Another example of this is the downtown area of a small PA town I stopped in recently. They had recently re-paved the entire center street with brick and stone.

Another example of this is the downtown area of a small PA town I stopped in recently. They had recently re-paved the entire center street with brick and stone. The sidewalks were wide and there were no curbs, only rubber-covered metal posts marking the boundary between car and pedestrian areas. As a driver, I found this design scary, because it was hard to visually see where I should be driving. But I noticed that the natural result of this was that I drove around 15mph despite signs coming into the town saying 25mph as the speed limit. Another cause of this is that the sound of bricks under your tires gives the impression that you're going faster than you actually are. It was scary, but it put my focus as a driver on not hitting pedestrians, poles, or other cars, rather than slavishly following lines and curbs. Not hitting pedestrians, poles, and other cars is the entire point of the lines and curbs, so it's a more direct way to solve the problem. I think the fear aspect comes from the fact that hitting a pedestrian seemed like a real possibility the entire time I was in the town. But that fear is rational: there is a real possibility of hitting a pedestrian, and a high-foot-traffic area shouldn't be designed to assuage that rational fear. Drivers should be afraid of hitting pedestrians. A placard commemorating the redesign in the town square said that since the redesign in 2017, car/pedestrian accidents dropped from 279 to 43. * I'm citing numbers and locations from memory here so take this all with a grain of salt. I only stopped in the town for lunch on a long drive, so I don't remember all the details. My memory for numbers is usually good, but is not infallible.