I just finished listening to Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do
SUVs are hugely costly to society. Because they are long and sluggish, they spend much more time getting rolling from a stop at a red light. This is one reason that our city traffic has slowed down. SUV drivers sit higher from the optical rush of the road so they are more likely to speed (just as you wouldn’t have a strong sensation of speed in an airplane 1000′ above the ground, though the airplane is moving at 4X the speed of a car). SUV drivers in at least two countries studied are less likely to wear seatbelts, more likely to be talking on a mobile phone, and less likely to have both hands on the wheel. They crash constantly and are statistically less safe than a minivan that is lighter weight.
Low-cost parking meters in cities are a primary cause of traffic jams and accidents. About 12 percent of cars driving around a city are looking for a parking spot. Those folks drive very slowly. When they stop, they tend to get hit by other cars, and traffic comes to a standstill until the accident is cleared. As soon as parking spots are more than 80 percent occupied, city traffic slows down to a crawl. (If we had a nationwide wireless Internet and perhaps an RFID transponder in cars, the solution would presumably be dynamic pricing for parking spaces so that there were always about 20 percent free.)
Intersections with lights are hugely dangerous and have very little capacity compared to roundabouts. The heavyweight control systems and signs don’t ensure driver or pedestrian safety. The intersection is useless during a clearing phase that has to be lengthened every year (now it is about 2 seconds of red in all directions). The intersection is very slow to start up again after a red (see the note about ponderous SUVs above).
Signs are basically useless, especially as they have been layered onto our roads year after year. People drive slower around curves with no “curve warning 30 mph” sign than they do with the sign. Deer crossing signs do nothing to reduce the prevalence of deer-car collisions.
High curbs and crosswalks do not protect pedestrians. In fact, in Dutch cities where all signs, curbs, and markings have been removed, accidents and injuries have gone down. Traffic engineers have spent decades applying techniques that work on highways to city streets and continue doing so though all research shows it doesn’t work. All of the road engineering discourages drivers from paying attention to what is happening around them. [Similar results were found in London.]
Skill does not make for a safer driver; an insurance company study of NASCAR-style racing drivers found that these supremely skilled individuals were more likely to get into accidents when driving on public streets than the average driver.
Contrary to advertisements touting the miracles of airbags, new cars are no safer than old cars, according to studies in Norway and the U.S. Adjusted for miles driven, people in new cars are more likely to be in an accident and more likely to be injured than people in old cars. Quite a few people are killed in new cars while traveling at less than 35 mph. What would reduce deaths and the cost of injuries would be if everyone wore helmets, though this has never been seriously proposed.
I recommend the book
Article in Wired magazine on the Dutch way of making roads safer by making them seem more dangerous.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
I hate driving. Yesterday a driver (assuming a woman, couldn’t see the face as this driver was diminutive) pulled out in front of me, not that it was a close call, but said driver didn’t stop at shoulder, just pulled out the way most people pull in to their driveways. Shortly thereafter we are at a traffic light where we both are turning left. Driver in front of me had a very ample opportunity to turn but didn’t and finally there was absolutely no oncoming traffic and then the light went yellow and driver commenced the ultimate slow motion left turn leaving me lurched out in the intersection. So I hit the horn hard, I mean come on, put down the cell phone and drive. On the autobahn you get serious fines for being caught fiddling around with devices in the car. Anyway this driver had a poodle type of dog behind the back seat moving along the rear window. I don’t have a pet, but really, why do this to an animal? They will become a projectile under any number of emergency conditions.
Driving is too stressful, I don’t even lust after sports cars anymore, what good are they unless you live in Montana?
Signs are still useful on country roads. Deer signs are kind of like the sign that cried wolf and get ignored, but if you see a deer hit the brakes, because others will follow.
Now the great traffic engineering trend is mounted cameras and shortened yellow times to increase the catch. In Lakeland FL, they snap your picture because you inch out after stopping completely to make a legal right on red maneuver. Private sector companies service the cameras and take about 40% of the fine.
The idea of eliminating curbs is interesting. I seem to recall the opposite exhortation from “A Pattern Language.” Although that may have been geared more toward pedestrian comfort and aesthetics than driver safety.
Personally, I found the Netherlands the third world of traffic.
First, this is just false:
“Dutch cities where all signs, curbs, and markings have been removed”.
One word about dutch roundabouts: the car which enters the roundabout has the precedence and during rush-hours deadlocks are frequent. Moreover, this is also dangerous since the speed of the incoming car is always higher.
If you live in the city centers you have to pay to keep the car in the street neer your house. For, me it was much chiper to drive to work with the car (outside the city borders, or in the company parking lot you do not have to pay) then to take the bicycle.
If I am not wrong, one day last year they recorded more than 800km of motorway queues! Note than the entire network is not much bigger… this is the real Dutch model.
I also enjoyed and reviewed this book. The best idea for a car safety device is still a six inch spike protruding from the center of the steering wheel and pointed at the driver’s chest. I bike most places and this would substantially increase my chances of surviving my commutes.
Dino: The fact that the Netherlands road system encouraged you to use a bicycle would not be regarded as a failure by their traffic engineers, I don’t think. In fact, I believe that the Dutch have the highest percentage of trips made by bicycle of any (Western?) nation.
As for the congestion, the Netherlands has approximately 1000 people per square mile; the U.S. has 70. Let’s see what our traffic looks like in 2100 when the U.S. population is expected to rise to nearly 1 billion people!
“What would reduce deaths and the cost of injuries would be if everyone wore helmets”
is the author referring to a regular bicycle helmet, or some specialized car helmet?
any data or estimate on reduction in death or injuries when wearing a helmet vs status quo of no helmet?
I’d consider wearing a helmet, at least for multiple hour road trips.
Comparing countries as you describe the book does is a mistake. Different countries have different ‘driving environments’ people act in. For instance, in the Netherlands, where cycles are everywhere, drivers know they have to pay attention to cyclist. Very few people use indicators lights in London, but most people give precedence to pedestrians on zebra crossings. In Italy most people do use indicators but would run over pedestrians on zebra crossings.
The idea that one measure would make driving safer/better across the board is pure fantasy. The fact that measure X works in country Y does not mean it will work equally in country Z, it a thing that needs to be tested. I understand that empirical testing is not de rigueur nowadays.
the more I learn about “urban” planning as a discipline in the United States, the more I’m convinced that the discipline has been co-opted by a cult of car-haters. (and I’ve had university-level courses in urban planning. Case in point: the curb extension http://www.surrey.ca/Living+in+Surrey/Utilities+And+Transportation/Transportation/Traffic+Calming/Traffic+Calming+Devices/Curb+Extensions.htm
It’s touted as a way to reduce the distance a pedestrian has to cross while in the path of traffic. In my experience, all it does it make the pedestrian more comfortable closer to the potential path of traffic (in contrast to the more dutch approach mentioned above). In a normal crosswalk, a driver will see the pedestrian step out into an area where the pedestrian is not in the normal flow of traffic and have to step out past the edge of where cars are parked (in california, we’re expected to yield to any pedestrian that steps off the curb). With an extension, the instant a pedestrian decides to step off a curb, he or she is right in traffic.
For a more humorous view of my general attitude:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/urban-planner-stuck-in-traffic-of-own-design,1704/
I’m skeptical that cars really aren’t safer – what explains http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908129.html
In 20 years, both the number of drivers and number of hours spent on the road have shot way up, but the number of deaths each year stays the same?
Brad: Thanks for the link. It explains itself to a large extent! The number of drunk-driving accidents is way down. A lot of hazardous sections of road have been improved since 1982. Because the costs of anything done by the government and anything done by the construction industry (among America’s least innovative) have gone up so much more than the rate of inflation, our society has not been able to afford to build new roads (in fact, the author of Traffic says that we can’t afford even the maintenance costs of the roads that our ancestors built for us; over the next 100 years we will have to let highways turn into weeds). So the huge increase in the number of cars and drivers has created traffic jams that reduce speeds to a non-lethal crawl.