Why street signs make traffic more dangerous
http://jalopnik.com/5533260/why-street-signs-make-traffic-more-dang...
This is a bit of a lengthy article for Jalopnik, but I think it's one worth reading. I was going to post it when I first read it, but it slipped my mind. Today there was another post about a dangerous intersection in Budapest where the lights went out, accidentally testing the theory.
Basically, Hans Monderman was a traffic engineer who believed that designing shared spaces for cars, bikes, and pedestrians where the perception of danger was perfectly clear is safer than posting control devices to influence people's behavior. Studies at test sites seem to prove this to be correct.
a few excerpts (but read the whole thing, the bit on time v distance is interesting):
"....As I drove with Monderman through the northern Dutch province of Friesland several years ago, he repeatedly pointed out offending traffic signs. “Do you really think that no one would perceive there is a bridge over there?” he might ask, about a sign warning that a bridge was ahead. “Why explain it?” He would follow with a characteristic maxim: “When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."
"...As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he wasn’t struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process—stop, go—the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic."
"...A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”
"...I don't want traffic behavior, I want social behavior"
There's also a bit of info about early traffic engineering in the US, how it relates to the car, and why we have such a hurdle to get over if anything like this could even begin to be taken seriously here.
I'm skeptical, but intrigued.
This is a bit of a lengthy article for Jalopnik, but I think it's one worth reading. I was going to post it when I first read it, but it slipped my mind. Today there was another post about a dangerous intersection in Budapest where the lights went out, accidentally testing the theory.
Basically, Hans Monderman was a traffic engineer who believed that designing shared spaces for cars, bikes, and pedestrians where the perception of danger was perfectly clear is safer than posting control devices to influence people's behavior. Studies at test sites seem to prove this to be correct.
a few excerpts (but read the whole thing, the bit on time v distance is interesting):
"....As I drove with Monderman through the northern Dutch province of Friesland several years ago, he repeatedly pointed out offending traffic signs. “Do you really think that no one would perceive there is a bridge over there?” he might ask, about a sign warning that a bridge was ahead. “Why explain it?” He would follow with a characteristic maxim: “When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."
"...As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he wasn’t struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process—stop, go—the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic."
"...A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”
"...I don't want traffic behavior, I want social behavior"
There's also a bit of info about early traffic engineering in the US, how it relates to the car, and why we have such a hurdle to get over if anything like this could even begin to be taken seriously here.
I'm skeptical, but intrigued.
Views: 112
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Perz on
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Great find - thanks for posting it. Monderman was a brilliant thinker, and I think anyone with even just a slight interest in urban planning will find his work to be fascinating.
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Permalink Reply by Jamais716 on
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It's a really nifty idea. Check out the author's book - http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785. It's a fascinating read for anybody who bikes or drives
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Permalink Reply by lauren sailor on
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i was wondering why those excerpts seemed so familiar, then i realized i have that book! i didn't finish it, though, even just reading about all that driving made me anxious.
Jamais716 said:It's a really nifty idea. Check out the author's book - http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785. It's a fascinating read for anybody who bikes or drives
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Permalink Reply by igz on
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I have MANY opinions to this. Ill start by saying that i AGREE with this guy's philosophy, however, especially here in the U.S. and A., i dont see it happening. Its a bit utopic. I would love to be proven otherwise. There have been serveral tests like the one outlined below that claim success. However, we must first acknowledge that Europe is already used to cycles on the road. Europe's transit evolution has been very different from our's here stateside.
Despite Monderman’s successes in places such as Makkinga and Drachten, skeptics have objected that while these arrangements are fine for small villages, they could never work in cities with heavy traffic. A project in London, undertaken a few years ago independently of Monderman, suggests otherwise. On Kensington High Street, a busy thoroughfare for pedestrians, bikes, and cars, local planners decided to spruce up the street and make it more attractive to shoppers by removing the metal railings that had been erected between the street and the sidewalk, as well as “street clutter,” everything from signs to hatched marks on the roadway. None of these measures complied with Department for Transport standards. And yet, since the makeover there have been fewer accidents than before. Though more pedestrians now cross outside crosswalks, car speeds (the fundamental cause of traffic danger) have been reduced, precisely because the area now feels like it must be navigated carefully.
...Yeah? try that in mid-town Manhattan.
Which brings us to..
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how long we have lived with this built ideology, Monderman’s ideas encounter two common criticisms. The first is that measures that appeal to the better angels of our nature could never work in a country such as the United States, where drivers seem stubbornly reluctant to “share the road” even with other cars, much less pedestrians and cyclists, and the threat of a lawsuit hovers over the smallest traffic intervention. It is true that if a local government is to remove the signs from a busy intersection, and orchestrate the smooth movement of bicycles and cars through it, strong social norms must be in place.
...Consider when a traffic light goes out...yes, people stop (usually) and let others go in an alternating fashion (usually) but the traffic it creates is rediculous. The issue here is volume...simply does not work in a high volume situation. Now what i will subscribe to, is the notion that if we were to eliminate the bike lanes, it is in fact now not a separate function and we have to co-transit and truely SHARE THE ROAD. But this would only be effective if we had many more cycles to be recognized as part of transit. City, country, and suburban roads in the U.S. are all designed around motor vehicles. We are being squeezed into the automotive transit infrastructure, and a drivers mindset. We must wait for evolution.
Otherwise, what we see is the nutjobs...
The other objection Monderman’s ideas often meet is that people do act like idiots, and that, if anything, we need more separation, more safeguards, more rules. Standing with me near the roundabout in Drachten, Monderman noticed a driver speeding past. “There’s a little part of society who don’t accept rules, who don’t accept social structures,” he said. “It’s not up to a traffic engineer to change it.” A few weeks earlier, he said, a local 21-year-old who had just gotten his driver’s license had died in a crash. “He used drugs, alcohol. There’s not a street that can cope with that problem.”
...im sorry...but i know all of us here have seen shithead fucknut drivers (and cyclists...and pedestrians). Unfortunately, all too often, rules and regulations are post activated to individual actions (One bad apple spoils a bunch). And what i see on the roads WAY to much...is that everyone is out for themselves, no one give a hoot about anyone else. Maybe we can change that, but thats gonna be with a lot of time.
Cant we all just get along?
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