Dupont Circle in Washington DC could take a page from this. It's the exact opposite principle: inner and outer circles, with sets of inner and outer traffic and pedestrian lights at each incoming road. At rush hour, it's fortunate if one vehicle can make it through each light. Other traffic circles in the area, in my experience, work much better without such control.
Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#32I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "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…
My perspective is that people are better at what they're doing when they're paying attention. Give them hints (signs) and shortcuts (straight roads), and their minds wander to something else, until something exceptional happens. There are few if any exceptionally good things that can happen in a car (most revolve around avoiding exceptionally bad things). In becoming a "native" Boston driver, I have noticed that not…
There are other costs though.
Let's suppose that a thirty minute drive where I'm impelled to pay attention all the time is safer. It still would take a lot out of me and make me less productive at work.
It's like the traffic circle where people felt less safe. The fact is you need to increase both actual safety and the feeling of safety, otherwise people are less happy and quite rightly aren't going to support the changes.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
What definitely does not work is drawing cyclist lanes onto the road. In Germany at least I think for a while it was believed that cycling lanes should be drawn on the roads rather than on the sideway. The result is that the cycling lanes become very dangerous, because car use them for short term parking all the time (it is not unusual to have a parking car every 100 meters). That would mean cycling around the car an…
I don't see why this is a big deal. Philadelphia has some recently added cycling lanes that I use all the time. If a car is parked you just look and cautiously veer around it. Sometimes you have to wait for a few seconds if there's heavy traffic and the space is narrow. But usually there's even enough room to get around a car without actually going back into the normal lane, since our bike lanes are converted from fu…
As a cyclist my feeling is that the risky situations are the ones were you cross into and out of traffic, or do anything unusual. So the cycling lane would be more risky than just driving straight on on the road. In the latter case, at least car drivers can see you from far away and prepare for overtaking you.
Maybe our streets are just not as big as yours in Philadelphia.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#34I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "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…
The other major possibility is the road markings where distracting drivers. Understanding the rules while driving is more complex than simply not hitting people. I would much rather someone trying to make a U turn thinking “Is this safe?” vs. “What does the sign say?”
In some ways i agree, but in others i disagree.
I'm a person who loves traffic lights, because the traffic light specifically tells a road user You can go or no you cant go. nobody has to do any guesswork as to who is allowed to go.
I see the whole "more alert because its more dangerous" every day. There used to be a single lane roundabout that i traveled through every day that they have now changed to a double lane roundabout. I am not sure of actual crash statistics related to it, but i see that people are more alert, because it is far more dangerous to what it used to be.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#35People walking on the edge of a 100' drop tend to walk very carefully. The end result of this sort of reasoning is a steel spike sticking out of the steering wheel in the place where the airbag sits now.
If applying a steel spike sticking out of the steering wheel resulted in a measurable decrease in deaths from traffic accidents, would you support it?
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#36I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "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…
It's possible that they will...but also possible that they won't. Given the evidence presented, we can't know. Has anyone done a followup study?
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#37I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness. Even the article provides a hint in this direction: "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…
We could have street signs that turn off when safety goes down then, and turn back on when measurements show that people are getting used to it
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#38I used to think shared space was a great alternative to car-centric streets but after reading David Hembrow's blog about bicycling in the Netherlands for a while it's clear that shared space is just a half-measure. If you want a society where people other than (mostly male) daredevils in their 20s and 30s can cycle then you need segregated biking facilities. Holland's percent of trips by bike (modal share) is around…
From my experience with cycling I can say that cycling on painted cycling lanes feels 2x safer than on shared space, and cycling on bike-only roads feels 10x safer (by far the worst problem on separate roads is dogs). The problem with shared space is that cars don't keep enough distance from the side. They go around you instead of driving in a straight line. This is especially a problem with trucks and buses, because they are so big.
What I usually do is cycling without hands on the handlebars. This keeps the cars at a much safer distance.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other major possibility is the road markings where distracting drivers. Understanding the rules while driving is more complex than simply not hitting people. I would much rather someone trying to make a U turn thinking “Is this safe?” vs. “What does the sign say?”
In some ways i agree, but in others i disagree. I'm a person who loves traffic lights, because the traffic light specifically tells a road user You can go or no you cant go. nobody has to do any guesswork as to who is allowed to go. I see the whole "more alert because its more dangerous" every day. There used to be a single lane roundabout that i traveled through every day that they have now changed to a double lane…
I'm a person who loves traffic lights, because the traffic light specifically tells a road user You can go or no you cant go. nobody has to do any guesswork as to who is allowed to go.
And yet about 1/4 of all traffic accidents happen at a traffic light within 5 seconds of a light change. Why? Because one person tried to cheat the rule, while another followed the rule without checking whether it was actually safe to do so.
Re: Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
My perspective is that people are better at what they're doing when they're paying attention. Give them hints (signs) and shortcuts (straight roads), and their minds wander to something else, until something exceptional happens. There are few if any exceptionally good things that can happen in a car (most revolve around avoiding exceptionally bad things). In becoming a "native" Boston driver, I have noticed that not…
There are other costs though. Let's suppose that a thirty minute drive where I'm impelled to pay attention all the time is safer. It still would take a lot out of me and make me less productive at work. It's like the traffic circle where people felt less safe. The fact is you need to increase both actual safety and the feeling of safety, otherwise people are less happy and quite rightly aren't going to support the ch…
Not just make you less productive at work, but these roads are inherently roads where you drive more carefully (read slower). Driving slower means longer commutes, and can be correlated to the same economic problem as road congestion (read slower). Richmond estimates that it has saved 18 million dollars from the economic cost of congested roads by providing public transit. There's a lot of money to be lost in the time.