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As a pedestrian I am terrified by streets with occlusions and random obstructions in the name of traffic calming. There's a road in Oxford with build-out with a

As a pedestrian I am terrified by streets with occlusions and random obstructions in the name of traffic calming. There's a road in Oxford with build-out with a tree in the middle of it. You can't see cars coming and they can't see me. Same goes for removing lines from the road. I'd rather cars knew where they stand and focus on what's important like looking out for other road users. I've always thought it was a perverse conclusion that the way to make someone operate heavy machinery more safely is to increase cognitive load of the people operating them. Why not have a the straight roads you describe, with rigid automatic enforcement and penalities that take dangerous drivers off the road? And then put in place infrastructure to make sure that not driving a car is a viable option, so that stricter enforcement has public support. I see this option as a self-reinforcing route to reducing car use.

cge 5y ago
On the other side of this: there's a residential street I cross rather frequently in California which is a straight road with good visibility, and this being California, both unsignalled crossings and a 35mph speed limit. Everyone drives at or above 35mph, and almost no one yields for pedestrians at cross walks despite all the yield to pedestrian signs that are clearly visible. I've seen people wait for several minutes afraid to cross; I've had one driver turning right onto the road run into me while I was crossing at a crosswalk, despite their stopping and presumably checking the road before turning; and I've frequently seen cars have to swerve or heavily brake in order to avoid running into the cars that have yielded to let pedestrians cross, despite those cars being quite clearly stopped and visible. In all my experience with high-visibility roads, even though you'd expect people to be better able to pay attention to everything on road with good visibility and clear markings, they actually seem much worse in those conditions. And given the ways in which they are worse, it's not clear how automatic enforcement would work; speed limits and traffic signals can be enforced, and perhaps crosswalks, with cameras, but often regulations seem focused on banning, rather than encouraging, this sort of enforcement.
- afandian 5y ago
  Crosswalks with traffic lights and speed cameras seems like such a self-evident solution to this. That doesn't seem any more authoritarian or heavy-handed than literally digging up the roads to make them more miserable to use. (Also, turn-on-red is such a weird idea. Especially as, from the sound of it, the rules vary from locale to locale.)
- mstipetic 5y ago
  In my hometown they implemented a system that checks for your speed and if you’re over turns on the next red light. Works like a charm.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Sounds like a great way to train all the locals to run red lights from 11pm-5am or so.
    - fho 5y ago
      No idea if that is universally true, but I feel like most people here (in Germany) have a lot of respect for red lights. It's not unusual to see cars waiting at a red light in the middle of nowhere.
- xorfish 5y ago
  Obstacles are only one of the ways you can calm traffic. Planting trees near the streets, narrower lanes, speed humps, roundabouts are all measures with a proven record that they improve safety. Crossings should also be one lane at a time. > In all my experience with high-visibility roads, even though you'd expect people to be better able to pay attention to everything on road with good visibility and clear markings, they actually seem much worse in those conditions This is nothing new. You shouldn't design a street like a road. You will end up with something called a stroad, that is bad at both beeing a street(a place where you can live, shop and whatever) and a road(something that connects two places) Stroads are ugly, inefficient and dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
  - andrepd 5y ago
    > You shouldn't design a street like a road. You will end up with something called a stroad, that is bad at both beeing a street(a place where you can live, shop and whatever) and a road(something that connects two places) Wow, I never saw this phrased like that.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
Many streets in Shanghai don't provide much access between the street and the sidewalk -- instead, there are pedestrian overpasses or underpasses. (It's not the norm -- there are more streets that a pedestrian can easily walk into -- but it's not uncommon either.) You don't need to make driving a car a nonviable option. Making walking into the street nonviable is just as good.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>I've always thought it was a perverse conclusion that the way to make someone operate heavy machinery more safely is to increase cognitive load of the people operating them. But the catch is that people doing things optimize for static cognitive load. In practice this means slowing down so "stuff" that demands thinking happens less readily when other things take up brain cycles. So you can get them to drive slower by adding "stuff" to the road. There are right and wrong ways to do this. Generally you try not to limit visibility. Remember, the goal is safer, not slower. And slower is just a crude proxy for that. With big multi-lane roads your best bet is generally to try and normalize traffic speeds or segregate traffic based on speed (truck lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc). >Why not have a the straight roads you describe, with rigid automatic enforcement and penalities that take dangerous drivers off the road? Because in a democracy with even enforcement they vote out the people who implemented such a system and with uneven enforcement it just turns into a system of extracting revenue from whichever groups nobody cares about. Orwellian crap like that simply doesn't fly in most of the world.

cge 5y ago

On the other side of this: there's a residential street I cross rather frequently in California which is a straight road with good visibility, and this being California, both unsignalled crossings and a 35mph speed limit. Everyone drives at or above 35mph, and almost no one yields for pedestrians at cross walks despite all the yield to pedestrian signs that are clearly visible. I've seen people wait for several minutes afraid to cross; I've had one driver turning right onto the road run into me while I was crossing at a crosswalk, despite their stopping and presumably checking the road before turning; and I've frequently seen cars have to swerve or heavily brake in order to avoid running into the cars that have yielded to let pedestrians cross, despite those cars being quite clearly stopped and visible. In all my experience with high-visibility roads, even though you'd expect people to be better able to pay attention to everything on road with good visibility and clear markings, they actually seem much worse in those conditions. And given the ways in which they are worse, it's not clear how automatic enforcement would work; speed limits and traffic signals can be enforced, and perhaps crosswalks, with cameras, but often regulations seem focused on banning, rather than encouraging, this sort of enforcement.

afandian 5y ago
Crosswalks with traffic lights and speed cameras seems like such a self-evident solution to this. That doesn't seem any more authoritarian or heavy-handed than literally digging up the roads to make them more miserable to use. (Also, turn-on-red is such a weird idea. Especially as, from the sound of it, the rules vary from locale to locale.)
mstipetic 5y ago
In my hometown they implemented a system that checks for your speed and if you’re over turns on the next red light. Works like a charm.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Sounds like a great way to train all the locals to run red lights from 11pm-5am or so.
  - fho 5y ago
    No idea if that is universally true, but I feel like most people here (in Germany) have a lot of respect for red lights. It's not unusual to see cars waiting at a red light in the middle of nowhere.
xorfish 5y ago
Obstacles are only one of the ways you can calm traffic. Planting trees near the streets, narrower lanes, speed humps, roundabouts are all measures with a proven record that they improve safety. Crossings should also be one lane at a time. > In all my experience with high-visibility roads, even though you'd expect people to be better able to pay attention to everything on road with good visibility and clear markings, they actually seem much worse in those conditions This is nothing new. You shouldn't design a street like a road. You will end up with something called a stroad, that is bad at both beeing a street(a place where you can live, shop and whatever) and a road(something that connects two places) Stroads are ugly, inefficient and dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
- andrepd 5y ago
  > You shouldn't design a street like a road. You will end up with something called a stroad, that is bad at both beeing a street(a place where you can live, shop and whatever) and a road(something that connects two places) Wow, I never saw this phrased like that.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

Many streets in Shanghai don't provide much access between the street and the sidewalk -- instead, there are pedestrian overpasses or underpasses. (It's not the norm -- there are more streets that a pedestrian can easily walk into -- but it's not uncommon either.) You don't need to make driving a car a nonviable option. Making walking into the street nonviable is just as good.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>I've always thought it was a perverse conclusion that the way to make someone operate heavy machinery more safely is to increase cognitive load of the people operating them. But the catch is that people doing things optimize for static cognitive load. In practice this means slowing down so "stuff" that demands thinking happens less readily when other things take up brain cycles. So you can get them to drive slower by adding "stuff" to the road. There are right and wrong ways to do this. Generally you try not to limit visibility. Remember, the goal is safer, not slower. And slower is just a crude proxy for that. With big multi-lane roads your best bet is generally to try and normalize traffic speeds or segregate traffic based on speed (truck lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc). >Why not have a the straight roads you describe, with rigid automatic enforcement and penalities that take dangerous drivers off the road? Because in a democracy with even enforcement they vote out the people who implemented such a system and with uneven enforcement it just turns into a system of extracting revenue from whichever groups nobody cares about. Orwellian crap like that simply doesn't fly in most of the world.