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I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' al

• ergo98 16y ago
  You have it EXACTLY right. Most Indian roads have exactly this sort of system in place, so it's a pretty good comparison. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-is-worlds-road-deaths-capital/articleshow/6023344.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-is-worlds-roa... Not so great of an example. The model is like every classic "We turned up the lights and people became more productive. And then we turned down the lights and they became more productive. And then..." It's flawed.
  • sp332 16y ago
    parent is referencing the Hawthorne Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
• Retric 16y ago
  The other major possibility is the road markings where distracting drivers. Understanding the rules while driving is more complex than simply not hitting people. I would much rather someone trying to make a U turn thinking “Is this safe?” vs. “What does the sign say?”
  • Pengwin 16y ago
    In some ways i agree, but in others i disagree. I'm a person who loves traffic lights, because the traffic light specifically tells a road user You can go or no you cant go. nobody has to do any guesswork as to who is allowed to go. I see the whole "more alert because its more dangerous" every day. There used to be a single lane roundabout that i traveled through every day that they have now changed to a double lane roundabout. I am not sure of actual crash statistics related to it, but i see that people are more alert, because it is far more dangerous to what it used to be.
    • btilly 16y ago
      I'm a person who loves traffic lights, because the traffic light specifically tells a road user You can go or no you cant go. nobody has to do any guesswork as to who is allowed to go. And yet about 1/4 of all traffic accidents happen at a traffic light within 5 seconds of a light change. Why? Because one person tried to cheat the rule, while another followed the rule without checking whether it was actually safe to do so.
• inferno0069 16y ago
  What I got from the article was not that naked roads should be everywhere, but actually that they absolutely shouldn't be everywhere. They should, however, be considered, as should a great many other possibilities, in the context of the specific environment that a traffic engineer is designing for. Instead we too often see a bias towards signs and signals and too much copy+paste of what has been done elsewhere.
• yason 16y ago
  Maybe temporary in the sense that once the driver is out of the naked area, back to the "forgiving road" where any obstacle that might possibly hinder the flow of speeding automotives has been removed, the alertness probably falls back to zero again. I don't think it's temporary in the sense that everything goes nicely for the first year and then everyone gets back to normal and accidents increase again. I think that once you're sloshing through flocks of living people with your car and never get a chance to actually clear your way and speed up over 10-20km/h, I suspect that you will always become alert whenever you hit that area. Conversely, walking around in an area where there are 1.5 ton blocks of moving metal without ever getting a chance to actually become absorbed in your thoughts and ignore the environment that you're in all together, you'll certainly feel less secure because you never know what's coming next and from where. Because there's no "known" in the equation and speeds are forcibly slow, people are both more careful and more able to stop their vehicles before anything happens.
• sbov 16y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if A/B tests we run suffer from this syndrome.
• ynniv 16y ago
  My perspective is that people are better at what they're doing when they're paying attention. Give them hints (signs) and shortcuts (straight roads), and their minds wander to something else, until something exceptional happens. There are few if any exceptionally good things that can happen in a car (most revolve around avoiding exceptionally bad things). In becoming a "native" Boston driver, I have noticed that not all drivers pay equal attention. In other places I have lived, the attention that other drivers paid was not as obvious, because roads were straight and everyone was a "good" (rigid rule obeying) driver most of the time. The roads here are twisty, bumpy, often full of holes, merge in odd manners, have roundabouts, unconventional signs, and generally more difficult to drive. Yet I seem to see fewer road-side accidents on the roads that I drive every day. Drivers new to the area see narrow lanes (more frequent lane violations), reduced traffic control (fewer clear opportunities to change lanes or turn), and faster drivers as chaotic and aggressive. It is also scary for tourists to cross the street in the midst of this apparent chaos (you'll see natives walking right through). So you might say that Boston has been in this sort of traffic chaos for a rather long time, and it has never been significantly more dangerous in reality (certainly in perception). I can only conclude that drivers who rely on a rigid rule-set have difficulty in unexpected situations, but when the exceptional is unexceptional, they will develop a more sophisticated model. The net benefit of signs might not be to increase safety, but to allow for lazier, more distracted drivers. Some signs are generally helpful (construction / traffic / drawbridge ahead ), but I would like to see a general reduction. People are smart, and only do what is required. We can tell them not to talk on the phone or "drive distracted" with little effect. Give them a couple of (hopefully temporarily) bad experiences while they are not paying attention, and they will certainly pay more attention all the time. EDIT: I should also point out that many people refuse to drive in Boston, making the driving population more self-selective than other cities. I don't think that this is a problem, but as society becomes more reliant on driving it becomes one. People who do not drive here can still get around by means of the subway, cabs, or plain walking (Boston isn't geographically large). I can't say the same of most other American cities.
  • joe_the_user 16y ago
    There are other costs though. Let's suppose that a thirty minute drive where I'm impelled to pay attention all the time is safer. It still would take a lot out of me and make me less productive at work. It's like the traffic circle where people felt less safe. The fact is you need to increase both actual safety and the feeling of safety, otherwise people are less happy and quite rightly aren't going to support the changes.
• emmett 16y ago
  It's possible that they will...but also possible that they won't. Given the evidence presented, we can't know. Has anyone done a followup study?
• Vicarious 16y ago
  We could have street signs that turn off when safety goes down then, and turn back on when measurements show that people are getting used to it
• jcdreads 16y ago
  Strong agreement on this point. Roads like River Drive in Philadelphia and Storrow Drive in Boston have twisty, blind corners and a 35 mph speed limit, but a regular flow of traffic that is at least 20 mph faster than that. It seems that once people become familiar with a road they fly along way faster than is actually safe. They promote their speed to their level of incompetence, if you will. On the other hand, it makes me consider (but doesn't remotely convince me of) the possibility that all of Boston's rotaries maybe aren't the dumbest road designs possible.