| sebberry | 10-19-2009 12:49 PM |
Letting drivers think for themselves? Recipe for disaster!
On the other hand, it might not be...
Clearly the police here a pro-regulation and enforcement and the general attitude towards road safety in most places around the world focus on the ticketing of bad behavior rather than setting up systems that force drivers to think for themselves and behave in a way that isn't anti-social to other drivers.
Just wanted to get some feedback on this from the officers (and other folks) here... Quote:
If you find yourself crossing the road in the German town of Bohmte, look both ways – and then perhaps check again.
It has scrapped all its traffic lights and road signs in a radical experiment designed to make the streets safer. Yesterday, the local council said the scheme was a complete success.
In the four weeks since the signs were ripped up, there has not been a single accident.
Officials wanted to test the theory that the 13,000 drivers who use the town every day would take extra care and show each other greater consideration if they were not told what to do.
They secured a £1.8million grant from the European Union to set up the scheme in the town near Hanover.
Four weeks ago, Bohmte banned traffic lights and warning signs, including those instructing drivers to give way or stop.
Only two rules remain – drivers cannot go above 30 mph, the German speed limit for city driving, and everyone has to yield to the right, regardless of whether it is a car, a bike or a mother with a pushchair.
Officials revealed there have been no shunts, bumps or pedestrian injuries in the month since the scheme started.
Previously, there was at least one serious crash every week and scores of lesser 'fender-benders'.
The scheme, based on the idea of 'shared space' from Dutch traffic expert Hans Monderman, will now continue indefinitely. The mayor, Klaus Goedejohann, said: 'Politeness pays – we have proved that.'
Peter Hilbricht, a police officer in charge of traffic planning, added that the main intersection generated about 50 accidents a year before the changes.
'The number plummeted,' he said. 'It has been a sea-change in German attitudes as much as anything else.'
The EU has subsidised similar programmes in seven cities across Europe. Exhibition Road in London has been due to become a 'shared space' for the last three years.
However, funding is an issue and the scheme is not expected to start until next year. One unexpected bonus of the trial in Bohmte is that the town is saving £5,000 a month replacing and repairing signs damaged through normal wear and tear or by vandals.
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...ad-signs.html#
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I came across a pointer online to this book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Quote:
Q: So much of what you uncover about life on the road seems counterintuitive. Like the fact that drivers drive closer to oncoming cars when there is a center line divider then when there is not; that most accidents happen close to home in familiar, not foreign, surroundings; that dangerous roads can be safer; safer cars can be more dangerous; that suburbs are often riskier than the inner city; the roundabout safer than the intersection. When it comes to traffic why are things so different from how we instinctively perceive them?
A: I think part of the reason is it’s easy for us to confuse what feels dangerous or safe in the moment and what might be, in a larger sense, safe or dangerous. We have a windshield’s eye view of driving that sometimes blinds us to larger realities or skews our perception.
Roundabouts feel dangerous because of all the work one has to do, like looking for an opening, jockeying for positioning. But it’s precisely because we have to do all that, and because of the way roundabouts are designed, that we have to slow down.
By contrast, it feels quite "safe" to sail through a big intersection where the lights are telling you that you have the right to speed through. We can, in essence, put our brain on hold. But those same intersections contain so many more chances for what engineers call "conflict," and at much higher speeds, than roundabouts. So when what seems quite safe suddenly turns quite dangerous — will we be as well prepared?
Similarly, we might be reassured that that yellow or white dividing line on a road is telling us where we should be, but how does that knowledge then change our behavior, to the point where may actually be driving closer — and faster — to the stream of oncoming traffic? Accidents are more likely to occur closer to home. Mostly this is because we do most driving closer to home, but studies do show that we pay less attention to signs and signals on local roads, because we "know" them, yet this knowledge actually give us a false sense of security.
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