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That is amazing. It is easy to imagine that safer cars have contributed most to this. But there are so many other factors.. emergency response, alcohol, road q
by mongol 7y ago
That is amazing.
It is easy to imagine that safer cars have contributed most to this. But there are so many other factors.. emergency response, alcohol, road quality, weather... I wonder how it would break down, if it was possible to measure it all.
- AdamHede 7y agoThey also look at road section with abnormally high levels of accidents and are actually willing to chance road layout to more intuitive. It is a legitimate reason to change the curvature or build a bridge or additional exit in Norway "because it's difficult to drive in". It's really quite incredible, and combine that with safer cars, and you can really start to eat into traffic fatalities.
- gambiting 7y agoInteresting, because in some places like the UK, road infrastructure is intentionally made "difficult" as it has been proven to make drivers pay more attention and reduce accidents around those places.
- vinay427 7y agoThese are different types of changes like lane narrowing or lane marker omitting that don't aim to make driving less intuitive, but to decrease the perceived safe speed of travel. They're trying to make driving feel more difficult without actually increasing the danger level, which in theory decreases the danger for everyone else on the road without actually endangering drivers.
- jka 7y agoDo you have a reference for that, out of interest? That might genuinely be the intention but I'd worry that -- depending on the kind of 'challenge' added to roads -- it might not always work out for the best.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoI might be cynical but IMHO there is no end to creative rationalisation of the poor investment in road infrastructure in the UK...
- Sharlin 7y agoThe keyword to look up is ”traffic calming”. Making lanes narrower, adding curb extensions (bulbouts), gentle curves to otherwise straight roadways, and so on.
- merijnv 7y agoI know this approach is used in residential areas in the Netherlands. A lot of these streets are designated as "woonerf" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street), which means that everything has right of way on cars (i.e. pedestrians, bikes, playing kids, whatever). The design is often (intentionally) tricky to navigate. Brick/cobble roads to make driving fast uncomfortable. Planter's narrowing/blocking half the road, resulting in the road frequently being limited to a single lane (often alternating sides) so cars can't simultaneously pass. Frequent 90 degree turns, that sorta thing. It make it impossible to drive fast on these roads. Note that this is only applied in some "zones", generally this applies to streets with houses, which will then connect up to a 30 km/h max road that is less obstructed and functions as a connecting artery to main roads in the city/town and eventually provincial roads (80 km/h) or highways. Each classification has different goals, so highways and provincial roads are "vehicles only", cyclists and pedestrians will be on completely separate unconnected paths (usually with several meters of separation from the main road). Main roads will have both cars and cyclists, but usually separate/designated bike lanes (and sometimes even separated bike paths). Only the 30km/h and woonerf streets really have bikes and cars mixed on the same lane (and will have measures that restrict car speed like I mentioned above).
- jka 7y agoGreat details, thanks very much! Glad to see that this designation is widespread across a decent number of countries as well.
- vintermann 7y agoThis happens in Norway too. For instance lots of zebra crossings were scraped away where I live a few years back, because they argued (from accident statistics) it gave pedestrians a false sense of security. That may be, but it also made 95% of drivers (those obeying traffic regulations) actually stop for you to cross. Obviously they don't if there's no crossing, and you have to wait ten times as long to cross safely.
- aledalgrande 7y agoThis is quite epic. It's like they live in a country where gov uses their brains to help.
- agumonkey 7y agoI don't know the economics of rebuilding roads but I wish other countries did the same.
- blattimwind 7y agoThat's certainly not unique, though the amount of effort put into it will vary. In Germany a typical response to an accident hotspot might be putting up extra signage (e.g. no passing, lower speed limit, Difficult Curves Ahead), adding or moving/changing a traffic light, speedbumps, speed checks etc. Major, expensive stuff like changing the routing or curvature is pretty rare and most likely to happen if the road is reworked anyway.
- AdrianB1 7y agoIt explains in another article linked in a comment: Oslo is virtually car-free. Heaving deadly accidents between cyclists and pedestrians is possible, but very rare, so the accidents disappeared because the main actor (cars) disappeared. It sounds obvious - if you want to eliminate car accidents, eliminate cars, this is what they did.
- tallanvor 7y agoThis is completely untrue. Oslo has tons of cars on the roads, unfortunately, even in the center of town. While the current city government has people that would like to get rid of cars - at least in the city center - we're nowhere close to being there.
- AdrianB1 7y agoI am just telling about the article, not saying it is true or not. Just sharing info.
- Tiktaalik 7y agoSafer cars how? Cars are just as safe in NA where we rack up the pedestrian deaths. The two ton vehicle slamming into a pedestrian at medium speeds will probably kill them. The only way to solve this problem is to lower speeds or remove the car from the road.
- Symbiote 7y agoCars are less safe in North America, since they're very often SUVs, trucks etc. Those have terrible results for the pedestrian in a collision. A typical European car hitting a pedestrian at 30mph is 80% survivable. (This road safety video is 14 years old now, and since then some places in the UK have managed to introduce 20mph limits, which are even better.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvja-PA5Egc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvja-PA5Egc