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> however, the roundabout provides a better throughput of traffic than other designs and has an excellent safety record, since traffic moves too slowly to do se
by snowwrestler 7y ago
> however, the roundabout provides a better throughput of traffic than other designs and has an excellent safety record, since traffic moves too slowly to do serious damage in the event of a collision. In 2010, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program concluded that the roundabout reduces injurious crashes by three quarters.
One of the hardest things in local democracy is that the best traffic patterns are often also traffic patterns that are unpopular with motorists. Sometimes that is directly linked (e.g. “road calming” where narrowing the road forces drivers to pay closer attention to their surroundings) and sometimes it’s just that the aggregate statistics are counter-intuitive (e.g. “road diets” where trading 2 lanes in each direction for 1 each direction + center turn lane often has no impact on total throughput).
- ken 7y agoThe problem, as always, is that parties disagree on what "best" means. Governments and safety organizations are pushing for "Vision Zero", i.e., safety at any cost. (My economics professor once pointed out that if you really want zero traffic deaths, just limit all cars to 5 mph everywhere.) For people driving on the road, the current level of risk (roughly 1 death per 100M miles) is acceptable, and arriving quickly is desirable. Once you get to the point where the numbers are really tiny, safety is hard. It's tough to make people follow procedures when they've never seen any problems from violating them. I see this effect happen with software, too.
- caconym_ 7y agoTrue, but in this case (apparently) there is the added wrinkle that this roundabout has better throughput than other designs, so what’s the downside? I guess it forces people to think harder than they’d normally have to while driving? I definitely find myself taking slightly longer routes that let me avoid stressful situations, e.g. turning left onto a busy road.
- mjevans 7y agoIf they really want to reach zero the only answer is a combination of self-driving cars (remove the idiot monkey) and proper pedestrian management to have dedicated crossings, away from the automated intersections.
- snowwrestler 7y agoI think characterizing "Vision Zero" as "safety at any cost" neatly illustrates what I'm saying about the local politics of traffic. (It is an explicit component of Vision Zero that improved safety should not be expensive to communities.)