How To Build Roads To Control How Fast You Drive 801
An anonymous reader writes "They're the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment. And now new research shows that, if built right, they just might work. A new study out of the University of Connecticut suggests that minor reductions in vehicle speed are possible through changes in the street environment. Through the use of roadside parking, tighter building setbacks, and more commercial land uses, road designers can make drivers subconsciously drive more slowly." All of that is gonna work a lot better than my strategy of placing car-sized holes covered with twigs and branches randomly every half mile or so down the interstates.
From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief. From TFA:
And:
Who would have thought that by reducing a driver's visibility, the driver would go slower to give themselves time to react to surprises? You? You in the back? Are you some kind of smartass? The Connecticut Department of Transportation studied this for four years [trb.org]. There's no way you could have arrived at the same conclusion so quickly!
This study was useful in determining how much people slowed down -- quantifying it at about 10% -- but sweeping on to claims like, "reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment" is silly. Streets packed with parked cars, pedestrians, nearby buildings, et. al. are generally more dangerous precisely because clear lines-of-sight are cut off. Sane drivers know this, reduce their speed, and then -- making wild hand-waving guesses, here -- wind up with about the same overall level of "dangerousness" as when driving on uncluttered roadways.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:2, Insightful)
I was always taught to drive so that I can stop within the distance I can see ... but to be honest I thought I was alone.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:2, Insightful)
Living in Seattle, I can tell you that reduced visibility and every intersection being potentially uncontrolled does not keep people from doing ~50 in 25 / 30 zones. MORE visibility, pedestrian over / underpasses, and simply banning cars from certain pedestrian heavy streets would probably do a helluva lot more good. People drive fast because they're impatient and getting to the grocery store between episodes of Lost is SeriousBusiness (tm), not because the road conditions are conducive to it.
Two basic ways to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
1) You can make the road look more dangerous, e.g. with optical illusions to make it look narrower
2) You can make the road actually and obviously more dangerous, e.g. reducing sight lines and adding on-street parking
Number 2 works, but it doesn't increase safety. Number 1 works... for a while. My concern with #1 is that drivers will realize they are being fooled, and start speeding up again. That's OK, except they may then interpret the real situation that the illusion was imitating as an illusion, and fail to take it into account, resulting in a net decrease in safety.
pain bumps... (Score:5, Insightful)
speed bumps also greatly slow down emergency vehicles. If you have ever been in an ambulance going over speed bumps you will curse the name of whoever came up with such a painful idea
It doesn't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former employee of an international road transportation company, we studied the exact same thing.
Interesting fact. When someone is driving in a place they don't know, they drive slower. You can duplicate the effect by making changes to a known environment, like this study does by adding cars to the roadside. Second interesting fact? Once the changes become 'known', speeds return to what they were previously. I notice this part is somehow absent in the claims that "the lower speeds make things safer."
If I was from the University of Connecticut, I'd be embarrassed to be releasing this study.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
...making the penalty for repeated speeding and reckless driving something more serious than it is.
This would require properly set speed limits and reasonable enforcement, say 10% or 5 MPH (whichever is greater) either direction. Inclement weather and rush hour aside, the speed limit is the expected rate of travel. Driving far too slow for conditions is just as dangerous as too fast.
Might have the opposite effect (Score:3, Insightful)
But as a person who actually drives, it always bugs me when I see these studies that invariably conclude that the worse you make driving, the safer it is. First it was cities with no street signs, and pointless traffic circles, and zigzags in the road, or just traffic lights programmed to jam up traffic as much as possible. Now we're going to remove the safety margins between vehicles and magically improve safety.
Maybe I'm nuts, but it seems like city planners would prefer it if just nobody drove at all and just took mass transit everywhere, which would be wonderful if they actually had usable mass transit outside of the city center.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd probably do a better job in reducing "dangerousness" by making the penalty for repeated speeding and reckless driving something more serious than it is. Maybe death
Doesn't work.
The penalty for driving drunk is often death and some people don't seem to mind much.
Re:How about making it safer for higher speeds? (Score:4, Insightful)
But outside of interstates and restricted-access roadways, roads are used by more than just automobile drivers.
Buses are stopping and going, pedestrians are walking to work or going shopping, people are parking, deliveries are being made, and cyclists and motorcyclists are going about their daily business.
There is a benefit for making streets usable for everyone -- it increases the livability of a community, reduces urban sprawl (and the associated financial and environmental costs), and allows the elderly and disable to live more independent lives.
Now before someone starts ranting about how they pay tax on gas and thus roads should only be for cars, the gax tax does not come anywhere close to funding roads in the US -- a large portion of the money needed to maintain and build roadways comes from property taxes and the general fund.
Not the DUH! - This is important (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually -the study was originally done by European regulators, who found that as drivers were isolated from external stimuli, they drove faster. So for example a town with no traffic lights had a lot lower average speed for cars - than in towns with traffic lights, stop signs etc. When the signs are taken out, the responsibility directly shifts to the driver, and while it is a bit more tiring, the results are fascinating.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html
Read it.
Fuck this article (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, "holy grail of transportation engineering"?? Bullshit. The goal of transportation engineering should be to achieve the best balance of maximized capacity, efficiency, and safety. You can always make roads safer by slowing things down - until you try to make them safer by causing congestion.. and the congestion causes frustrated and aggressive driving. The study basically says to throw more shit in the way of drivers to slow things down.. That's because it's creating an unsafe environment.. and drivers naturally try to compensate for it.
Here in Florida, the transportation engineers have decided that old people react slower. Therefore, all traffic lights change slower.. So that causes inattentive driving since people can be waiting as much as 5 minutes between lights. Then, people are very slow to start proceeding through the intersection once lights turn green - partly because desperate drivers run all the yellow lights because they have to wait another 5 minutes between lights. My argument would be that traffic rules should not change to accomodate for people unable to follow the rules. Chicago's lights change quickly at an intersection..
Also, our political wanker of a governor (Charlie Christ) decided he did not like the 'move over law' because he said it promoted speeding. So, people are free to sit in the left lane of major highways going under the speed limit while others try to get around them. Florida interstates are a clusterfuck.. Nobody moves over.. So you have a clump of cars bumper to bumper for a mile.. and then a mile of highway that hardly has anyone on it.. I would argue it would be safer to have an actual passing lane and allow people to spread out.
Cars today have more horsepower, more traction, better safety, and more braking power than cars 20-30 years ago.. Yet, our speed limits have decreased.. Why?
Traffic is an absolute mess.. and the idea that 'slower is safer' is contributing to that mess.
Re:all of your observations (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:1, Insightful)
The penalty for driving drunk is often death and some people don't seem to mind much.
I want to preface this by saying that I am not trying to be a troll. It often seems that the person hit by the drunk driver is the one that dies and not the drunk driver. Seems like the penalty isn't really death.
Re:Other strategies... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Portugese system goes further and makes other drivers angry with you for speeding.
I think the Portuguese system is the future. Note that it shames you in front of other drivers, but that it also slows you as a penalty for speeding. People will naturally adopt the behavior that gets them where they are going fastest. If you make 'speeding' the slower option, people will just naturally drive safer.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know what legal jurisdiction you live in but anywhere I've ever driven in the US the driver is always responsible for hitting a pedestrian.
Re:all of your observations (Score:3, Insightful)
I would be surprised if assholes were deterred by narrower lanes. Anyone on a residential road who feels that *they* are safe at 90 mph isn't paying attention to rational queues.
Wrong direction (Score:3, Insightful)
How about designing roads that are safer to drive fast on.
Fast is good if it's safe
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Other strategies... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is really cute. I would just stop caring and go through the red.
Re:pain bumps... (Score:2, Insightful)
So roads should only support high speeds for emergency vehicles?
The holy grail should be for roads to be improved to support higher speeds safely, not lower speeds. Roads are for transportation, not waiting. If you want emergency vehicles to work well you need the roads to be usable. Making them parking lots doesn't help.
Speedbumps blow...and can be illegal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Around here, we have a law that says the state (as in US state) sets the speed limits on all roads unless a waiver is given to a locality (city or county) to override the speed limit that would ordinarily apply to a given road.
I'm sure the purpose is both uniformity (so everyone "knows" how fast to drive on unfamiliar or unposted roads) and to prevent municipalities from changing speed limits arbitrarily (speed traps, etc).
The side effect to this in the larger urban areas is that in response to heavy traffic, people seek out residential through streets as means around the major arterial streets, which are clogged. The people living on those streets hate the traffic and the speeding that goes with it, so the residents are able to petition the council to get speedbumps installed on their streets.
IMHO these suck. One, they don't really slow or divert that much traffic. Usually you see people driving the speed limit and then braking hard at the speed bumps and then accelerating hard to get back to their speed limits. While I sympathize with the people living on those streets, they ARE through streets that belong to everyone who pays taxes, not private roads for the benefit of the residents -- you only ever see speedbumps in upscale residential areas.
I also think they are illegal usurpation of the state speed limits -- you can't drive the legal speed limit on the street without damage to your vehicle and/or creating a dangerous situation flying off the bumps.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because of the American attitude of entitlement. It causes road rage where we "OWN" the road and you doing the speed limit is taking away my RIGHT to break the law dammit! ARRRGH!!!!
so we drive really stupid here. we drove 2 feet from the car in front of us to "punish them" or to try and "force them to move" by bullying the other driver. We also blow the red lights really late because we are far more important that everyone else. Oops I killed a bicyclist or motorcyclist, they should have not been there!
Couple that with incredibly inadequate driving education and almost no liability. (In Michigan we have no-fault. I can "accidentally" sideswipe your car and not get in any trouble, only pay for higher insurance rates)
Death rates here in the USA are higher simply because many of us here really suck at driving and are a danger on the road. It's been that way for a really long time. Even in the 50's we had cartoons trying to educate against road rage and bad driving.
survival of the slowest? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is really idiotic, what is it, the 'survival of the slowest' law? Here is what I see on roads in Baden Baden, Germany. There are many narrow mountain roads here, you'd think people would slow down, many drive very quickly right through the turns, the twists, whatever. The autobahn is amazing, no matter how fast you are going, there will be someone zooming right past you. In the city there are limits that are a bit lower than what I am used to from North America, but those are normally very short stretches of the road where they don't want you to make too much noise, people really mostly follow the speed limits very closely. There is a very well developed public transit system here, and this is not including the railroads. There are many roundabouts and they are wonderful, you have to slow down but often you can go through it without any stop, and it is an intersection, there are no lights there. Seems intuitive and friendly enough, however in the city core the streets are often so narrow between two very close buildings that you just can't go fast, but you don't expect to. But this would not work for a large city, it would be completely stuck, there are only a few tens of thousands of people living here. It would not work for Toronto for example (which was just named as the city with the worst traffic ever, it takes people more than 80 minutes on average to commute both ways and the public transportation is not growing.)
No no no, if you want people to slow down, you are doing it wrong. You need to get people into public transportation system, then there will be fewer people driving and there would be more space on the road, yes people would go faster, but there would be fewer fatalities still, if fewer people are behind the wheel.
Re:Fuck this article (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously?
Because the monkey behind the wheel hasn't improved any, is now distracted by his cell phone, GPS, and on-board DVD players, and statistically is older than the monkey behind the wheel was 20-30 years ago.
Basically, the monkey is the critical part in the system, and it just isn't getting any better.
(Well except for you. You are a MAGNIFICENT driver, and we should all just stay the hell out of your way when you drive.)
Re:Speedbumps blow...and can be illegal. (Score:2, Insightful)
you only ever see speedbumps in upscale residential areas.
That's because the lower class streets have inverse speedbumps, AKA, potholes.
Re:Other strategies... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are significant differences in the use of speed limits in the US versus Europe. US speed limits are slower with a larger amount of enforcement judgement granted the police. The purpose of that approach is to create a large body of willing speeders to generate revenue off of. Drivers tend to disregard posted limits when they are unreasonable. My experience in Europe is that speed limits are more reasonable with less tolerance of speeding. Their attitude seems to be maintaining safe speeds rather than profits, at least as compared to the US.
With that pervasive government corruption in mind, I'm not sure that european approaches will be that interesting for the US. Portable shame machines are, in fact, used in the US but frequently they are to trick radar detector drivers into ignoring warnings so that police get a clear shot. They get paid for by insurance companies who profit from rate hikes when drivers get tickets. The US speed limit policy is all about revenue generation, not safety. That is true of all US traffic enforcement.
One last thing, US drivers tend not to care what other drivers think.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:1, Insightful)
Pedestrian fatalities will most likely be reduced, too. Recently here in Toronto and it's surrounding cities (Greater Toronto Area, or the GTA) there were a bunch of pedestrians struck or killed by cars. What was found was that in areas where there were tens of thousands of pedestrians there were less accidents (the downtown core and Old Toronto that was built prior to WWII), while most of these accidents happened in the more suburban, car-dependent boroughs of the city and surrounding cities. Why? Well, old residential streets aren't as wide and in much of the old city that was built without laneways, let alone private parking spaces there are cars parked on both sides of the street effectively leaving 1 lane of traffic. Further, in the old city there are more pedestrians, streets aren't 6 lanes wide, and there are frequent stop lights, meaning that drivers are used to pedestrians, cars are forced to slow down by the physical nature of the road, and it's easier and quicker to cross for pedestrians.
This article itself isn't anything new... any city planner that is interested in making a city for people will tell you that these are the things that have been done for a while. Then again, from what I can tell, the state's largest city has a couple of bus routes at most and is most likely dominated by cars.
I'd suggest you and everyone else read Jane Jacob's " Death and Life of Great American Cities". It was written in 1961 and she is the reason why Manhattan wasn't destroyed by highways entering and cutting through the borough. An incredibly well written book that anyone can understand and is considered one of the most influential books on planning in the past century.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
But you probably also increase the amount of collisions. To me, it looks like trading two fatal injuries with one fatal injuries and ten major injuries. I am not sure it really is better.
PS: For those who wonder, thoses numbers come from the ether.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Other strategies... (Score:2, Insightful)
I had a similar idea for parking lots, but I never tried to fund it.
Pneumatic speed bumps. If you speed, they pump up, if not, no bump...
Another idea I had was to raise the speed limit by 10mph/kph after 8pm.
This gives semi-trucks a solid reason to drive off-hours, since they will do anything to make more time and hence money faster.
This would free up bandwidth for commuters.
And of course, my biggest idea to date is:
Free Speed Limit Database. [wikispeedia.org]
Thanks for sharing that Portugal thing. Abrigado.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I in no way support or encourage tail-gating, I can tell you that it does get really irritating in FL with grandma driving in the fast lane of a 3 or 4 lane freeway at 55-60mph. Of course people get irritated. It seems to be worse around here in the winter, when retired people from all over flock to FL.
Tailgaters are part of the problem but the people who feel "entitled" to drive in the fast lane when they aren't passing someone are just as bad.
Re:Fuck this article (Score:2, Insightful)
Cars today have more horsepower, more traction, better safety, and more braking power than cars 20-30 years ago.. Yet, our speed limits have decreased.. Why?
Why? To maximize ticket revenue, duh.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
we drove 2 feet from the car in front of us to "punish them" or to try and "force them to move" by bullying the other driver.
In the USA, a majority of the "road rage" incidents could be avoided if the "Slowmo's" stop racing each other in the left lane and get the out of the passing lane. If you are going slower than the rest of the other traffic, move over. I don't care if you are doing the speed limit or 100MPH over it - if someone is coming up behind you, get over. Not hard - lose the ego and your sense of entitlement that just because you think you are going fast enough you can ride comfortably in the left lane. I don't give a damn if you're the only person on the road for 900 miles - if you are in the left lane and I am coming up behind you get the Hell over. That one little selfless act on your part will lessen the road rage factor. This goes for all you "hyper-milers" in your Priuses, too. STAY IN THE RIGHT LANE.
Don't get me started on you idiots that can't merge to save your life. It's called an accelerator - grow a pair, get your cage up to speed and get it in there. It's the disparity of speed between drivers that usually cause accidents. I don't care if you are trying to save $0.0004 cents of gas by coasting off your batts and trying to keep your little eco-motor from kicking in - you merge on the highway, act like you mean it or stick to the side roads where people on all these new occluded streets can admire your choice of body panel colors.
Cluttering up the road and removing sight-lines reduces speed? Wow. Brilliant. As a motorcyclist that's just what I need - more obstacles to dodge.
sorry for the soapbox rant... :-)
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's one of the biggest differences between the US and Europe. People in Europe know and for the most part obey rules of the road, like staying in the right lane, and watching your mirrors if you're in the fast lane.
You could spend 5 miles behind a slow poke in the fast lane and have them not even know you're there because they drive with horse blinds on: looking ahead as if in a daze.
Getting a license in the UK is also a lot more difficult than the US, something along the lines of a week-long process (not completely familiar). When was the last time anyone in the US was required to back up a whole block with their wheel 5 inches from the curb, an take a corner the same way.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
The great myth of purported American entitlement. In terms of driving I would rank American drivers as less self-centered than most countries, and in terms of statistics (I think other people on this story have submitted global figures on driving fatalities), safer. If you do any serious traveling you'll find in a lot of countries drivers treat traffic lights, lane dividers, stop signs, pedestrians, and other drivers as meaningless impediments to their own travels.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
What does it matter if the entire population drives or doesn't drive?
Being in a situation where nobody drives or nobody needs to drive is a viable solution to cutting the amount of deaths resulting from road traffic accidents.
Re:Enforcement--brilliant! (Score:3, Insightful)
Require car manufactures to have speedometers that are accurate (and easily calibrateable) and I will support your proposal. Simply getting new tires can chuck the speedometer by 5MPH, nevermind other factors.
Re:Fuck this article (Score:2, Insightful)
Speed limits have decreased in the last 20-30 years? What crack are you smoking?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
For approximately thirteen years (1974–1987), no speed limit in the United States exceeded 55 mph.
Now there are no states with a maximum speed limit of 55.
drive SAFER not SLOWER... (Score:2, Insightful)
The trick is not to make slower drivers, the trick is to make SAFER drivers. Slower drivers are not always safer drivers.
1) Set accurate speed limits so people will actually follow them. It is ridiculous that "following traffic" means having to break the law.
2) Mandate *better* and *harder* driver license tests. In the US it is all too easy for someone to get a driving license with little or no training. (seriously; check out this test: "Drive in a straight line, drive backwards in a straight line, parallel park, do a 3 point U-turn", and the kicker is, many states only require you to do TWO of the above. And if you fail the test, you can pay the fee and take it again, and in the mean time despite failing, you're allowed to continue driving with your permit.
3) Have the police start enforcing SAFE driving concerns. Enforce laws about people driving in the wrong lane, driving while on the cell phone, driving with improper equipment. Yes, I know, speeding tickets are great revenue, but stop enforcing only the speeding laws, especially when you're not making anyone any safer you're just picking up revenue from some unlucky sob (or more likely these days lining the pockets of a traffic lawyer).
If the focus was on safety, we could raise speed limits and increase traffic flow and reduce congestion.
disclaimer: I catch a lot of crap for driving a "sporty" car, but I focus all my attention on safe driving. driving should be a cooperative adventure, not a competitive sport. Take all the a-holes and distracted drivers off the road and we could all enjoy our commute and weekend drives a lot more. =) Just telling people to slow down, or trying to find ways to force them to slow down won't really change anything, other than perhaps an increase in speeding tickets. =/
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of this attitude comes from exceptionally rude drivers and exceptionally low speed limits. Most of our roads (compared to Europe) are wide, straight and multilane. You can drive far faster than the speed limit without any risk, and you factor this into account when determining where to live. We elect to live as far into the suburbs as we can to a) get the lowest cost house we can and b) avoid city congestion. The faster you can go, the farther you can live, the farther your income stretches, the happier you are. This is less true for young single people, who may like urban life at any cost.
Next, particularly in the south, drivers are incredibly rude. They will sit in the left lane while traffic piles up behind them, and not think of getting to the right. My mom's attitude is "I'm going the speed limit, you all can just be patient", which is infuriating if you're behind her. This causes all sorts of bad behavior, the most systemic is the need to pass on the right. Passing on the right, or being the faster vehicle in the right lane, is dangerous precisely because visibility to the rear is limited. If slower traffic is always in the right lane, and you always pass in the left lane, when switching into the right lane you can be reasonably sure you won't hit someone you didn't see. If traffic is going arbitrary speeds in any lane, then it's a free for all, your eyes have to look everywhere and you reduce your margin of error.
In any event this article makes us mad not because WE OWN THE ROAD, but because most of us want to go faster, not slower. The amount of time we spend on the road is pure overhead and something to reduce. The problem are the inevitable conflicts between small business interests, which tend to want main thoroughfares going right past their door and want this "town center" idea where you can park and wander through town from shop to shop; versus commuter interests, who mostly want to go from dense business area to residential area, with as limited access between as possible. The small business interests intentionally wish to impede your commute such that you're going slow, you may as well stop and shop on your way home, and are just using this pedestrian accident thing as a scapegoat. If they did not attempt to get in the way of commuters, there would also be fewer accidents. Even here in Texas, home of the land yacht, when they opened up the new tollway around Austin all you heard was business owners bitching and moaning that traffic didn't flow by them anymore. I had 0 sympathy since they were largely located halfway to nowhere, neither near residential centers nor business centers, where people may use free time to shop. But I'm sure they'd love to have had this study when they were trying to kill the road.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't we start new roads, and even reconstruction on roads needing repairs to come up to standards like the Autobahn? Why not build a road designed to house heavier and fast traffic? Wouldn't that allow for quicker travel of people and goods?
From what I've seen of the stats of the Autobahn...they allow for many times the speed of highways in the US, yet the accident rate isn't proportionally worse at all.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Autobahn isn't as well-constructed as the US Interstate system. Our interstates are probably the best highways in the world.
The problem isn't the road, it's the drivers. US drivers are morons, because they'll give a license to anybody. In Germany, you have to spend thousands of dollars on a driving instructor, and take a rigorous test to prove you can actually drive. Not everyone drives; lots of people don't have cars, and just take public transit (which is readily available and convenient there, unlike here). I would imagine many people also only drive sometimes, perhaps for weekend trips and the like, while taking public transit in town.
With well-trained drivers, and a lot of unskilled people simply not driving, it makes perfect sense they would have a lower accident rate.
A lot of people simply shouldn't be driving; they have no talent for it. My wife, a helicopter pilot instructor, sees this in aviation. Some people try to become helicopter pilots, and simply can't. They don't have the feel for the controls, and can't manage all the different inputs and still handle the aircraft. (Helicopters aren't like planes; helicopters are inherently unstable, and require constant corrections to maintain controls.) A certain percentage of people who go to helicopter training school wash out because they simply can't do it, and can't perform within standard to pass the licensing tests. While cars are easier than helicopters in some ways (they go straight without wrecking unless you turn the wheel), they're more difficult than others (after all, most aircraft pilots don't fly in very close proximity to other aircraft, unless they're the Blue Angels) because of all the chaos on the street. Some people simply aren't going to be good drivers, no matter how much they train, and they have no business driving. But here in the USA, we view it as a "right" simply because it's so hard to get around without a car in most places, so we're stuck with the bad drivers it seems.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the speed limit is 50, and I am driving at 50, you are welcome to overtake where safe to do so if you wish - but I will not actively get out your way by pulling over.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently it does mean nothing, otherwise they wouldn't continue to do it. It seems some drunk guy discovered that your vehicle still starts even if they took away your license, so it doesn't inhibit them at all.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
They now teach you to assume that every car driver is intentionally going to kill you.
It's interesting how (and I don't mean this to stereotype; there are all types of motorcyclists) some motorcyclists drive like they want to be killed.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes.
Be very careful when you bring monetary arguments into traffic safety debates. Beyond 40-45 mph, the average medical costs for an accident starts to go back down. Not to be crass, but a funeral is cheaper than physical therapy.
There are legitimate reasons for analyzing costs of traffic management both on a financial basis and a humanitarian basis. It is important to not intermingle them because they have very different responses to traffic speed. Results like "Doubling the average highway traffic speeds will reduce the per-accident medical expenses by a factor of 10!" may be both absolutely true and completely useless.
Re:I just don't see how this is a good idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the fact is, you are making the roads more dangerous! How can this be a good thing?
Because drivers are more careful, and rarely careless, when conditions are dangerous. People being careless is usually what kills.
Alaska sees dangerous, icy roads 2/3 of the year, yet our over-all accident and death rate is lower than the national average. Shouldn't it be the case that the nice, grippy streets of the lower 48 would be much safer?
We also tend to drive individually and do less carpooling and the like because destinations are so far apart. So again, dangerous roads seem on the surface to mean people drive more carefully, for a net reduction in accidents and loss of life.
Re:From the No Duh Dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
In an odd coincidence, I've learned to assume that any bicycle rider is suicidally insane, and would like nothing better than to damage my front grill to go out with a blaze of something or other. Motorcyclists I usually trust to be mostly sane, but I've still got to watch them.