily commute can have a serious impact on a person's health. Deliberately increasing the stress associated with driving without considering the ramifications is irresponsible imo. http://time.com/9912/10-things-your-commute-does-to-your-body/ http://time.com/9912/10-things-your-commute-does-to-your-bod...

slaman 10y ago
I agree with you up to the stress bit. Until we have reliable autonomous driving we should be fully alert while piloting heavy objects through shared space at high velocities. It adds to your cognitive load sure, but so does killing an equally distracted pedestrian.
mcguire 10y ago
"Making driving more dangerous forces drivers to focus harder, and focusing harder makes drivers less likely to screw up." The inescapable conclusion is that we should get rid of seat belts, mount the driver in a plexiglass bubble in front of the front bumper, and put a bloody great spike in the middle of the steering wheel. Any takers?
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I had an other smart acquaintance who believed replacing airbags with spikes would make people safer. Ridiculous. That's like saying that decreasing did production will make people use food smarter and starve less. It'll improve the efficiency of food usage, but fewer people won't starve. Steering wheel spikes will improve driver habits, but people won't be safer overall.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Typo: decreasing food production
- 10y ago

phkahler 10y ago

I've said it before. Putting sidewalks right next to vehicle traffic is stupid. I suggested to a friend that putting walkways through the back yards in a suburban neighborhood would be a better idea. You'd also have half as many because they'd run between two properties. He said oh yeah, they do it that way in... I think it was Texas?

tbihl 10y ago
That planning decision articulates to the drivers and pedestrians that the cars will encounter few or no hazards, and that the pedestrians are not welcome near roadways. It also supports things like large safety areas (25 ft) on either side of the road that allow drivers to be minimally injured if their cars leave the road. It tells everyone, "cars have margin of error to wander out of their space" and, following from that, "pedestrians shouldn't feel overly confident about not encountering cars in pedestrian space." That's a pretty good way to do highways. The alternative is the reverse, where pedestrians wander, and drivers know not to get too comfortable even in their own spaces. This arrangement supports commerce and community and vitality. You can't have it both ways. You're either moving cars, or you're building places. Both have their place, but they are separate places.
bluthru 10y ago
Neighborhood A: You stroll down the sidewalk under a canopy of trees and wave to your neighbors on their porch. Neighborhood B: You walk behind people's houses completely isolated from everything.
Baeocystin 10y ago
They've started doing exactly that in a couple of the newer developments here in Gilroy (California). The roads within the development are significantly narrower, but there are now bike lanes separated from the traffic by actual curbs instead of just a painted line, and the sidewalks are a bit wider, too. The biggest walkability boost is that all cul-de-sacs now have walkways at the top of the 'bubble', so that foot and bicycle traffic can pass straight on through. Also, roundabouts have replaced stoplights. On the more negative side, the other feature of these development is the size of the lots vs. the size of the homes on them. The houses are close enough that you could probably reach out a window and hand something to your neighbor without much effort, and while each house does have a (small) garage, there is very limited on-street parking. I have mixed feelings about whether it will succeed, simply because the locations chosen for these developments are many miles away from the nearest stores, so anyone who lives there is going to need to drive most of the time anyway. Some of this is just the chicken/egg problem, some of it unchangeable without completely flattening and rebuilding the city. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I personally am glad not to live in such a place, as it as cramped as any city dwelling, but without the positives that dense cities provide.

paulsutter 10y ago

Human drivers are bad for safety[1] and should be replaced. Good news is that we're already on track to solve the real problem. [1] 1.25 million deaths per year: http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/

ihoz 10y ago

Completely anecdotal, but I agree with this article 100% I spent the first 6 years of my (oldest) kid's lives in the immediate bordering towns of Madison, WI. Nice, straight, flat, wide lanes. The people tore through those streets; I did as well, before I had kids. We moved a few years ago and now live outside of Boston. Narrow, winding streets that are easily 1/2 as wide as WI. I feel much safer with my kids in this neighborhood than in WI. And it's for every reason listed in this article.

Rapzid 10y ago

So.. New Zealand has 3.25m wide lanes typically. If you are interested in studies about how variables such as this and speed affect yearly fatality outcomes, NZ Transport may be a good place to start. With ACC and public health in general safety and reducing healthcare costs(read: traffic accidents) is a huge concern. That being said, anyone driving from back to Auckland from the snow at 120kph+ knows that you don't drive slower due to the narrow lanes and crazy windy roads as much as you drive to the tolerances ;) Just like in US mountain areas you may be timid at first and get smoked by and annoy the locals, but you will soon learn to push the envelope.

mahyarm 10y ago

But with 12 foot lanes, you can adjust the lanes after the fact to 10 foot lanes and put bike lanes everywhere!

mrob 10y ago
2 feet is inadequate for a bike lane. I just measured the width of my bicycle and it's 23.5 inches, so even if I rode perfectly central I'd have only a quarter inch clearance each side. And my bike is not unusually wide.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  But if it's a 2 lane road (4 total), then you'll have 4 feet for the bike lane.

mantas 10y ago

Over there in Europe, we have mixed approach which IMO is great - Highways (including city bypasses etc highway-like roads, not only posted highways) are plenty wide. Like, dual-carriage can easily fit 3 or even 4 trucks next to each other. - Major fast traffic city streets (no pedestrians, good visibility, preferably crossings are 2-level or controlled) Are wide-ish to drive comfortably, 3 trucks could barely fit on dual-carriage, but 3 cars - easily - City streets (pedestrians highly possible, cars coming in/out of drives, no speed-up/slow-down lanes, uncontrolled crossings) are just wide enough to drive comfortable at 50km/h. May have speed control features. - Residential streets. Narrow streets. Parked cars on the sides. Driving at > 30km/h is not comfortable. 2 trucks could hardly pass. Lots of speed control features. In addition to that, we usually have traffic features that warn of upcoming speed limit. For example, small towns frequently got an artificial S turn or shallow speed bump-. You can easily pass it at 50-ish km/h. Sometimes it's possible at 30 or 70. Which is usually the speed limit for upcoming stretch of the road. I love this approach. The road itself should tell it's limit. Safe-looking roads that are actually not safe suck. Point in case, we recently had some 2-wide-lanes-one-way streets converted to 2-narrow-lanes + bus lane. I was sceptical at first, but in general traffic calmed down, less assholes, less speeding. This approach sucks if there're no enough highway(-ish) roads and bypasses though. It's a torture to do a long drive through small cities. On the other hand, it's safer to residents of those cities if people passing through don't speed 2x the limit..

tempestn 10y ago

All kinds of things can go wrong when the lanes are too wide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwinnODU0yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwinnODU0yo

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

I'll keep this bit: we, as a society, are more than willing to sacrifice lives for automobility Perhaps that's the point we need to reconsider, the cause-not-symptom behind the effect that the OP associates with a simple metric (which, to me, sounds a bit superstitious: why precisely 10 foot lanes, and not 9.5 or 10.5 ones?)

heisenbit 10y ago

In a neighborhood I drive through every day the city cut off with a painted divider roughly 4 feet on each side off the road for bikes. I think as a result the speed I drive has decreased somewhat. Drivers adjust speed according to visual clues. The speed limit is only one factor and probably not even the most important one.