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from the what-about-the-road-less-traveled? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
We all became familiar with the idea of "bending a curve" thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it seems another US curve needs bending: that of US traffic fatalities, which have been up strongly and abnormally over the last couple of years. The low-hanging fruit when it comes to changing that might not be in the car as much as around it.
[...] Thanks in large part to in-car safety tech like airbags, antilock brakes, stability control and, more recently, automatic emergency braking, US traffic fatalities have generally been on a long decline since 1970. The 52,000 such deaths recorded 52 years ago shrank to 36,000 in 2019 even as the US population and vehicle miles driven both increased dramatically. But 2020 and 2021 saw the biggest spike in over 50 years to a total of almost 43,000 per year, turning the roadway fatality clock back to 2002. In short, something's not working as well as it did.
"We need regulations related to vehicle design and street design," says Yonah Freemark, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on urban mobility and equity. "Those two play a really important role in how likely people are to get killed in streets, especially pedestrians (and cyclists) that are struck by cars."
Speed cameras are common in several countries outside the US, often using technology that calculates average speed of a given vehicle based on the time stamps when it passes two or more places on the roadway.
In-vehicle safety technologies that protect occupants have only become more prevalent over the last couple of years, so Freemark looks at pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in collisions with cars as the next key area for improvement. Three-quarters of US auto buyers select a light truck that is typically heavier and larger than the sedan or coupe they may have chosen as their previous purchase, a formula for a more brutal impact with someone outside of the vehicle. In the future, many more electric cars will be sold and their well-known weight problem could exacerbate the seriousness of collisions.
[...] That difference plays out when you compare roadway fatality stats outside the US. "Over the last 20 years or so we've seen quite a divergence between other developed countries, like France," Freemark said of a comparison he's focused on. He noted other countries' taxation schemes that disincentivize the purchase of large, heavy vehicles as well as automatic speeding cameras and the presence of far more traffic circles that still befuddle most US drivers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 25 2022, @04:58PM (6 children)
I don't think what you propose is a reasonable solution. There are areas where it could work, and separated bicycle/pedestrian right of ways are definitely better where they are possible. Unfortunately, the number of bicyclists is rather small in most of the country, so that would be quite difficult to justify. I don't really have a good solution. Bicycle lanes are a truly lousy approach. I think they cause as many problems as they solve. But separate ways are impossible in most places.
Traffic circles could be a reasonable approach to streamlining traffic flow, but not with any design I've seen. The idea of using them in a compact form is a bad idea. The denser and faster the traffic, the larger they would need to be to make things better. Eventually one would end up with elevated loops that would feed traffic in to them in a central loop, and have traffic exit at the outer edge. It could be done quite well, but a cloverleaf would probably do just as well, and take up less space. (Still, if you had six or more exits, it might make SOME sense.)
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 25 2022, @07:01PM (2 children)
Sorry, but no, cloverleafs aren't a replacement for roundabouts. Cloverleafs are a good answer for restricted access roads like our interstates. They are a passing good answer for some lesser restricted access highways. Not so much good for much of anything else.
Actually, cloverleafs take up more room than a roundabout with the same traffic capacity.
Neither solution is likely to ever be adopted for suburban and downtown intersections, but roundabouts make a lot more sense.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 25 2022, @08:24PM (1 child)
I didn't say they were a good answer for the typical location in which roundabouts are used, just that they were better than roundabouts.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 25 2022, @09:21PM
Roundabouts slow traffic down at intersections - that's a good thing.
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Monday July 25 2022, @07:33PM (2 children)
There may be a chicken and egg problem. Perhaps there WOULD be more cyclists if they didn't have to contend with coal rolling monster trucks.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 25 2022, @08:31PM
That's only partially true. Yeah, when street traffic is such that bicycles are suppressed, it's a chicken and egg problem, but in many suburban areas that used to be fairly bicycle friendly, increasing traffic without a redesign has caused bicycles to become unreasonably dangerous. It's not just a chicken and egg problem, also involved is that the need for cars is sufficiently strong that just about everyone who qualifies for a driver's license feels a need to own their own car, and once they have that, it's a lot easier and safer to use that than to use a bicycle. Even when I was a kid I was an outlier because I didn't WANT to drive. But I was certainly made aware of all the reasons most people did.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 25 2022, @10:57PM
The real problem with cycling around here is: weather.
Cycle to work in the morning and you'll need a shower when you get there. I did that for a time in Houston, showers were just steps from my desk so why not? But.... in the afternoons, you never know when it will be A) sweltering hot or B) torrential thunderstorm downpouring, and occasionally you get the thrill of trying to race through A) to beat B) to your home.
Couple that with the existential threat of a lifetime of paralysis or other gruesome disability handed out by someone(s) paying too little attention whilst navigating their 6000lb land-ship in your vicinity, and.... nope, just not worth deep-breathing the exhaust fumes for all that.
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