6 ms·

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

• 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.)
    • Aloha 10y ago
      Not residential street - suburban thoroughfare - as in 4-6 lanes wide.
      • bdcravens 10y ago
        In Houston 2 lane (1 each way) thoroughfares are often 45 mph.
    • Someone 10y ago
      I thought the hinges are there to be able to adjust the mirror to the driver's eye position. If you move the seat forward or your upper body is longer the angle at which you look at the mirror changes.
      • brbsix 10y ago
        This is what they're there for: https://youtu.be/JIO7lZuokpQ?t=7m25s https://youtu.be/JIO7lZuokpQ?t=7m25s Also, I'm not sure why the OP referred to them as rear view mirrors. I've only heard them called side view mirrors.
      • to3m 10y ago
        For automatic-type mirrors, no. That sort of mirror has a hinge to let the mirror rotate forwards and backwards on one axis. This is there to fold the mirror in, and to help absorb whacks. The mirror angle itself is adjusted by a separate, finer mechanism inside the unit. For manual-type mirrors the same joint - some kind of ball-and-socket affair, I imagine? - performs both functions. The joint has a much wider range of movement than you'd expect if it were just for catering for the position of the driver's head.
    • tropo 10y ago
      Those are de-jure numbers. Add 50% to get de-facto numbers. So yeah, 50 MPH is normal for residential. The highways marked 65 MPH are actually 100 MPH. Speed limits suffer from a NIMBY problem. Everybody wants to the limit to be 5 MPH around their own home, but 125 MPH when traveling elsewhere. The locals control the limits. The same goes for speed bumps, often loved by the locals but hated by everybody else.
• mcguire 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, have you ever driven a box van on roads with 10ft lanes? I just looked this up: an ambulance is 9' wide. A pumper truck is 9'9". A ladder truck is 10'.
  • Pxtl 10y ago
    Which is why European cities with narrow roads have special fire trucks that accomdate them. Today we build cities to fit fire trucks instead of building fire trucks to fit cities.
    • haimez 10y ago
      Looks like we've got an expert here. Please sir, cure us of our collective ignorance. What is the ideal street width, in millimeters? Edit: I'm going to leave my comment as-is, and just point out that this is a question that you should feel comfortable answering, even if indirectly, to weigh in on this matter. HN is getting way out of hand with people prescribing solutions to problems that the prescriber knows jack shit about.
    • kalleboo 10y ago
      Here's an example of a Japanese fire truck for narrow residential roads: http://www.synapse.ne.jp/hozumi/P1000996.jpg http://www.synapse.ne.jp/hozumi/P1000996.jpg It fits into the "Kei car" tax category, which means max 3.4m (11.2ft) long, 1.48m (4.9ft) wide
    • kwhitefoot 10y ago
      And Europeans and Scandinavians generally, especially here in Norway, get out of the way when an emergency vehicle is heard or seen. Often this happens on roads that are only six metres wide yet there is still room for the ambulance or fire engine to storm down the centre with room to spare. Of course not all Europeans are so public spirited, I've seen video from the UK and Germany where people made no attempt to get out of the way.
    • tropo 10y ago
      I know which fire truck I want if my place is burning. The bigger the better. I'll take a 20-foot wide truck please, with extra water. Little trucks are not the same.
• slaman 10y ago
  I've found the older cities I've lived in with much tighter roads have much better drivers as a result. People know their distances and are hyper-aware of their surroundings because it is a necessity in order to avoid minor collisions. In cities that are more 'designed' by traffic engineers there is ample room so people don't know the dimensions of their own vehicle and travel at greater speeds while letting themselves be distracted more frequently. The accidents that result are usually frame-bending as opposed to bumper replacements.
  • moyta 10y ago
    In a lot of older areas the roads were built just big enough for farm to market purposes[1] either officially (as in Texas) or unofficially. This resulted in narrow, twisty & curvy roads that encourage people to drive slower and safer. The safer a road is perceived to be through visual cues (wider, straighter, less hilly, etc) the faster drivers will go. Hence why in Seattle and other cities dangerous (read wide, "safe" feeling) roads are being put on a diet, and going from 4 lanes to 2 lanes with a center turn lane and bike lanes (sadly usually unprotected). The same thing is being done in Denmark, where they actually add curves & planters to the roads to force cars to curve and feel unsafe, which ultimately results in safer streets for everyone involved. Another strategy that I've heard has better results is eliminating sidewalks and getting rid of jaywalking laws, so that traffic of all types are forced to intermingle at much lower speeds. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm-to-market_road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm-to-market_road
    • haimez 10y ago
      I think the turn lanes and bike lanes were the motivation, the lane width became the accommodating variable.
    • dnzm 10y ago
      As for mingling different sorts of traffic - I've heard of several spots here in the Netherlands where they've done just that, and it doesn't always result in lower accident rates. At some point you cross the line between "less of a comfort zone everybody is more aware" and "confusing mess that has so many things going on that nobody is aware of everything". A narrow road can still be predictable - you'll have to be alert to prevent minor bumps, but there's no surprises that can result in rear-ends because you have to slam on the brakes. I don't have any studies numbers to back it up atm.
• tbihl 10y ago
  Absolutely correct, the way we improve safety is by making the most dangerous people feel less comfortable. I've read about some places where a rural highway leading into a town will narrow to ten foot lanes, waking drivers out of their daze because the driving environment is about to become much more complex. I wish I could remember where this was.
  • addicted 10y ago
    It's like the thought experiment of replacing seat belts with a spike sticking out of the steering wheel. That will guarantee that car accidents and deaths drop dramatically.
    • brassic 10y ago
      The long forgotten irony in this meme is that cars used to be designed like this. There were no seat belts and the steering column was a rigid spear. It was practically designed to kill you. Historical evidence suggests that there would indeed be fewer accidents but more car drivers would die (because even quite trivial bumps would be fatal), though pedestrians and cyclists would be safer. As someone who chooses not to drive, that sounds pretty good to me.
  • astrobe_ 10y ago
    In my country, high traffic moderate speed (90km/h - 56 mph) sometimes go across rural villages where the speed limit is usually half that. Furthermore, drivers here are notorious for not giving a frack about speed limits. So some of those villages have experienced with various ways to narrow the road. Sometimes it plays only with perception, by adding for instance small plastic poles to separate the lanes. Sometimes it's chicanes or bumps. I can't give figures on the effectiveness of this, but as a driver you instinctively slow down when the road appears narrower. It seems to me more effective than a sign on the side of the road.
    • izacus 10y ago
      The traffic islands before towns[0] have proven to be extremely effective at actually making people slow down to 50km/h. [0]: http://www.rediweldtraffic.co.uk/media/9186/RediPaveHeader.jpg http://www.rediweldtraffic.co.uk/media/9186/RediPaveHeader.j...
• Spooky23 10y ago
  My issue with the article is that it doesn't really scope the problem. A six lane boulevard or highway in a city is a different animal than a typical street, and the examples seem to be those large through streets. I live in a state where the the state only maintains state designated roads outside of cities. So maybe I'm weird. But generally, I think it's safe to say that boulevards, regardless of lane width tend to be unfriendly to non-automotive traffic. Side streets with marked lanes are rarely wide. So other than stating that engineers are Uber conservative, the problem really isn't defined.
  • sharpercoder 10y ago
    It implicitly scopes by arguing for pedestrian safety. This means it goes for all roads were pedestrian crossings are done.
• throwaway1X2 10y ago
  > Honestly speaking, I have enough of our politicians of disregarding scientific studies and expert analysis, but this is somewhat accepted. The problem is, the linked article is not scientific. Yes, it links some studies and cherry picks a few sentences from them, but exactly in the way that media do in pieces like "Scientists have discovered 3 more ways make your road safer!". For example, the article cites a study that says that higher speed is expected on wider straight streets between traffic lights. Then it says that there is no reason to not apply to other types of road (like not being straight? or maybe 20 other even unworded reasons, which is why scientists tests hypotheses and don't publish papers 'there is no reason this is not true' all day). Then it says that pedestrian hit at speed X have better chances than when being hit at speed Y. But does each car hit a pedestrian? By this same method you can say that blindfolded drivers will drive more slowly. Will it be safer? Sorry, this is no science, this is pushing an agenda. It uses nice subtitle "The Studies: Rare but Conclusive" right before citing a paper, where even cherry-picked quote says it was statistically insignificant. It uses grand wordings to play as having all in hard data, but it stretches conclusions by untested implications. It doesn't compare costs and outcomes to other alternatives (optical speed "bumps", lenghtwise wave markings, etc.). It doesn't mention effects on driver fatigue (you have your nice slower speeds on several streets, but people drive half an hour through that and pay less attention elsewhere), it doesn't consider long term impact - many traffic solutions shows changes, because, well, they ARE changes. Some of them regress very quickly - e.g. make a few roads narrower? It is a change in both the temporal aspect (a week ago, the street was wider) and the citywise movement (you drive and suddenly the next road is narrower). Change several roads throughout the city and this mind trick will be gone, people will get accustomed and speed up, now on narrower street. What is the worst of this, is that five years from such a change, articles like this one playing it "scientifically" could compare the 'before' and 'after' and still claim decrease in accidents and deaths regardless of the true effect of the narrower road. All you need to do is: - not account for changing vehicle park, where old cars full of sharp edges are scraped and newer cars are shaped all around accidents, there must be clearance between engine and bonnet, some bonnets even pop up, etc. - not account for common driver assists (ESP, blind spot indicators, bird's eye parking view, rear passing traffic alarm, etc.), - improving systems like autonomous braking (talking not only about Tesla, it has been out there for quite some time, it only needs to come down to cheaper cars), - healthcare improvements, new methods, new apparatus. All of these could make previously deadly accidents survivable or could prevent them altogether cooperating with the driver or even autonomously, regardless of whether you make your roads narrower or not. Accounting for all these effects is hard (not impossible) and it is beyond the level of "scientificness" often found in articles like these. The article is simply the same politics as from politicians, only targeted to a little more sophisticated reader than the typical "experts found out X. end of article." articles from media, yet the reader must be one who doesn't orient themselves in science and politics of agenda pushing transportation-proposing-articles.
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  Earlier this year I was at a day long car control clinic hosted by a BMW CCA chapter (they do a lot to promote driving proficiency and safety). A comment that one of the instructors made will stay with me forever: "In the states they teach you how to operate a car but they don't teach you how to drive".
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• NatW 10y ago
  As a US driver living in France, I can share just the anecdote that French driving far less pleasant, more stressful, and feels more dangerous due to its narrow traffic lanes. I can also report seeing high numbers of highway accidents in Paris, and I would be surprised if per capita traffic fatalities were lower in France. I dream of driving in the luxurious, relaxing wide lanes of the US.
  • detaro 10y ago
    According to wikipedia numbers, France has half the traffic fatalities per capita, and and a bit less than the US per distance driven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...