IMO these findings that roads are safer without markings, or by being narrower are because drivers have a heightened level of attention and focus when they encounter something unexpected. When they are widespread and commonplace the accident rate will go past that of wide/marked roads. For a fair comparison, if you compared a country with wide/marked streets to a country where narrow/unmarked streets are commonplace (Mexico for example) you'd find marked/wide is much safer.
I suspect that there would also be some negative effect of consistently increasing the cognitive load associated with driving, as opposed to looking at performance on specific roads on which a given driver probably only spends a small portion of their total drive time. At some point, I would expect the detriment of mental fatigue to outstrip the benefit of "forcing" people to pay attention.
When I drive and see a huge truck driving at high speed from the opposite direction, I tell myself "just keep your lane, he will keep his lane too, and it will be fine" (and I probably unconsciously slow down a bit). Without the lanes I'd probably feel a bit less comfortable.
On the other hand: having visited a number of EU countries, IMO the UK seems to have 2-3x more clutter on the roads (lanes, texts for drivers and pedestrians and what not) than any other of them. They have texts everywhere!
This is an interesting idea. Maybe we should be looking at this as an optimization problem where drivers have a limited budget for attention and we want to concentrate it in the parts where it's most useful by varying the quality of UI assists?
A while back I read a study that agreed with your assertion. It examined intersections that had traffic lights removed. They found that in the short term, accident rates went down but after some time passed the accident rates shot back up. The authors theorized that the temporary reduction was due to the novelty of the change.
> When they are widespread and commonplace the accident rate will go past that of wide/marked roads.
Widespread or not, the lack of rules still forces drivers to be more aware of their surroundings. Drivers are not going to start speeding through junctions because they are used to it, the risks remain the same. As an anecdote, the Netherlands has unmarked crossings everywhere and one of the lowest rates of road accidents.
> For a fair comparison, if you compared a country with wide/marked streets to a country where narrow/unmarked streets are commonplace (Mexico for example) you'd find marked/wide is much safer.
That assumption doesn't hold any water. It is nearly impossible to make that kind of comparison due to the amount of factors involved - fleet composition and age, skill and education, driver attitude and behaviour, pavement quality, speeds, etc, etc.
The lack of markings also makes it really dangerous to be anywhere near the road without a steel cage of some sort. I can't count the number of times I've nearly been run over in a crosswalk by people turning into it at a red light. I can't imagine how much more dangerous they would be if we took all the markings off and relied solely on their flawed judgement.
A big part of that is the corner-building tendencies that US civil engineers have. Often they'll build the corner in a broad sweep that makes it easier to turn at high speed. If it was built aggressively to force traffic to slow, it'd also be a shorter distance for pedestrians to cross.
Pedestrians also really need to pay attention. I have never had a close call because I treat traffic as the highly dangerous place it is. Yet, I see plenty of people practically throw themselves into oncoming traffic the instant the crosswalk changes.
It would behoove pedestrians to pay attention simply so they don't die.
Claiming they are obligated to, however is entirely wrong. (And in fact, in my country a car hitting a lesser traffic member is at fault be default, with only some percentages removed if the other member actively caused an accident.)
Cars are obligated to ensure they don't kill anyone even when that other one is behaving irresponsibly.
Alternatively, car drivers need to recognise the fact that they're in control of a lethal bit of machinery and drive appropriately - and this means stopping at the lights.
I recently saw someone walk in front of a train that had just started to leave the station. There were warning lights and bells on the train, which was slowly approaching the crosswalk. (There were no pedestrian boom gates for this level crossing.)
The person did a huge jump backwards when the engineer blew the train's horn.
I still couldn't believe that someone would cross train tracks without looking.
"Turning into a red light" - lack of markings is coupled with removal of traffic signs and different road and sidewalk designs. Turning a blind corner in this setting is the equivalent of closing your eyes and stepping on the gas, there's a huge chance it will end up badly, whereas with stop lights drivers think there is "enough time" assuming everyone else is paying attention to the rules.
The Netherlands also has priority for pedestrians and bicycles everywhere. That's different from the UK, where many car drivers feel the road is entirely theirs and anyone else shouldn't be on the road.
When I was in the Netherlands, my coworker literally would hurry into the crosswalk to force cars to stop. When we questioned him about it, he said, "They have to stop. It's the law!"
My Polish coworker and I were not so anxious to enforce the law with our bodies.
What is safe for the motorist is generally unsafe for bicycles and pedestrians. Like well-marked wide lanes where you can mindlessly zoom forward with no disruptions. That's the traffic engineer's definition of "road safety". And that does indeed apply nicely to highways which are roads that only motorists are admitted to.
Yet in a city such a "zoom lane" is the direct opposite of what you want. You want trees around, people walking and crossing, bicycles eating up part of the lane, cars parked and cars passing way too close, sudden surprises, and very active, observant, and careful drivers.
The problem actually often is that there's not enough happening for your brain to stay focused. That's also the reason why in Germany roads aren't built straight.
There are so many fallacies here that it's hard to know where to start. Others already pointed out the possibility that these effects are a short-lived result of the change in policy.
> Research has shown that removing white lines induces uncertainty and thus cuts vehicle speeds by 13%.
Not paving roads would decrease vehicle speeds, too. Adding obstructions to windshields would also likely increase uncertainty and cut vehicle speeds. But neither decreasing vehicle speeds nor maximizing safety is the singular goal of the road system, and the article seems to completely miss that.
> Rules, controls, signs, traffic lights all reduce our awareness of our surroundings and thus our sense of danger.
Even if true, I would expect that rules and signals afford us much more predictive power about nearby moving objects, which could be far more valuable than an increased a sense of danger.
> A crossing is where everyone should be watching everyone else, but everyone is watching the lights. They are awaiting orders. When given them, they assume all is safe and crash on.
If everyone's watching and obeying the lights, then how do the crashes happen?
Of course, they happen because of the people not obeying the lights. What reason is there to believe that the same driver who would run a red light (by accident or otherwise) would generally make better ad-hoc judgments without the light?
You could argue that drivers already obeying traffic lights could also avoid accidents by also watching other drivers, but they can already do that. You can argue that removing the lights will force them to do that, but it's not clear that's a _net_ positive (i.e., would ad-hoc human decisions really be better on average?). That argument would also undermine the article's claim that the existing system of lights represents our attachment to the nanny state.
> What reason is there to believe that the same driver who would run a red light (by accident or otherwise) would generally make better ad-hoc judgments without the light?
There would still be assholes. The difference is the other drivers would be checking for cross traffic instead of going as soon as they see the green light.
I'm certainly not convinced and in particular doubt you'd get high traffic flow, but it seems quite plausible for less busy intersections.
>If everyone's watching and obeying the lights, then how do the crashes happen?
You can obey lights and stop signs and still run over a walker who is obeying the law. Turning right on a red is terrible for this reason (many drivers never even look right before the turn, assuming only cars from their left merit consideration). Cyclists get right hooked when drivers blindly turn when the light tells them it's ok.
That's certainly true. I thought the article focused more on car-car crashes, but those are obviously important, too. It seems like the considerations in suburban and rural areas are fairly different than urban areas.
Protecting everyone is important, but at this point we think disproportionately about people in cars when considering safety. We should be looking at the fact you are vastly more likely to be killed per mile walking or riding than driving. This despite the fact that walking (or cycling) don't even involve hurtling yourself through space at 60mph. (For motorcycles it's not a huge surprise to see higher morbidity, of course, since you combine high speeds AND lack of protection).
In short, we've made driving a car safe, possibly by making it really easy to die doing anything but driving a car. Making drivers nervous, slow, and cautious should help with this. (Correlation =\= causation, I realize). How safe do you feel crossing a busy street with an uncontrolled crosswalk? I hate it - drivers don't actually understand they're supposed to stop. How about bicycling on public roads? Waiting in stop and go traffic on your motorcycle hoping the person texting behind you doesn't pancake you between them and the truck in front of you? (This is a good reason to lane split, btw, or at least adopt a lane position such that if you are hit you get thrown into empty space and not a vehicle).
Pedestrian data is hard to gather well since people don't log walking miles like driving miles, but they are also more likely to die per trip, and again, since people walk shorter distances than they drive, almost certainly more likely to die per mile;
"...Pedestrians are over-represented in the crash data, accounting for 14 percent of all traffic fatalities but only 10.9 percent of trips.... "
"In 2013, 4,735 pedestrians and 743 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts). "
http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm
>> Not paving roads would decrease vehicle speeds, too. Adding obstructions to windshields would also likely increase uncertainty and cut vehicle speeds.
Removing suspensions from cars, as well. Most people would slow down if all your teeth could be broken by a sufficiently large bump.
I do wonder if drivers prefer the markings so that they can, for example, drive faster in the face of on-coming traffic or not give bicycles as much room.
When cycling in a painted cycle lane I am consistently treated far worse than when cycling on a road without one. Well, used to be. I no longer cycle in them at all - I am forced to use the entire lane because it is unsafe to use a painted cycle lane. I'd rather get beeped at by one motorist than be endangered by five close passes.
Anecdata (from the US). I drive an electric longboard. The biggest impact on my safety came from one small change: start wearing a full-face helmet. It looks like a motorcycle helmet, but is lighter.
As soon as I started doing that, cars cyclists and just about everyone started taking me seriously. Cars no longer pass super closely. They no longer honk when I take the entire lane. Many even use indicators when passing me with a wide berth.
I think they basically treat me as a motorbike because the helmet makes them realize that I am a proper participant in traffic.
As a result also has a lower safety rating. But electric longboards don't reach high enough speeds to need the safety of a motorcycle helmet. So it's better to go with less neck strain.
I do the same in germany. I try to accomodate cars, but in a narrow single-lane road with parked cars and a high curb to me right, sorry to the cars behind me, but until i can safely get out of the way, you have to deal with going a bit slower.
Cyclists like you make people like me vote against pro-cyclist laws. You have no moral right to slow down all traffic on a road to the speed of your calves because you feel unsafe in your designated lane, and I hope you soon have no legal right to do that.
You forget that most often such a lane is as wide as a bicycle + 10 cm on each side. Meaning that if a car passes fast enough it could even push the cyclist around just with its air flow. Plus, at lower speeds bikes tend to go less than straight, so there is a fairly real danger of bumping into, e.g. the mirror on a car. Additionally a cyclist is obligated to handle things coming at him from between parked cars and such, which is really tricky since a cyclist is often much closer to those than a driving car. Those and more i don't have in mind right now are plenty important reasons why taking a lane can make traffic safer for everyone.
Having been in the situation often enough, i can also tell you: I wouldn't mind if cars passed by me in narrow situations if they slowed down while doing so, but more often than not, cars pass by at full speed instead.
Lastly, keep in mind that this situation only happens in narrow side streets, not on big streets with better separated traffic flows.
Sport cyclists taking a whole lane while ignoring a dedicated bike path are just assholes.
In the UK, highways are for the public to use. No preference or priority is given to any vehicle user or person wishing to use the road faster. I am not slowing down traffic, I am simply using the road as is my entitlement. There is no law which states I must travel at a minimum speed, nor one which requires me to use any particular part of the lane I use. Within sensible use and reason, I use the lane how I see fit.
There are of course provisions to dissuade or prevent vehicular use which is purposefully obstructing, but my purpose is not to obstruct. Its purpose is to aid in the enforcement of rules which state vehicles must pass cyclists within certain safety limits, which they do not adhere to of their own.
I have a moral right to not be killed by impatient people. I do not just "feel" unsafe in my designated lane: I am unsafe. Cycle paths, in the UK, are not mandatory for any users, precisely because they are not always suitable. Until the UK's highways are no longer for the public there will never be a time where I am not entitled to safe passage on it.
Gotcha. Cameras are good for those too. You can get speed limits and such from databases, but they may be out of date. A camera is guaranteed to see the latest every time. For an extreme example, the interstate closest to me has dynamic speed limits at peak times. My car can pick up the current limit with the camera, but a database lookup obviously couldn't.
Perhaps one can take the notion of "fewer markings = fewer accidents" in a different way- perhaps it's simply the number of things to look it is more than humans can handle.
The town I grew up in is about a 10 minute drive from the main highway, along a country road. Between the highway and the town there are something like 50+ signs, in a 15km stretch.
Local attractions promoted by the local government; speed limits; directions to various villages and towns; that this road was recently improved by the Provincial Government (sign coincidentally in the most recent political party's favourite colour); warning that there's a traffic light up ahead; oh don't forget you're on provincial road #whatever.
The result is one of two things: you either spend too many brain cycles focusing on them (and not the road), or you completely ignore all of them (possibly to your detriment).
I anxiously await the coming of the autonomous vehicle so that these problems go away.
The author hints at, but does not point to, data that correlates motorcycle helmets laws with higher accidents. That is counter to recent research which supports the standard view that helmet laws save lives: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-cost-of-repealing-m...
Short version: after repealing helmet laws in Michigan, they have seen higher injury severity and mortality.
I think you are mistaken. This is the quote from the article I am responding to: "Adams has figures to prove that countries – indeed US states – that do not require motorbike helmets have fewer biking accidents than those that do."
The research I linked to is also about motorcycles.
It's kind of hard to believe the same remains true in heavy rain, in the dark. I find that even the absence (or poor maintenance of) cat's eyes can be problematic then.
People would then be driving very very slowly which would have the same effect. You wouldn't believe it, but my friend drove 90 mph in fog so thick you couldn't see 10 feet out. This is because he had road markers and assumed the other drivers had their lights on so he would see them. If there were no road markers he'd be driving 30 mph.
There are a few examples of councils poorly implementing shared spaces. Any crossings are removed (pedestrians are supposed to be able to just cross anywhere at any time without waiting); but car drivers don't change their behaviour. It's a bit of a problem, especially for people with visual impairment.
There's a passing reference to accessibility in the article.
It's probably like a lot of things, the takeaway doesn't need to be the extreme that safety features on roads are bad, it can be that each safety feature on a given road should be evaluated as to whether it is truly beneficial.
I drive full speed on a highway with a traffic light, so when it's green I go through at about 55 mph. I get a little nervous because a wreck at that speed would not be fun.
If that traffic light were removed I would go a lot slower through that intersection, as would most people. Perhaps there would be fewer wrecks, and at low speeds any wrecks certainly would be less harmful.
But that would come at the expense of backing up that highway.
Some road design decisions are made to facilitate speed and throughput, not safety.
>But that would come at the expense of backing up that highway.
Roundabouts are a great solution to this. Everyone slows down a bit, instead of either doing 55 or 0. Also, when there IS a collision, you're more likely to get a glancing blow instead of t-boned.
Also, when I'm riding (motorcycle or bicycle) this kind of intersection is terrifying because it only takes one person running a light at 55mph to kill you.
I doubt that's practical in the US. The country has many miles of state highways (and the older US Routes; US 41 north of Chicago is a popular bypass for a toll road) for which a limited-access road with no at-grade intersections is far too expensive to be worth it, but traffic is light enough that a 55 or 65 mile per hour speed limit is reasonable.
This is one of those non-intuitive findings - like that study which showed bicycle helmets increase bicycle accidents due to increased risk taking - that I refuse to believe.
The most serious accidents are ones where the helmet is not enough to protect the cyclist. So every e wearing a helmet doesn't really reduce the number of serious injuries, while it does encourage more wreckless riding because of the feeling/assumption of safety.
This could be reflected in insurance rates. Mandatory insurance in most states is liability insurance. If safety features increase risk-taking, then safer cars should be more expensive to insure. The insurance companies employ legions of statisticians.
I support that removing markings is fine for areas that are lower traffic or lower speed: country back-roads, neighborhoods, etc.
I'm highly dubious that it's a good idea for high capacity or high speed areas. I cannot even begin to imagine how effective the over capacity freeways in the Seattle metro area would be without their stripes. Nor can I imagine what other major metro areas would experience.
Today, people get upset when the car ahead of them is driving 25 in a 25mph zone. I mean, how dare this idiot ahead of them slow them up on their way to the Walmart?
In the unmarked road case, people will eventually learn to act in their own self interest, which probably means zooming around the slowpoke.
This will result in (a) very little, (b) a head on collision (c) the sudden termination of the 8 year old that was riding their bike in the road - which is why the original idiot was driving at 25 in the first place.
There's a solution that takes the best of both worlds: clearly marked and enforceable road markings made to deliberately slow traffic by requiring more attentiveness:
Urban real-estate is expensive and valuable terrain, so wasting it on wide lanes that encourage fast traffic in places where fast traffic is the opposite of what you want (eg. where people live and walk and bike) should be an obviously bad idea.
I'm iffy about the removal of lane marking in all but quiet residential roads, but I'm definitely onboard with narrower lanes.
Its a very high load on brain, because you have to make decision on every road. Also, its unclear how you handle insurance cases. In some countries road hog's insurance company pays money for recovery. Without clear rules its gonna be a mess.
Some how I really doubt that Mondarman ever drove in DC traffic. To say that without other indicators, drivers will seek to look other drivers in the eye definitely wouldn't work around here.
This article pulls me both ways, because on the one hand I sympathize strongly with the libertarian idea that people should be left to judge their own risk, but on the other hand I don't buy the argument that the only reason for having white lines on roads, traffic signals, etc., is nanny-state control of people's behavior rather than letting them judge their own risk.
To me, the lines on the road and the traffic signals are not there to make me feel safe; they're there to provide Schelling points. If I have two-way traffic on a road with no line down the middle, how do I know where the division between lanes is? And more importantly, how do I know all the other drivers will think it's in the same place I think it is? The line is a simple solution to that problem. Similarly, if I come to an intersection and there is a 4-way stop sign, how do I know when it's my turn? And more importantly, how do I know all the other drivers will think it's my turn when I think it is? Traffic lights are a simple solution to that problem. The article just assumes that the root cause of accidents is drivers behaving recklessly, rather than drivers making different judgments about where boundaries are. But it presents no data to support that.
Also, at the end of the article, we get this:
"Traffic engineers, who maim and kill us with their regulations, lights and paint pots, merely go on dreaming up ever more of them. They pretend they are making our lives safer when they are doing the exact opposite. And we let them."
This suggests a completely different root cause of the problem: the people who put the boundaries and regulations in place bear no responsibility if they turn out to be badly placed. If that really is the root cause, the solution is obvious: make the people who place the boundaries--the traffic engineers--legally liable for making the boundaries function properly. If painted lines down the middle of the road, or traffic lights, increase accidents, make the traffic engineers pay. That would give them an incentive to only make regulations that are net benefits. But of course the article does not talk about such a solution at all; it only talks about fighting one one-size-fits-all regulation with another.
Btw, I am not advocating the above solution; I am merely saying that it is a logical consequence of the observation I quoted from the article. To me, the correct solution to what the article claims is the problem--lack of incentive for personal responsibility--is to increase the incentive for personal responsibility. You don't do that by removing obvious Schelling points for coordinating behavior, like lines on roads and traffic signals. You do that by making people suffer the consequences of wrong decisions. If you are at fault in an accident, your insurance company should raise your rates. If you are at fault in a serious enough accident, you might not be able to afford to drive at all. If we have a problem with personal responsibility in our society, it's because we refuse to acknowledge that responsibility has to work that way if it is to work at all.
people suffer the consequences of wrong decisions. If you are at fault in an accident, your insurance company should raise your rates
How do you establish at- fault behavior on unmarked roads? if there are no markings, and I'm supposed to just "do the right thing", then by definition I can not be at fault because my actions were entirely performed within the framework of the unmarked road constraint.
Of course, there is a solution to this: universal, publicly funded ( via use taxes ) auto insurance.
I suppose another alternative would be to re-establish private toll roads. (In the US these are quite rare, although there are some public toll roads.).
Pay extra for roads that are marked and patrolled. (In that case, reduced price insurance could be purchased at the time of paying the toll.)
> How do you establish at- fault behavior on unmarked roads?
I was not advocating unmarked roads. The article does, but I don't. Being able to establish fault is another aspect of the road markings being Schelling points--everybody knows that if they jump the line they're at fault.
> If there are no markings, and I'm supposed to just "do the right thing", then by definition I can not be at fault
The above notwithstanding, I don't think this is correct. It's not impossible to assign fault without road markings; it's just a lot more difficult, and the assignment is a lot more likely to cause conflict between the parties.
> there is a solution to this: universal, publicly funded ( via use taxes ) auto insurance.
I don't understand how this solves the problem. If anything, it seems to me it would reduce drivers' incentives to correctly judge risk.
> I suppose another alternative would be to re-establish private toll roads.
This would help with the incentives of the traffic engineer, yes. I'm not sure how it would help with the incentives of the driver.
Also, the problem with any privatized road system is that competition in roads is difficult; roads are not commodities. Good road rights of way are determined by geography, not the market. This is one of those cases where even if an optimal solution exists, it's not one that can be reached in the absence of an omnipotent divine being.
I think what we'd all actually be safer without is super smart academic types who think they can do a better job of system design than 100 years of shared experience. Traffic rules are among the most organic constraints we have developed. Literally every rule was written in blood. When I was teaching my daughters to drive I told them that if they ignored a stop sign, or ran a traffic light, they were not only putting their own lives and the lives of others at risk, they were also disrespecting the memories of the people who were maimed or killed so that we could realize we needed a traffic signal or sign in that spot.
Automated vehicles will solve this entire problem, and in the meantime I'll go with what we've learned by, you know, actually driving over academic theorizing.
That implies reasoned thought will never win out over the wisdom of crowds - was Pasteur a "super smart academic type"? By this logic commonly-held superstitions trump data resulting from experiment.
It also fails to recognize the experience of people who aren't in the majority. Many of my acquaintances would say the best way to improve safety for bicyclists is to outlaw cycling (I'm sure the less pleasant among them would support this), but we have the right to travel for a reason.
No the article discusses observed phenomena and attributes their cause to what the author wishes the cause to be, without, as far as I could see, any real evidence.
