6 ms·
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs (2017)
- bertil 3y agoWe tried that in 1910s. What we got was a whole lot of dead people and no one wanted to ride bicycles anymore.
- ilyt 3y agoWe can only hope none of the hacks that wrote the article gets close enough to any decision regarding roads
- akira2501 3y agoThis completely fails to account for the fact that 50% of roadway fatalities in the US involve alcohol. Many of the rest involve youth, drugs or inexperience of one form or another. This isn't a "some people don't pay attention" problem. And some "clever" hackish solution to try to deal with this narrow avenue will have precisely zero impact on fatalities and an oversized impact on driver irritation. Want fewer accidents? Outlaw alcohol, use a "provisional" plate system for new drivers, and limit the amount of horsepower drivers under 24 can legally drive.
- bobthepanda 3y agoAt least if you replace signals with roundabouts, the theory is that it is just not possible to speed in a straight line for very long, since you’d hit a roundabout circle.
- akira2501 3y agoGoogle "Milwaukee Roundabout."
- bobthepanda 3y agoIt works if you have multiple roundabouts in succession. This place looks like it’s a roundabout downhill from a straight bridge, so plenty of room to speed. Probably should narrow the bridge.
- dsego 3y agoCroatia had 0 blood alcohol for a few years if I remember correctly, it was deemed not successful after statistic didn't show a reduction in accidents and fatalities, although I believe it was probably reversed back to 0.5 per mille because of lobbying and tourism. We also had horsepower limits for young drivers, but that was deemed unconstitutional. I think they're now considering a trial driver's license for young drivers, might be an eu thing, I'm not sure about the details.
- felipemnoa 3y ago>>Outlaw alcohol It is already illegal to drive while intoxicated And prohibition has already been tried. Some people just don't care, even if they know the penalties are going to be harsh.
- akira2501 3y agoPrecisely the point. We drive trillions of miles in a year and the number of fatalities and even permanent disability from accidents is astonishingly low. As modern people in a free democratic society, I wonder if we at some point have to accept, "this is as good as it gets." Your only other options are complete tyranny of the state over motorists.
- atom058 3y agoLooking at the raw statistics, it seems that the US could do more to improve road safety I'm not a traffic engineer, but I believe better street design (meaning slowing cars down) and roundabouts could help. Building more public transport is also an option, but it might not be a feasible solution due to US City design. US: 12,9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants Europe: 9.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants Sweden: 2,2 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants Netherlands: 3,8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
- akira2501 3y agoIt's tempting to pull statistics for the "entire USA" and then try to imagine policy around it. What you should do is pull statistics for different states and then consider policy. For example, Texas has fewer inhabitants than California, yet more people die on Texas roads than California roads. Perhaps there's something to be examined there? Further.. again, so many fatalities in the US involve alcohol that you immediately want to think about how Europe, Sweden and the Netherlands handle drunk driving behavior and what sorts of drunk driving diversion programs they engage in. It's also why I mentioned Australia's "provisional plate" system. I think that's a great idea, and it specifically puts horsepower limits on vehicles for "provisional" drivers. This is also a known risk factor, and it's why insurance coverage for young men under 24 is significantly more expensive than for females in the same age bracket. The fatality ratio is 8:1 across the sexes. So.. sure, roundabouts and traffic calming might be it, but my reading of the data suggests more interesting problems.
- konschubert 3y agoWe have the option to make traffic much safer by implementing mandatory gps based speed governors and automatic breaking for collision avoidance. Self driving cars are the next step in this. people will make up a million stories how going above the speed limit is essential for their safety. It’s all BS. People want to speed, and they are willing to accept thousands of dead and disabled as the price.
- SoftTalker 3y agoIf traffic spacing is maintained, speed is not a problem. Speed is a problem when one car is going 20mph slower than everyone else and creating a logjam.
- konschubert 3y agoexhibit a Speed is absolutely a problem because it reduces the time you have to react to oncoming and crossing traffic and because it increases the impact of collisions.
- Eavolution 3y agoIntroduce a stupid 45mph speed limit on drivers for 1 year after they've passed their test in NI. That means I could be on a motorway or big A road where people are going 70+mph, and be supposed to do 45mph. Of course I don't do that unless I see a car that I think is a police car. I've been flashed at before for doing 45mph and find it way easier to drive at the same speed as other cars.
- qwytw 3y ago> People want to speed, and they are willing to accept thousands of dead and disabled as the price. Is speeding the primary reason of most traffic fatalities? Also it's highly variable, in some case it might result in a significant increase in risk and in others it might be completely negligible.
- Zigurd 3y agoUrban speeds above 20mph are way more deadly, and "stroads" are bad. Speeding on limited access highways where you don't have vulnerable traffic is probably a minor factor if any.
- kaycebasques 3y agoThis reminds me of the story about American football padding and feedback loops. Whenever stats are published showing that high schoolers are getting more concussions when playing football, the natural reaction is to add more padding. But what ends up happening is that the players get more confident and hit even harder, resulting in more concussions. So the counterintuitive solution might be to remove padding, not add more. Presumably if you feel more "naked" and vulnerable your subconscious will restrain how hard you hit. I heard this story in the feedback loops section of 101 Universal Design Principles. I haven't looked into the research, so take the idea with a grain of salt.
- Vecr 3y agoThat only applies when you are intentionally hitting your head into things. I would personally wear an appropriate helmet for pretty much everything and do risk analysis to prevent overconfidence and excessive risk taking.
- kaycebasques 3y agoYes, wearing a helmet when biking is obviously safer than not. Maybe there's some kind of upper and lower bounds to the idea.
- rurp 3y agoA similar concept applies to combat sports. Most people see big padded boxing gloves and think they are for limiting damage to the opponent. It's actually the opposite. The gloves protect against breaking your hand on a punch, allowing a boxer to hit their opponent more aggressively. Boxing or MMA without gloves would actually be less harmful, but it appears more brutal so most leagues use gloves.
- Moldoteck 3y agoYeah, traffic calming can reduce accidents: speed bumps, 90 degree turns, road lanes reduction, safe islands on crosswalks. With all these in place, signals&signs will be treated just as mini informative help instead of a full guide
- thriftwy 3y agoWhen I approach a bus stop which has a "slow down to 40 km/h" sign I literally remove my eyes from the road and place them on speedometer/smartphone. What could go wrong, you would ask... Distracting driver with signs surely has a cognitive and alertness cost.
- pard68 3y agoSounds like rural America. No signs, no lights, minimal paint. You are an adult, get from point A to point B without killing anyone.
- dangus 3y agoIn the US, the beat idea is to eliminate stroads. They’re the most dangerous form of road in terms of traffic and pedestrian fatalities because they don’t know what they want to be. They are designed to maximize speed but also with a high number of conflict points (driveways and intersections). They are neither a road (high speed way to get between destinations) nor a street (low speed set of destinations). If you keep traffic at 25mph or below with narrow roads and other traffic calming properties, everyone is safer. Coincidentally, city streets like this tend to not need much signage - usually just stop signs at intersections.
- Falkon1313 3y agoSo let's see what the suggestions are: - Remove markings (such as crosswalks) - Remove signals (such as pedestrian crossings) - Remove curbs (so that cars can, and will, drive on what is supposed to be sidewalk) - Where there are sidewalks, block them with cafes (so that pedestrians must walk in the road) As a frequent pedestrian, on the already pedestrian-hostile streets of the U.S., many of which do not have sidewalks, I have zero faith that this would make drivers behave better. Quite the opposite. This is the land where the very concept of walking somewhere, or riding a bike, is utterly foreign and incomprehensible to most people. It's the land of selfishness, where anyone else on the road is an inconvenience 'in your way'. We need more controls, not less. And, ideally, solid barriers to separate the death-machines from the living people. They should have to go around the places where there are people, instead of barreling carelessly through them.
- Shawnj2 3y agoI mostly agree. While visiting Italy was nice and being walkable is great, the drivers were mostly insane and there aren’t a lot of places where areas that are safe to walk are clearly defined so drivers will happily drive in the middle of the road.
- NylaTheWolf 3y agoI was thinking about Italy while reading through the comments. I've seen people crossing the roads in between drivers. Lovely place and I'd love to visit again but the streets scare me LMAO
- spiffytech 3y agoI'll never forget what a professor said in college: If you're serious about eliminating traffic fatalities, outlaw seat belts and airbags, then install a 6-inch steel spike in the center of every steering wheel. The few people who still dare to drive will be far too cautious to cause an accident. That is, of course, about as ridiculous as A Modest Proposal. Still, over the years it's caused me to repeatedly notice that no matter how hard society complains about something (e.g., traffic fatalities), we keep implicitly deciding that some lifestyles are worth sacrificing lives to preserve.
- naikrovek 3y ago"big think" my white fanny. anyone drive in India? that's what they're describing.
- i_like_apis 3y agoAbsolutely no thanks. Where to start? There are so many poorly thought out ideas here it's like a firehose. Videos of crazy intersections somewhat "working" in the third world does not at all suggest a superior, safer, less congested, or more just system. How about this: > 5. See eye to eye: Right-of-way is negotiated by human interaction, rather than commonly ignored signs. First of all, signs are definitely not "commonly ignored". The opposite is true. Right-of-way should be defendable in a fair court. Rules are the only way to do that. If two people see each other fine, what happens when they both "feel" right and enter each other's path? The article is overloaded with fallacies.
- version_five 3y agoYes! I've driven a lot in France where at least in smaller cities there are way fewer signals and stop signs than on North America. Like a lot of trips you don't encounter any. Traffic is managed by roundabouts and priority to the right. The consequence is you have to watch what other cars are doing and actively drive. When traffic signals mediate everything for you, it's much easier to turn your brain off and when something unexpected, like a pedestrian crossing the road occurs, you don't see them because you're only watching the signals. The added benefit is much better traffic flow. I wish we could get more roundabouts, unfortunately I think it would be a tough transition.
- aurels 3y agoFrance is roundabout-land ! (And I agree it's a good solution).
- ilyt 3y agoI have mixed feelings about roundabouts. Like, when done well they obviously work and they are even mildly entertaining to drive around when traffic is light but many towns slapped them in places where obviously there barely enough space for intersection, let alone roundabout and it is just awkward to drive around.
- qwytw 3y agoI guess in Europe roundabouts are often just the alternative to stop signs since it's the only way you can have an intersection between equal priority streets without traffic lights.
- graton 3y agoRoundabouts are quite a bit safer than alternatives like stop signs and traffic signals. Hard to have T-bone crashes plus it forces the speed to be reduced.
- dontlaugh 3y agoMini roundabouts are great too. The awkwardness is part of the point, they encourage slowing down.
- tamimio 3y agoAnd never ending road constructions, which is for weird reasons -not weird but most likely constructions mafia- Canada in general and Montreal specifically have them all year round!!
- _benj 3y agoYes! A family member actually had an accident because they had “right of way” and thus just drove onwards. I no longer trusts road signs and will still look in an intersection even if, for example, there is no stop sign but I can’t see that no cars are actually coming!
- projektfu 3y agoYep, in the uniform traffic code, nobody "has" the right of way, they can only yield it. Failing to yield can get you a ticket, but acting like you deserve the road can get you killed. I feel that traffic is much worse since before COVID, drivers more aggressive, etc. You have to accept that people are going to make terrible decisions and roll with it. Incidentally, we had storms knock out the power and some typically backed up intersections were moving along very well, with people being cautious but assertive, and not aggressive.
- xwkd 3y ago> I feel that traffic is much worse since before COVID, drivers more aggressive, etc. From what I've seen, it seems like people are less afraid of the consequences of bad driving behavior. There's less of a police presence on the roads. I'm not sure why that's the case, but I have a few guesses.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoAs someone once said--I forget who--if you put a giant metal spike on the steering wheel, pointing straight at the driver's heart--unsafe driving will plummet. I mean, that's the same attitude. There is a truth to it, but only if you don't get carried away.
- zirgs 3y agoMotorcycle riding is basically that, but motorcyclists still ride like crazy. They do wheelies on public roads, exceed the speed limit by 50 km/h or more, ignore red lights, filter through moving traffic and so on. The fact that their vehicle has 0 safety features doesn't make them ride more carefully. It's the opposite.
- 123pie123 3y agofrom my very limited experience with people who ride motocyles, they love the risks involve. Otherwise they'd not bother riding a motocyle
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI used to ride one (before I had a kid), and I was generally a pretty careful rider. After I took my license exam, the instructor sat me down and told me every stupid thing I had done in great detail. He then said "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you passed. But if you keep riding like that, you will be another road statistic.". I got the point. Anyway, despite becoming careful, I still loved riding it. It is way more physical than driving a car and that was pleasurable in itself. But there are indeed a lot of completely crazy bike riders out there.
- lucianbr 3y agoJeremy Clarkson. Obviously it was meant as a joke. I can't believe people take this sort of thing seriously, it would require having no life experience at all.
- 3y ago
- Apreche 3y agoWant fewer car crashes? Remove cars.
- version_five 3y agoEven if you feel that way your comment brings absolutely nothing to this discussion.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y ago[flagged]
- Zigurd 3y agoFewer car-miles would in fact reduce car-related deaths. Make cars less appealing for a lot of trips relative to e-bikes, bike, public transit, walking, or getting things delivered is perfectly rational. Especially when you look at the rest of this thread in which several people have good arguments that nothing else will work.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoIf you have ever been to cities in Holland, you would know that removing cars helps enormously. Bicycles, pedestrians, trams, all going through the town quite safely. There are some cars too (they are not banned) but not many, and they crawl along. It was so liberating to be in that environment. Obviously not for petrolheads, but much safer and nicer for everyone else.
- Shawnj2 3y agoI feel like car enthusiasts should appreciate public transit options the most since it allows you to drive more as a hobby since everyone isn’t doing it.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoThere is an upward limit on how much drivers can effectively pay attention to. So, I tend to think that this approach works for small intersections, but not for very busy ones, all the scary videos of people doing it daily nothwithstanding. I'm fairly certain people get killed all the time.
- blueflow 3y agoAnd as example they picked Vietnam, Ethiopia and India to show that unshaped traffic works. But: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate#/media/File:Road_traffic_accidents_world_map_-_Death_-_WHO2013.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... Looks like its worse by a factor of around 5.
- yohannesk 3y agoI am from Ethiopia. I can confirm that it does not work. I wouldn't recommend tourists to drive here unless they stay at least a month observing how traffic works. Years ago when I started driving, I use to slow down, be attentive, allow people to go first but through time I learned (was forced?) to be like the average driver or I couldn't get anywhere. This[1] place is renovated now but there are other squares where people drive like this. It's prone to traffic accidents [1] https://youtu.be/UEIn8GJIg0E https://youtu.be/UEIn8GJIg0E
- 123pie123 3y agoI think that it works best when the traffic density is below a certain level. When traffic becomes busy some order is needed
- SapporoChris 3y agoAmazing video. My jaw dropped watching it. However I then realized the video playback is quite speed up. Perhaps as much as x4. Still a very interesting video.
- qwytw 3y agoAnd it's not even adjusted by miles/km driven which I assume is significantly lower there (e.g. the US is not that bad compared to Eastern Europe or Belgium if you take into account that Americans driven much more on average).
- Drunk_Engineer 3y agoThis factor of 5 difference in 3rd world countries might actually be explained by Smeed's Curve: "In 1947 Ruben Smeed, the founding father of transport studies in Britain, discovered an intriguing statistical relationship [for 20 countries] between the number of cars per person, and the road accident fatality rate per car. The data revealed that as numbers of cars increased, the death rate per car plummeted. "The Smeed Curve might be considered a societal learning curve. As one encounters more cars people, literally, learn how to live with them. Another part of the explanation might be found in contemplation of other societal changes that accompany rising car ownership. Car ownership correlates highly with measures of affluence. Death rates per car decrease as affluence increases. "When cars are few in number most fatalities are vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists). As vehicle numbers increase the vulnerable retreat." http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/shared%20space.pdf http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/shared%20...
- NohatCoder 3y agoSo, if you make one special road intersection that breaks all the rules of how road intersections normally work people will slow down and pay extra attention. If you make a million of them people will get used to them and/or they will get tired of paying all that extra attention. The cost of going slower all the time will add up, so people will go back to going fast. All of this means that an experiment of one intersection doesn't necessarily tell us anything useful about the results of a broader implementation. The article even does mention places with less traffic regulation that serve as much better test beds, and then waves away the obvious conclusion.
- krona 3y ago> The cost of going slower all the time will add up, so people will go back to going fast. Interesting hypothesis but where is the evidence? I can think of country-wide counter examples such as the UK (among the safest roads in the world) where they've been removing central line markings on country roads for years in the name of safety. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/removal-road-markings-safer-fewer-accidents-drivers https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 123pie123 3y agothis makes me chuckle - sorry for the tabloid link: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-weirdest-road-painted-bonkers-28919417 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-weirdest-road... I'm a great beliver in getting rid of most traffic lights when its less busy - say by just having a flashing amber light, meaning its a free for all reply
- tnecniv 3y agoI read a psychology study a long while back (might be able to find it idk) that I think would agree with this line of thinking but with a slightly different mechanism. The paper argued that we have an internal risk level that we like to drive at, regardless of speed limit. Speeds higher than that risk level feel dangerous and are avoided. Speeds lower than that risk level are basically too boring and the task is not stimulating so you speed up. That risk level is individual dependent, hence some people like to speed more than others. In this context, one weird “lawless” intersection is a novelty that requires attention and is likely perceived as riskier since it is unfamiliar. However, if all intersections were like that, they become normal and people will face them more aggressively.
- metabagel 3y agoI feel like roundabouts are less frustrating than traffic lights, safer, and flow better.
- fnimick 3y agoOnly if you don't care about cyclists and pedestrians who now have no protected time to cross intersecting roads.
- ilyt 3y agoGood, they can pay attention for once. Traffic arriving to roundabout is slow enough anyway as you can't just "ride thru it" if it is a small one. And for big ones, well, you can just have traffic lights. Or not have passing for pedestrians in same place as for cars
- dageshi 3y agoThe pedestrians/cyclists in the uk & france seem to manage?
- knutzui 3y agoIn many cases, there will be pedestrian crosswalks on each exit/entrance to the roundabout. At least that's how I have experienced roundabouts in central Europe.
- livueta 3y ago> protected time to cross As a road runner and bike commuter in the before times who's been run over a couple of times, crosswalks are a shit idea that cause far more harm than good, full stop. Fuck crosswalks. This is actually a good example of what the article discusses, because there's only two possible states: one, in which there's little enough traffic that crossing normally is obvious and trivial, and two, where there's enough traffic that no quantity of flashing lights, neon striping, reflectors and such could ever make crossing truly safe. Staying alive on the roads without a death cage requires assuming that anyone in a car can and will ignore any rule at any time, because, eventually, someone will - and if you trusted that little green man to keep you alive, well, whoops. Crosswalks encourage the sort of head-down passivity in inherently dangerous situations that just gets people killed, and the more flashing shit you attach to them the more you alert fatigue drivers into ignoring them. Crosswalks are similar to speed limits in this context in that they're utterly ineffective but provide an excuse to not actually fix the problem, i.e. build a lot of nonvehicular overpasses/underpasses. The point of criticizing a rules-based approach to traffic safety isn't to encourage some orgy of vehicular homicide, but to move to actually workable solutions involving changing the built environment. And in my area, anyway, roundabouts are more likely to come with nonvehicular bypass structures than other forms of interchange. I'll take a roundabout + overpass over a traffic light + crosswalk every day of the week. In the most walkable places I've lived, that walkability was delivered not by an obsession with figuring out the precise set of rules or the precise enforcement mechanism needed to finally make it work, but by an acknowledgement that the sort of infrastructure you build is inextricably linked to how people use it. Build a stroad and you'll get pedestrian deaths regardless of the rules you try to layer on top of it. Build a walking bridge and you dodge the problem entirely.
- yazantapuz 3y agoAlso, drive more slowly.
- naniwaduni 3y agoThe trouble, of course, is that driving more slowly means you're driving more slowly.
- Zigurd 3y agoThat's a feature not a bug. Except for limited access roads.
- mihoda 3y agoExamples near me: Gilman St and 580/80, Eastshore freeway (a street), and frontage. Unsigned. Terrible asphalt. Slow and safe. Marin and Masonic (bart track underpass): flashing red most of the day lately -> safe.