A Road With Fewer Rules
Brighton, UK (wikimedia)
Whenever people start complaining about urban cyclists not following traffic rules, the typical response is to say that cyclists need more dedicated space on the road rather than awkwardly being shoved into street traffic.
But when I think about this, I’m always reminded of the fact that arguably we need fewer traffic rules. The basic idea of traffic rules—separated uses, painted lane markers, giant signs, etc.—is to make it safe for the drivers of cars to drive their cars very quickly. That’s an okay design principle for a highway, but its nearly-universal adoption as a design principle for urban roadways is arguably very misguided. If it were up to me, more city streets would follow Hans Monderman’s shared space principles and just be undifferentiated stretch on which cars, bikes, mopeds, pedestrians, etc. are all free to travel. The over-arching “rule” would be “don’t collide with anyone.”
After all, if you think about a car-free space—a park or pedestrian plaza of some some, say—there’s not a need for elaborate “traffic rules.” The people aren’t herded into lanes or strictly told where to walk. The convention is to stroll on the right side of the sidewalk or whatever, but people are free to be flexible as the situation dictates. The point is that you’re not supposed to collide with anyone, and that everyone needs to undertake the personal responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on.
74 Responses to “A Road With Fewer Rules”
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August 10th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
This doesn’t seem like a good idea. I’m just thinking of parking lots, and in particular the complicated ones at shopping malls where there are semi-roads winding through and so on. I’ve noticed that people drive very recklessly in those things because it isn’t clear that the “usual” rules apply, whatever they are, and in case of an accident there’s plausible deniability.
I don’t necessarily think that the current set of rules, ie make the road safe to drive as fast as possible, is the right one. But no rules doesn’t sound good, either as a biker, pedestrian, or driver.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Yes, this is a wonderful notion, and in fact people moving along together — by foot or in vehicles — are actually quite marvelous in their ability to self-organize. When traffic signals began, they were merely advisory: if no one was coming, you could go against the red light.
But only if people are in a cooperative mood. After years of Ayn Randian selfish indoctrinations, can they revert to this basic human ability?
In Aarhus, Denmark, the solution is simple. Bikes are ridden in a lane that is BETWEEN the parked cars and the sidewalk. No entanglement with traffic, and the only important dangers is not noticing if a passenger is about to exit the vehicle.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
We could ban seatbelts, airbags and ABS systems and traffic would most likely slow down too, but that doesn’t make it a great idea.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I don’t think bicyclists behave very well on trails at all. They are just the dominant mode of transportation, so pedestrians are sure to stay out of the way. The courtesy of letting a pedestrian know that you are passing on their left and such are lost by many a bicyclists. The problem seems to be that roads and the laws that govern them are made solely for cars. Instead, we need to focus on laws/rules that will make the roads safe for cars, bikes, and pedestrians.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
arguably we need fewer traffic rules
everyone needs to undertake the personal responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on
You sound downright liberatarian. Come away with me to my gulch.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
It would be, um, interesting, to see this tried out, but I’m pretty sure the first few weeks would rack up one hell of a body count. Also, even without all the signs and lines and whatnot, roads are designed (mostly straight lines, minimized sharp curves) in order to maximize the speed of traffic. Consider the difference in traffic speed between the West Village and the rest of Manhattan that’s on the grid.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I’ve been hit twice by cyclists who were going the wrong way on a one way street. I’ve learned to look both ways.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
The main error in this thinking seems to me this assumption that people walking without rules don’t collide. They do, it’s just that they often brush by each other or avoid collisions using maneuvers not really available to cars. Two cars brushing by each other, or a person is far more catastrophic. The status quo isn’t great, but it is better than no rules, especially because cars are more likely to act recklessly since the don’t incur damage to themselves in a collision.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
This might work on roads in China and such, where most of the travelers are cyclists or pedestrians, and the motorists are latecomers outnumbered by the others. But if you built a new path, allowed motor vehicles on it, but had no rules whatsoever (i.e., pedestrians could walk down the middle of the street without getting cited), I’m thinking mayhem would ensue.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’d argue that most of the developing world already puts this idea to practice. And I’d further argue that you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to drive or bike in most urban areas of the developing world.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
This is fine for small downtowns, but not for places like Manhattan. First off, Manhattan’s streets are already in a state of controlled chaos. You could paint over all the lines tomorrow and traffic would behave exactly the same. Second, with the amount of traffic flowing through Manhattan each day it is just wildly impractical to expect drivers to be going 10mph for the length of 7th avenue while pedestrians are free to cross into traffic at any moment. And just think what will happen when an emergency vehicle needs to get through quickly.
If instead you segregate each mode of travel (driving, biking, walking) then within each segregated space people will be able to travel more freely, without having to worry about the other modes. So give pedestrians their pedestrian walkways, cyclists their segregated bikeways, and drivers their uncluttered roadways, and everybody will be happy. Except perhaps accident attourneys.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
That’s my street! By the way Matt, the local bus operation is quite something. This from their website:
http://www.buses.co.uk/information/aboutus.aspx
At Brighton & Hove we have successfully grown the market
for local bus travel by an average 5% each year since
1993, something which is unique in the bus industry.
The throughput of the buses never stops surprising me. Check it (and Brighton) out next time you are in London.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
This strikes me, frankly, as insane. We direct passanger traffic all the time. There’s a reason they put up those ropes in movie theater lines and whatnot. The public isn’t and shouldn’t be trusted to form their own lines. Sidewalks are another example.
As for the notion of everybody responsibly paying attention to what they are doing in lieu of draconian mandates, I don’t even know what to say. Lots of people are transformed by the experience of driving into creatures with no notion of responsibility in my experience.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I remember when I was visiting Buenos Aires and for many intersections they didn’t have stop signs or signals. What they did have were small open drainage channels for rainwater running parallel to the streets. The effect was that all cars had to slow down when approaching intersections because of the depression in the road. It was quite safe and efficient for smaller neighborhood roads (not for avenues and boulevards).
August 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Actually, there are places where there are no road rules (well, they exist, but nobody cares about them). And anyone who’s ever been to Cairo will tell you the result is disastrous. Completely jammed, extremely dangerous traffic (especially for pedestrians). Many if not most cars show damage from previous collisions.
The analogy is false.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Bjorn’s about right: people on foot don’t need rules
because a) they’re moving slowly, b) they’re highly
manoeuvrable, c) they’re soft enough that collisions are
usually no more than a momentary annoyance.
Cars, on the other hand, are dangerous not just because of
their speed, but also because a) they’re not very agile
b) they’re *very* heavy, so have a lot of energy even at
low speed c) they’re hard, so even a minor collision at low
speed is likely to cause severe bruising or broken bones
d) drivers have restricted sightlines e) drivers can’t
hear much from outside the car, due to engine noise and the
acoustic shielding to muffle the engine noise.
Mixing cars and pedestrians isn’t going to work well.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
So black people would drive 5 abreast and force everyone else off the road?
August 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Shared space is basically how is works in Kigali, where I live. You tend to get far more alert drivers who use their horn a lot to make sure everyone around is aware of their presence, since there are a lot of pedestrians and not many crosswalks.
I find it much easier and less stressful.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Just to get a little mathematical, kinetic energy is
0.5*M*V*V. If you had a 3000lb car travelling at only 5mph,
it would have the same kinetic energy as a 150lb person
sprinting at 22mph.
Cars are very dangerous to pedestrians even when they’re
travelling very slowly.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
But when I think about this, I’m always reminded of the fact that arguably we need fewer traffic rules.
But when I hear glibertarian magical proposals, I am always moved to wonder if anyone has done, yaknow, a study on this?
August 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
I used to think shared space was a good idea until I started reading David Hembrow’s blog. It’s better than all cars all the time, but it’s still not good enough. The places with the best walking and cycling stats go way farther than shared space.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Yeah, I remember my life flashing before my eyes on a bus ride on a highway in Vietnam that was shared by buses, trucks, small cars, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, and every other form of transportation. Absolutely the most terrifying traffic experience I’ve ever had, hands down. a two lane road with wide shoulders was basically seven lanes; pedestrians and cows on the shoulders, then bikes/scooters, then motor vehicles, plus a space in the center used as a passing lane for motor vehicles. In practice this meant our bus driver pulling out into the center lane, leaning on the horn, and going as far as he could as fast as he could before ducking out of the passing lane at the last possible second to avoid a head-on collision with another bus or truck coming the opposite direction doing the same thing. This must have happened 30 times in a two-hour trip. And maybe our bus driver was a crazy asshole, but it was happening all over the rest of the road as well; bikes were moving into the car lane to pass other bikes, cows were moving into the bike lane to pass other cows, etc. Jesus Christ, that was scary. Not coincidentally, Vietnam has absolutely appalling traffic death statistics.
Now, this is not what Matt’s talking about; some neighborhood street is different from a major highway. But you would also want traffic control measures in place for major city streets, otherwise the situation would get like it gets in developing world cities. Basically this is a bad idea outside of small neighborhood roads.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Well, before everyone piles on, this isn’t as misguided as it seems at first, unless Matt is arguing for complete anarchy.
Consider traffic circles replacing lights. It annoys people, and it seems particularly scary at first because there doesn’t seem to be order and no one knows what to do. But it’s been proven that replacing a traffic light with a circle both eases traffic and lowers the number of accidents.
The key is to give continual cues to drivers that they shouldn’t be barreling down the road at twice the speed limit.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I’m not sure I see the wisdom of slowing all traffic to walking speed. Bicyclists may slow down cars, but in reality, not by much. Let’s not go overboard and forget that there are certain advantages to driving cars that go beyond the ability to kill pedestrians and cyclists.
As a person who rides NYC streets fairly frequently, I prefer sharing space with cars than pedestrians.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Fer chrissakes people. Go read “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt (or at least read his blog). Matt’s post may not have gotten too deep into it, but all your concerns have already been dealt with. You sound like a bunch of reactionaries. CHANGE? OH NOES!
Most of our “concerns” about road sharing are actually just ways of masking our sense that someone else is “gaming the system” by using a more efficient form of transportation (such as bicycling) than car drivers.
A perfect example of this attitude is the reaction of American drivers to lane-splitting by motorcycles/scotters. It’s legal EVERYWHERE except for the U.S. and Canada (though it is legal in California and possibly Quebec(?)). When state legislatures try to legalize it, car drivers immediately get angry because they feel like riders shouldn’t be able to “cut the line” even though theoretically it reduces congestion by utilizing more of the roadway (all that space between lanes goes wasted during traffic jams).
August 10th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Yeah, seconding Botswana Meat. Not that I haven’t come to expect ignorant, kneejerk comments on this blog, but some of the commenters speculating from ignorance above might do well to actually read the link.
This idea has you know, actually been tried in a few places in developed countries, including big busy places like London. And the results have been positive for the most part. It’s counterintuitive, but among other things traffic seems to flow smoother. There’s also less of it, and there are marked reductons in pedestrian injuries.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I can see how this concept could work very well in shopping areas and city centers, but wouldn’t it mainly work by encouraging cars to not drive there because it’s so slow and such a PITA? As you convert more and more streets to “shared space” it seems you’re going to get closer and closer to the “total chaos and instant death” model people discuss above.
Are there examples of this working well on a large scale?
August 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Yeah, I always notice how when a street is resurfaced in NY, but before DOT has a chance to paint lines, things seem to work out fine, even on quite busy streets (Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn comes to mind): pedestrians cross without crosswalks, nobody drifts into oncoming traffic despite the absence of a yellow line, etc.
But yeah, probably also average car speed is a little slower under such circumstances, and to far too many people that is really all that needs to be said.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
But yeah, probably also average car speed is a little slower under such circumstances, and to far too many people that is really all that needs to be said.
Yeah, although this is debatable. I think what’s happened with some of these experiments is that when they remove most of the lights and stop signs, and drivers start having to actually watch the road and think, what happens is that top speed goes way down, but the average rate of travel can actually go up.
It’s tortoise and hare. Instead of spending 20 seconds speeding down the road four blocks, then getting stuck at a light or in traffic for 2 minutes (rinse repeat), everyone just moves smoothly along at a modest but steady 15 mph or whatever.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
For such spaces you need new and explicit rules about blocking traffic, and different designs to avoid bottlenecks. People tend to stop at places which cause the maximum disruption, they fail to pull out of the way, etc. The fact is that they do not make efficient traffic flow left to themselves.
This kind of thing is not for roads where covering distance is the main objective.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
While some suggestions seem to work well (roundabouts/traffic circles), the idea of a complete truck/bus/car/bike/ped free-for-all seems inherently dangerous. In 35+ years of urban cycling in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and other major North American cities I’ve had run ins with cars, roller bladers and pedestrians not to mention close calls with trucks and city busses. Just for safety reasons, I would strongly vote for separated lanes such as those in the Netherlands or Denmark.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
For what it’s worth i think the main problem is the many bad drivers out there.They are a amall minority but there are enough to make the roads very unsafe.This goes for bad cycilists as well .They all should be cracked down on!
It’s not a case of byciclists VS car drivers.
I do not own a car and i ride a bycicle to work.But i have more in common with safe drivers than with bad cyclists.And vice versa.
I am not talking about small things either.At least in Baltimore it has become very common to run a red light lately.And im not talking about a yellow light that just turned red either.I have almost been literally killed by this on a few occasions .
As for byciclist who ride on the wrong side of the road . They bother us byciclists more than car drivers.If you are riding your bike on a small peice of the road on the side of traffic ,the last thing you want to see is a byciclist coming at you the wrong way.There is no way you can get out of his way.
I do not claim to know whether fewer or more rules would help.But police should enforce and crack down on the obviousely good rules[ like not runnng a red light!!] .
August 10th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
In 35+ years of urban cycling in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and other major North American cities I’ve had run ins with cars, roller bladers and pedestrians not to mention close calls with trucks and city busses.
But all of these are places with nominally highly regimented traffic control. I think you’re underestimating the degree to which this is an artifact of that regimentation, and the resulting view of all these separate users that they are in their own space and they don’t need to watch out for the others. Even though there are nominally rules, people still break them left and right. The difference is mostly that they’re not usually watching out for all the other people who are also breaking them.
That’s not to say there should be no rules at all, or that this approach is a good idea for all (or even most) places, but it’s not ludicrous. And, where it’s appropriate, the evidence suggests it’s a lot safer.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Pete from Baltimore: How many people (other than the riders themselves) have EVER been killed by the MAJOR societal problem of bicyclists running red lights?
The fact of the matter is, cars and trucks weigh thousands of pounds. A traffic infraction committed by a driver of a car or truck is potentially MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more hazardous other people than a scofflaw bicyclist could ever hope to be.
Why should we devote police resources to bicyclists? It’s CAR DRIVERS that run people over on a daily basis….
August 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
The shared spaces idea depends a lot on the culture in which the “shared space” concept is put into place.
Where I live, in Dubai, there are areas like this. Unfortunately, there are a ton of young drivers in very large vehicles, for whom no signage means “no stopping or slowing required.” Consequently, pedestrians and cyclists have to be incredibly vigilant. The statistics alone tell the story.
Also, this concept is already in force in places like Egypt and India, mostly because traffic regulations and the network of rules and appropriate signage has not really developed there.
I can guarantee that the lack of signage in those places, especially in large cities like Cairo and Mumbai, does not make you safer in the least.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Yeah, then they’d read the quotes from people living with the “shared space” principles that say it sucks.
In the US context, these aren’t realistic proposals to solve what Americans want to solve from traffic laws: letting the mostest travel the fastest. These are proposals to limit car travel, which are now relatively favored in most communities because de facto few protections are given to other transportation.
If you want to see how this would work in the US, go to the Santa Monica pier. Even taking out cars, it’s not pretty.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Having used multiple modes of travel, I’d have to say that it’s pretty unambiguous who’s responsible for most of the problems. Moreover, it’s the ones you would expect just from theoretical considerations: yes, I’m talking about automobiles.
What needs to be done is to have draconian penalties that are also enforced against the offending parties. The problem is, most people – including judges, policemen, and juries – tend to be more sympathetic to the automobile operator than they should be because they themselves drive. And so what you have is a sense of entitlement on the part of the motorists. It’s obvious, or so they think, that the roads were built for them; everyone else is just so much riff-raff. Any use of ‘their’ roadways by non-motorists is to be considered a privilege, and woe to those who don’t defer.
Get rid of that attitude and you get rid of a lot of the problem. I speak, btw, as a sometime pedestrian who has had to dodge any number of drivers making left and right turns, even though both the law and some rather unambiguous and quite obvious traffic signals indicate that I have the right-of-way.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I remember being impressed by the traffic flow in New Delhi when I was there several years ago. I have no idea what the actual laws were; the only one I recognized was that drivers mostly obeyed traffic lights. Other than that, the traffic rule actually observed seem to be this: the right of way goes to the largest vehicle with the loudest horn.
Trucks, buses, cars, autorickshaws, rickshaws, motorcycles, mopeds, bicicyles, elephants, donkeys, pedestrians, etc., all shared the same roadway. A skilled autorickshaw driver was able to make his way across town with surprising speed, unless and until things jammed up completely. It was exhilarating.
Of course, in that city “There were 2,088 deaths due to road accidents in 2008 and the number of pedestrians among them was 1,075…” That’s almost three pedestrians killed every day. I’m just sayin’…
August 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Yeah, then they’d read the quotes from people living with the “shared space” principles that say it sucks.
Uh, maybe. But I don’t see too many of those on the wikipedia page. Wikipedia being wikipedia, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything — the “criticisms section is thin, perhaps suspiciously thin, but still. While there are always some gripers, this seems genuinely successful.
It’s another sensible addition to the list of disciplines that are starting to incorporate empirical data and improved knowledge about actual human psychology and cognition to get better results. Not perfect ones, but much better than relying on our demonstrably less-than-reliable intuition, or faulty institutionalized assumptions about traffic flow from 1956.
(Which, incidentally, and contra a couple of posters above, is certainly not some libertarian fantasy. Emphasis on empirics and actual human cognition is pretty petty much the diametric opposite of obnoxious, absolutist libertarian naivete.)
August 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Context is everything: shared space approaches that work tend to be in places that already have established norms of road use — and a hierarchy of strict liability for the various users.
So I think you need to go from highly structured, externally-dictated direction towards models that require engagement with other road users — Zephyrus’s example of replacing stop lights with roundabouts — before contemplating more radical approaches to traffic management . Small steps.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Regarding comment #34 from Botswana
When i was refering to red light runners i was talking about cars .If i did not make that clear i apoligise.And i have almost been killed by cars running red lights.
As for bad byciclists their main sin is riding on the wrong side of the road.In Baltimore where i live our streets are very narrow.If someone is going the wrong way i can not get out of their way unless i go to the left and get hit by a car.Usally we both come to a standstill and faceoff with the other byciclist getting on the sidewalk and me riding on somewhat pissed off.Are byciclist as dangerous as cars ? Of course not because of size. But that does not excuse bad bycicle riding.
I still do not see how criticsizing bad bycicling is anti-bike anymore than criticsizing bad driving is anti-car.For the record Botswana i have never owned a car and according to my odometer i do about 3- 5,000 miles a year on my bike.So i am hardly anti bike.I am sorry if you feel that i am since that was not my intention ,nor my point.
Best regards to you Botswana
August 10th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Of course, in that city “There were 2,088 deaths due to road accidents in 2008 and the number of pedestrians among them was 1,075…” That’s almost three pedestrians killed every day. I’m just sayin’…
Assuming that’s the metro area (pop. 15m+) and not the city proper (just a few hundred k), that’s not horrendous. For comparison, New York City (pop 8m+) averages more than 1500 traffic deaths a year.
That’s 0.18 deaths per 1000 residents in New York. In New Delhi, it’s only 0.13. (Not so different from US as whole in 2008, at about 0.124. And I think that’s a historic low.)
August 10th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Start with a draconian crack down on drivers who run right lights and speed in urban areas and go from there. In Iowa they apparently can not get pedestrians safely across the street at the moment so I would suggest some gradual steps before we implement a free for all. I may be a bit jaded as I live next to a busy traffic circle.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
jack lecou @ #42:
Where are you getting those numbers? I’m just working from Google searches, so my sources may not be authoritative, but this source says the largest annual number of traffic fatalities in NYC from 2000-2007 was just 392, in 2001. That included 192 pedestrians. Your source may well be better, but I’d appreciate a link.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
My link at #44 was to a law firm website, which I guess is a bit shady. Here’s a governmental source with the same data.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I used to ride my Japanese racer all over Denver, and when car drivers got the right to make the right on red, things got ugly.
I, everyone else on board, and my laptop smacked the floor, once, when a bicyclist pulled in front of the bus. Trying not to kill a pedestrian or bicyclist can wreak havoc; but as a life-long pedestrian, the most danger I’ve seen has come from drivers who aren’t paying attention. I was clipped by a driver talking on her cell phone, once. If she even noticed that she hit me, she didn’t let on.
Walkable urbanity is a selling point for me, though even in places that are insanely walkable, there aren’t always many pedestrians. In Scottsdale, men would see me walking and assume that I was prostituting or homeless. It was very strange, and I always said, “I have a home. I’m walking to the grocery store.” They looked like they didn’t believe me. Weird.
The more pedestrians and bicyclists appear, the sooner drivers will learn to anticipate them.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
FearItself-
Oops. You’re right. I should have checked my dates more closely. I used this, which was the first thing that came up on google for “New York City traffic fatalities”, but the data is 1993-1998.
They’ve evidently plummeted since then, apparently from increased policing.
(I think the point holds, though. The numbers for the US as a whole are current, I used nhtsa.gov. Just means New Delhi is slighty better off than NYC was in the nineties. And probably there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in New Delhi too…)
August 10th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
nuts
August 10th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
jack lecou –
Thanks for the link. Let’s take a closer look at just the cities, though, since I suspect traffic fatalities in the U.S. disproportionately happen outside cities.
Page 4 of the source you gave puts the number of traffic fatalities in U.S. urban areas in 2008 at 15,983. Admittedly, this is not very precise, since the NHTSA only divides the data into “urban” and “rural” (along with a small number of “unknown”), but it should get us in the ballpark. There are more accidents classified as “rural” than “urban.”
The U.S. population is about 307 million. Since approximately %81 live in urban areas, that gives us an urban population of roughly 250 million. That’s an urban traffic fatality rate of just .063 per 1000 urban residents, about half the rate you calculated for Delhi.
Of course, this is all back-of-the envelope calculations based on web-sourced statistics. I didn’t mean to get this far into the weeds, but I wanted some numbers to back up my sense, based on the city’s reputation and my personal experience, that travel in Delhi was dangerous as well as chaotic. I think the numbers support the former; I will leave it to other visitors to the city to confirm or deny the latter.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I used to agree with you until my 2 year old wandered onto a shared space he didn’t identify as a road.
I was in New Zealand once, in the country near Rotorua, and saw some sheep crossing the road. The farmer opened gates which blocked the road and the sheep ran across the road. Before the sheep were quite across, the waiting cars started pushing forwards. The cars were stupider than the sheep. I have no problem at all FORCING cars to drive sensibly, because given the choice they do not.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
FearItself-
Yeah, assuming that the definitions of “urban” for the two numbers are about the same, that might be about right. Stands to reason that urban area accidents should be a lot lower, since VMT is much lower. I’d guess that this is somewhat unfair in the sense that New Delhi probably has even lower VMT than US urban areas. (But that’s part of the point – making the streets better for bicycles and pedestrians.)
In any case, my (modified) point was that New Delhi still compares very favorably with NYC ca. 1995.
And NYC traffic patterns 10 years ago couldn’t have been that different from today. Things have improved, but mostly at the margins (a few crackdowns on drunks, speeding, red light running). In all other respects, the rules and patterns in NYC ten years ago resemble the patterns and rules of NYC today far more than they do the patterns and rules of New Delhi.
So I think it’s very likely that New Delhi could make modest efforts to weed out the most dangerous road users and see similarly huge reductions in mortality, while otherwise keeping intact the overall patterns, and that smoothly flowing chaos you observed.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Or another way to look at it is as two independent axes. There’s 1) what the rules are (highly regimented vs. free-flowing), and then there’s 2) how they are enforced.
New Delhi is up in one corner, with free-flowing rules, but minimum safety enforcement. That gives good traffic flow and use diversity, but poor safety.
NYC ca. 1995 is in the neighboring quadrant, with restrictive rules, but poorly enforced–there you have poor traffic flow, even worse safety.
NYC today is in a third quadrant: restrictive rules, well enforced. You get OK safety, but flow and diversity still aren’t terrific.
So the idea is that maybe the best solution of all is somewhere in the remaining quadrant, the region that is just now being explored: free-flowing New-Delhi-like rules, with safe behavior strictly enforced.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:19 am
I’m not trying to argue that ours is the best of all possible traffic regimes. It’s certainly possible to imagine a better set of rules by which people and vehicles would move through a city if we could create it by fiat. (Or even by FIAT, although I have no idea how safe Rome is).
We can even imagine a better system that could actually be implemented in the cities we live, although that’s a more difficult task (even to imagine) given that legal change would have to be accompanied by changes in peoples’ cultural expectations about how to behave. Engineering human behavior is tricky.
If we can make our systems better, I support that. I just want to raise the point that there’s nothing magical about “fewer rules,” and places like Delhi offer some pretty powerful counter-examples which should give us caution. By temperament I sympathize with the desire for fewer rules; for example, while I always wear my seat belt and motorcycle helmet, I’m not in favor of laws mandating that all drivers/ motorcyclists must do the same. But even coming from that perspective, I think that when you start fiddling around with complex social systems it pays to attend closely to the possibility of unintended consequences. For example, we failed to take such care when we deregulated the electricity industry, and the result was Enron. If we deregulate traffic without taking more care, I shudder to think what might happen.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Yeah, but that’s where slowgoing and some cautious empirical experiments come in.
I’m just saying that there’s a tendency to want to boil it down to “no rules” vs. “the rules we have”, and that isn’t the right way to look at it. You still have rules. It’s just not about mindless lane markers and stop lights. Instead it’s more about being alert and sharing the road responsibly. (That’s ultimately the sort of rule you really want to enforce anyway, so it stands to reason that it might be helpful to make that paramount, and to remove the excess regimentation that makes it so easy to zone out.)
August 11th, 2009 at 5:58 am
I live in Massachusetts, and out of state visitors constantly complain about our chaotic drivers, pedestrians and bikers who essentially ignore most rules and have created their own de facto shared space system. Their observations are right: you can pretty much expect any car to continue through a red light, any pedestrian to dart out at any time. Compared to Illinois, where I grew up, or California, where I lived for several years, Boston and Massachusetts are absolutely anarchic.
Because of this, everyone drives, and walks, without a sense of entitlement.
The result? Take a look at which state ranks number one most years in fewest fatalities per mile driven, or fewest fatalities per population. It is Massachusetts, an entire state that pretty much acts like driving rules, lane markers and walk signals are trifles to be ignored, and where you are required to navigate using your senses of vision, hearing and common.
Drivers from rule-abiding states obviously feel the need for a sense of ownership of their driving space, and as we can see by the comments, are horrified at the idea of giving it up. But the facts don’t back them up.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:42 am
For those of you who commented that shared space doesn’t create road safety in Dehli, Vietnam, etc…
These aren’t fair comparisons. Less developed countries tend to have a combination of lower regard for life, lesser legal penalties less consistently applied, lower vehicle safety standards, absence of driver training, etc. None of these conditions apply here.
The idea isn’t heave-ho, anything goes. We can expand shared space, and at the same time continually strengthen penalties and enforcement, both legal and cultural, for driving dangerously. We’ve done a great job with making drunk driving socially unacceptable. We can and must do the same with driving-while-on-phone. THIS will save lives, regardless of the focus on lane-markers and bike lanes.
Expecting drivers to use their common sense and pay full attention, which is the core idea of shared space, will not create the chaotic streets of Delhi, because we don’t share its culture or legal system. This is a fallacious argument.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am
jack lecou: Instead it’s more about being alert and sharing the road responsibly.
Yes. I agree. The more this change happens, the safer and more efficient traffic flow would be regardless of the laws in effect. That means choosing laws that (carefully) move driver / pedestrian behavior in that direction, and if more sharing of spaces works, I’m down with that.
It has to be done with a sensitivity to the behavior patterns of the locals, though, because local variation matters, as GreggB points out.
(I was driving in Massachussetts quite a bit this summer, and failed to appreciate its utopian traffic regime. Perhaps as an out-of-state driver, I was ill-equipped to do so. Probably the effects of some lingering disrespect for life that rubbed off on me while hanging out with the wogs in Delhi.)
To the extent that shared spaces do work, it will be not because there are fewer rules, but because the participants are following shared, unwritten cultural rules (which can be a lot more complex and situationally flexible than written, enforceable traffic law is ever likely to be). That’s fine in theory, but everybody on the road in a given place has to share the same expectations for it to work. How possible will that be? Only experimentation will answer that question, but it’s worth trying.
One last thing: driver training matters a lot, as several commentors have mentioned. Personally, I think it should be a lot harder than it is in this country to get and keep a driver’s license, but that social change is a pretty heavy lift given our cultural devotion to the automobile.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:50 am
One last thing: driver training matters a lot, as several commentors have mentioned. Personally, I think it should be a lot harder than it is in this country to get and keep a driver’s license, but that social change is a pretty heavy lift given our cultural devotion to the automobile.
Yeah. It is really ridiculous. You get one sort of desultory test when you’re 16 or so, then for the rest of your life you pretty much just make an appearance at the DMV for a new photo every 5 or 10 years, maybe show them you’re not actually blind or something.
And maybe, sometimes, if you do something really really irresponsible, or actually hurt somebody, perhaps repeatedly, you’ll get it taken away. For a few months.
That’s an absurd system for licensing the use of heavy equipment on public streets. But definitely an uphill battle to change it.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:41 am
‘After all, if you think about a car-free space—a park or pedestrian plaza of some some, say—there’s not a need for elaborate “traffic rules.” ‘
Of course, when people collide with people, they seldom die. And they seldom use their bodies as an aggressive weapon for inserting themselves into the intersection. You seldom see an explosion of Sidewalk Rage.
Matt’s ideas about urban planning are eccentric, to say the least, and involve absurd comparisons of incommensurate behaviors.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Of course, when people collide with people, they seldom die. And they seldom use their bodies as an aggressive weapon for inserting themselves into the intersection. You seldom see an explosion of Sidewalk Rage.
Matt’s ideas about urban planning are eccentric, to say the least, and involve absurd comparisons of incommensurate behaviors.
You know, arguably Matt’s analogy to a public plaza was a little unfortunate, but have you even read the links or the rest of the thread? Signs point to no…
Also, think about that plaza again for a minute. Certainly it’s true that collisions between pedestrians are mostly pretty harmless, and that people brush against each other relatively frequently (compared to cars on a road), and, in extreme cases of inattention even collide head on with each other. But ask yourself whether those facts are really as disconnected as you’re assuming. Don’t you think it’s likely that people brush against each other relatively frequently while walking BECAUSE it’s harmless, not because the traffic patterns somehow make it inevitable?
If touching someone instead resulted in a powerful electric shock, say, or expensive-to-repair damage to your paint and metal work, do you really think collisions would be so frequent? Or would everyone just pay slightly more attention to where they were walking, even in a free-flowing public plaza?
Or consider New Delhi (or insert-your-favorite-chaotic-third-world-city-here). We’ve established it has a somewhat higher accident rate, and that we’d want somewhat different rules and more safety enforcement than that. But even so, the accident rate there is not astronomically higher. As anarchic as it appears, it’s clearly not bumper cars. Instead, road users of all kinds are mostly just forced to pay attention and cooperate more.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
The legal environment is different in the U.S. than in other countries, too. A lot of the traffic law we have is designed to clarify responsibility for accidents so we can more easily decide who pays for damages and injuries. A regime that relied more on cooperative sharing of space could easily lead to an even more expensive and time-consuming tort system than the one we’ve already got. I’m not saying that would definitely happen, but it seems a likely outcome.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
One more point: cars are *big*. A Toyota Camry is 71in x
189in, or 5.9ft x 15.7ft = 93 sq ft. Whereas a pedestrian
is maybe 22in wide, and even with 3ft to swing legs occupies
only about 5.5 sq ft. The car is taking about 17x more
area than the pedestrian.
This extra width of a car aggravates the difficulty of
avoiding collision. If you’re a pedestrian, and you notice
a car heading straight towards you, then you may need to
move rapidly sideways as much as (71/2)+(22/2) in = 3.9ft.
To avoid collision with an oncoming pedestrian or cyclist,
you only need to move about (22/2)+(22/2) in = 1.8ft.
Human beings have significant reaction time, and then a
rather limited rate of acceleration due to their upright
posture (try chasing a cat sometime, or even a 4-year-old).
The one good thing about cars is that they (mostly) have
excellent brakes. Whereas most bicycles don’t. But really
for cars to mix with pedestrians the cars have to go *slower*
than walking pace (and even then, it’s going to be a huge
hazard for young children, who are short enough that drivers
can’t see them well, and distracted enough that they can’t be
axpected to take avoiding action at all).
As for the third world examples, I’ve been to India and Nepal,
and the traffic and driving styles scare the heck out of me.
And I wouldn’t trust accident figures to be anywhere near
the truth …
In general, safety seems to be a low priority in India.
I went for a walk one evening in Delhi, was walking briskly
along the sidewalk at dusk and suddenly ran into barbed wire,
tearing my pants and narrowly avoiding a nasty injury.
Some kind of food seller had set up some tables on the
sidewalk and strung barbed wire to keep pedestrians away
from them. That’s a libertarian for you …
August 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The one good thing about cars is that they (mostly) have
excellent brakes. Whereas most bicycles don’t. But really
for cars to mix with pedestrians the cars have to go *slower*
than walking pace (and even then, it’s going to be a huge
hazard for young children, who are short enough that drivers
can’t see them well, and distracted enough that they can’t be
axpected to take avoiding action at all).
I think this probably bespeaks a misunderstanding of what’s being proposed or envisioned. It’s not that cars are “mixing” with pedestrians, as if they’re all intermingled together, travelling in the same direction down the middle of the street.
Traffic will still segment by type, and direction, with cars probably somewhere in the middle of the road, using different sides of the street for each direction of travel; pedestrians on the sides; bicycles sharing both worlds.
The difference is that there’s just less formal distinction. If you want to cross the street, you look to make sure it’s safe, but then you just cross, and we don’t call it “jaywalking”. If there are few cars and lots of pedestrians, the pedestrians expand to fill the space a little. Bicycles, and even cars, use common sense to get through intersections, rather than being lulled into mindless (angry) regimentation by signals and stop signs.
And while drivers have to slow down a little and pay attention to this sort of thing, and to see if the intersection they’re passing through is clear, etc., their overall rate of travel doesn’t suffer much (or maybe even improves). There are fewer unnecessary stops to wait for traffic signals at empty intersections (for example), and they naturally go at a speed that’s better matched to driver reaction time, so there’s less bunching.
The place to look is not so much Delhi (which is an extreme example), but something more like turn of the century American and European streets, where the space was shared by pedestrians, horses, streetcars, automobiles, bicycles, etc.
Each mode still has its typical place on the street, but it’s nevertheless a stimulation rich environment where you have to pay attention, not a concrete channel designed to funnel cars along at ridiculous speeds. And there’s no self-righteous sense of entitlement when a bicyclist dares to share the roadway with motorists.
It’s that, coupled with a more refined (and evidence-based) approach to traffic direction: cut back on unthinking deployment of signals and stop signs, sensibly deploy more cooperative roundabout-type mechanisms, etc.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
“Each mode still has its typical place on the street, but it’s nevertheless a stimulation rich environment where you have to pay attention”
The trouble is that auto manufacturers have spent the last
50 years making the interior of a passenger vehicle more and
more like your living room: comfy seats, little noise from
outside, a nice streo system, a phone, even a DVD player in the back, heating and air conditioning so that you never
need to open the window.
A system that worked reasonably well for horse-powered
vehicles, with drivers fully exposed to the elements (and
with a considerable degree of intelligence in the horse,
even if the driver isn’t paying attention) is not necessarily
suitable for modern cars and their drivers.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
A system that worked reasonably well for horse-powered
vehicles, with drivers fully exposed to the elements (and
with a considerable degree of intelligence in the horse,
even if the driver isn’t paying attention) is not necessarily
suitable for modern cars and their drivers.
If modern cars have really eliminated the ability to pay attention to what’s happening beyond the dashboard, I would think we should view that as a rather huge problem with modern cars.
I don’t happen to think that’s the case, but if it were, we should do something about that problem. Not use it as an excuse to preserve poorly designed streets and public spaces…
August 11th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
“If modern cars have really eliminated the ability to pay attention to what’s happening beyond the dashboard, I would think we should view that as a rather huge problem with modern cars.”
Most cars these days give you good vision to the front,
less good vision to the sides (big pillars), and crappy
vision to the rear. But no auditory cues from outside at
all: a lot of acoustic insulation to keep out engine and
road noise, and a big stereo. I had an accident in a
parking lot a couple of years ago: I backed out of a space
and stopped, preparing to go forwards, someone else started
backing out of a space on the other side, I blew my horn
long and loud, and he just kept on coming and reversed into
the fender of my stationary car.
Anyhow, it’s a real problem: the vehicle that you would
design to drive safely in a city with mixed traffic is
very different from the vehicle you would design for
driving comfortably at 65mph on an interstate highway for
4 hours. It’s not about “ability to pay attention”, it’s
about how effective your attention can be when you’re
encased in a crumple zone and a roll cage and a soundproof
cabin behind an aerodynamically efficient windshield.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I backed out of a space
and stopped, preparing to go forwards, someone else started
backing out of a space on the other side, I blew my horn
long and loud, and he just kept on coming and reversed into
the fender of my stationary car.
I think your parking lot incident is exactly the sort of inattention this idea is trying to address. Modern cars aren’t what made the guy run into you. It’s more that he was just used to zoning out and assuming no one would be there.
Seeing and hearing better might help, but the horn is just a kludge anyway, really. It’s not as if the guy that hit you had visibility so bad that he literally couldn’t have looked around and seen you. (And if he did have limited visibility for some reason, he should have taken other precautions.)
(It’s probably true that the ideal car for driving on a freeway isn’t the same as the ideal vehicle for driving in a city. And maybe better street design in cities will lead to a market for better suited vehicles. But you still obviously have to make some tradeoffs one way or the other. If those compromises find you in a situation where you’ve got less than ideal visibility or maneuverability or whatever, it just means you’ve got an extra responsibility to be cautious and alert.)
August 11th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
“Modern cars aren’t what made the guy run into you. It’s more that he was just used to zoning out and assuming no one would be there.”
Partly. But it was a really hot day and a sunny parking lot,
so he had just got into a very hot car and was running the
AC full (and maybe the radio as well). He said he never
heard the horn. Now that’s pretty remarkable, given that
a car horn is specifically designed to be loud and to get
your attention, and I was honking it right at him at point-
blank range as he collided with my stationary car.
I’m betting that if he’d been in one of those three-wheeler
scooter-cab vehicles that are common in Asia, the outcome
would have been very different.
But boy, you sure wouldn’t want to try driving one of those
on a freeway (they probably max out at about 30mph, and
more commonly drive about 15 mph dodging across lanes to avoid bicycles, cows, and buses).
August 11th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
“Seeing and hearing better might help, but the horn is just a kludge anyway, really. It’s not as if the guy that hit you had visibility so bad that he literally couldn’t have looked around and seen you.”
IIRC he was in some kind of SUV or pickup. My slight
experience with those kinds of vehicles is they’re long
and have a high door to the trunk and a big rear pillar,
so visibility to the rear is terrible, especially for seeing
a small relatively low vehicle (my car is a Mazda Protege
2000 – not tiny, but way lower than any SUV). And the blind spot
between the center mirror and the side mirror is notorious.
So yes, if he had really looked round carefully at the right
moment he probably could have seen me, or if he’d had his
window down and AC off he would have heard me. But my
point is that the design of his vehicle and its accessories
made it really difficult for him to be aware of his
environment. It’s not either/or between bad vehicle
design and driver negligence: the two factors interact,
if the design makes it hard to be careful, then you’re
more likely to make mistakes.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I’m betting that if he’d been in one of those three-wheeler
scooter-cab vehicles that are common in Asia, the outcome
would have been very different.
But boy, you sure wouldn’t want to try driving one of those
on a freeway.
Probably not, but something like smart car is actually pretty similarly sized, and would probably be comfortable enough on a freeway. I guess you might not want to do 90, but it would get you to grandma’s house.
if the design makes it hard to be careful, then you’re
more likely to make mistakes.
Yeah. That’s a good point. It certainly applies to vehicles as well as streets.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
“Probably not, but something like smart car is actually pretty similarly sized, and would probably be comfortable enough on a freeway.”
I’ve never sat in a Smart Car. But the physics of air
resistance (power proportional to the cube of the airspeed)
dictates that a vehicle capable of driving at 70mph+ has
to have a pretty big engine. And internal combustion engines
are inherently noisy (high pressure exhaust gases from each
power stroke). So any car designed for comfortable highway
travel is going to have to block out a lot of the exterior
sound. I would suspect the Smart Car shares that
feature, which is a problem for low-speed travel in mixed
traffic.
All these problems are soluble. But then I guess it’s a
chicken-and-egg problem: if there aren’t many urban areas
with mixed traffic, then there won’t be much demand for
cars which are designed for that environment; and as long as
people are driving pickups and SUVs and muscle cars, mixed-
traffic road use is going to be dangerous.
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