Life Without Traffic Signs 604
zuikaku writes, "Der Spiegel has an article titled European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs reporting that seven cities and regions in Europe are doing away with traffic signs, signals, painted lines, and even sidewalks. With the motto 'Unsafe is Safe,' the idea is that, when faced with an uncertain, unregulated situation, drivers will be naturally cautious and courteous. Then again, they may end up with streets jammed with pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars like some places in India and China." I can't see this idea getting traction in the U.S.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:3, Interesting)
This in itself limits the safe speed any car can travel.
I think in town centres it can and will work.
Having lived in both Germany and the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany also has roughly half the number of traffic fatalities per capita as the US, take that for what it is worth.
Fine in theory (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Interesting)
All of the cities listed in the story are small towns, the largest boasts of reducing their traffic signals from 18 to 2. Imagine trying to eliminate traffic signals and signs in a city like New York City, where there are over 11,000 signals [nyc.gov], and almost 3,000 in Manhattan alone. If you've ever ridden in a cab at 5:00am, you have seen the chaos that ensues when there are no signals (since cabbies completely ignore all lights at that time). It's certainly not safer.
If we rely on courtesy to dictate our traffic patterns, we'll be victim to those who have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk. The U.S. has far too many people that fall into this category for the strategy to be effective.
Re:Having lived in both Germany and the US (Score:3, Interesting)
rj
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't work, because it's designed on a grid system, which requires arbitration at each junction as soon as traffic flow rises above a trivial level.
But in my town of about 40,000 people, there are few if any traffic signs, no lights and two stop signs that I know of. Everything is designed with flow in mind, and it works just fine. Traffic slows down at peak times, but it almost never stops flowing. Almost every accident that I've seen here has involved a single vehicle driven badly, rather than multiple vehicles colliding through misunderstanding or aggression.
Re:Even with signs, some cities are like that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Letting yourself go (Score:4, Interesting)
What you need is simple and clear rules.
Here in NSW, Australia you have to travel at 40km/hr in a school zone but only during certain times. Our main highways even have school zones. It's a joke. If you're doing 41km/hr at 3:29pm you're speeding and can lose a quarter of your license, but at 3:31pm you're fine. (We have a demerit system. You have 12 points. Points you lose are lost for 3 years. If you reach zero you lose your licence. Speeding, even 1km/hr over the limit loses you 3 points). It's getting even more ridiculous. We have one speed zone being trialed that's 90km/hr in the wet and 100km/hr in the dry. There's a speed camera and the variable limit is posted only where the camera can nab you. Talk about a bunch of revenue raising horse shit. So now the driver has to know exactly what time of day it is (to the minute) and judge the weather before they know what their speed limit is. What's worse is that everyone speeds - except at the known speed cameras - and if you stick to the limit you make everyone around you angry (which isn't safe!!!)
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard about the idea of removing footpaths etc in many small towns for years and to be honest I'm not a fan. It works ok on certain forms of street (especially narrow lanes with very little through traffic).
At other times it's looked very dangerous. Deliberately making a road dangerous in the hope of slowing down traffic is not a good idea. Speed ramps are possibly an exception but eliminating footpaths and lines from the centre of a road just cause confusion and exacerbate bad driving habits. You get people parking everywhere and turning right (driving on the left in Ireland) with the car pulled so far over to the left that cars behind get stuck unnecessarily and drivers get pissed off and aggressive.
Reminds Me Of This Article (Score:5, Interesting)
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As Cars Collide, Belgian Motorists Refuse to Yield
A Shortage of Stop Signs And Quirky Driving Rules Create Culture of Crashes
By MARY JACOBY
September 25, 2006; Page A1
BRUSSELS -- The intersection outside Isabelle de Bruyn's row house in a quiet residential neighborhood here is a typical Belgian crossroads. It has no stop signs. Now and then, cars collide outside her front door.
"The air bags explode. One car flipped over in the street. Part of one car ended up here," says Ms. de Bruyn, a real-estate agent, pointing to her front steps. Her brother-in-law, Christophe de Bruyn, adds: "In America, they have stop signs. I think that's a good idea for Belgium, too."
The suggestion isn't popular at the Belgian transport ministry. "We'd have to put signs at every crossroads," says spokeswoman Els Bruggeman. "We have lots of intersections."
But insurance companies seeking an easier way to sort out who's at fault in Belgium's frequent fender benders have lobbied for a solution. And so now the government is in the process of making changes to a traffic rule at the heart of Belgium's problems. It is known as priorité de droite, or "priority from the right."
The law evolved from a rule adopted nearly a century ago in neighboring France, intended to offer drivers a simple rule of thumb: Always yield to any vehicle coming from one's right unless a sign or other road marking instructs otherwise.
That was meant to modernize an even more unwieldy rule of the time: Right of way went to the driver of the highest social rank. Horse-drawn carriages were still in common use, and, after accidents, "it wasn't unusual for the passengers to get out of their carriages and compare their titles and ranks in the nobility," says Benoit Godart, a spokesman for the government-financed Belgian Road Safety Institute.
Even more confusing, a driver in Belgium who stops to look both ways at an intersection loses the legal right to proceed first. Such caution might seem prudent, given the lack of stop signs. But a driver who merely taps his brakes can find that his pause has sent a dangerous signal to other drivers: Any sign of hesitation often spurs other drivers to hit the gas in a race to get through the crossing first.
The result is a game of chicken at crossings, where to slow down is to "show weakness," says Belgian traffic court lawyer Virginie Delannoy. Neither driver wants to lose this traffic game, she says, adding: "And then, bam!"
To make matters worse, cars on many of the smallest side streets still qualify for priority over those on major thoroughfares -- so long as they are coming from the right. That forces drivers on many boulevards to slam on their brakes without warning, and some get rear-ended as a result. On certain roads, the rule is suspended, but the only indication of that is a small yield sign drivers often overlook.
Today, failing to yield is the cause of more than two-thirds of the accidents at unmarked Belgian intersections that result in bodily injury.
It contributes to Belgium's relatively high traffic fatality rate, analysts say. Last year, deaths in Belgium from driving accidents were 11.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris.
Other countries have more stop signs and traffic lights. By comparison, deaths in the Netherlands were 4.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, 6.1 in Germany and 8.7 in France -- countries that border Belgium.
Although the U.S. has a higher number of fatalities in absolute numbers -- 14.5 per 100,000 inhabitants -- there are more cars on the street in the U.S., as a percentage of the population, than in Belgium. Americans also spend on average more time in their cars, traveling longer distances.
When the difference in the number of cars is accounted for, Belgium has
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:3, Interesting)
PS: Our grid system would work without lights in most intersections. Where you have 10-lane wide boulevards lights are a necessity, but many of the less important lights could be removed with no ill effect on congestion.
Roundabouts in the US (Score:1, Interesting)
We have these all over in Carmel, Indiana, and they are rapidly being adopted in other parts of Central Indiana. Personally, I think they work pretty well. It is tons better than a four-way stop both in efficiency and safety. And certainly a ton cheaper to setup and maintain than a traffic light. Definitely safer, too. I've seen plenty of accidents at traffic lights and four way stops when people go when they're not supposed to. I haven't seen an accident or remnants of at a roundabout. Not that I don't think they do happen, but that they are infrequent enough I have not had the opportunity to see one.
I did see once someone start around the roundabout, stop, backup, then start going around it the wrong way. Remember: In the USA you are always going counter-clockwise on a roundabout. If you want to turn "left" you just go around counter-clockwise and get off on that road. I've also heard of someone that didn't turn onto the roundabout and went right through the middle into a rock sculture. He was lucky he just bottomed out his car instead of getting T-boned by cross traffic for running what would have previously been a stop sign.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:5, Interesting)
But yes, the grid is generally pretty nice compared to the suburban way. The main drawback to removing lights from a grid is that traffic can move really fast unless there are obstructions in the intersections. You would need to put in circles or something to keep speeds down. Circle have one huge disadvantage compared to traffic lights: if one cross street is backed up, the circle backs up and then prevents the other cross street from moving.
Interestingly enough, at rush hour (especially near the Holland Tunnel) the stoplights are pretty much ignored - you just sort of find a spot and go. Pedestrians just cross wherever - traffic is practically at a standstill anyway. I've never seen an accident in this tight driving situation, but I suppose that minor accidents must happen. However, even a "reckless" driver can't do too much damage because there is really nowhere to go.
Re:Bike Lanes (Score:3, Interesting)
In Vienna (Austria) there is the Ringstraße, a beautiful boulevard around the inner city with a sidewalk that is several meters wide. The bike strip they painted there bends and turns every 100 meters without any need and usually with a radius that requires you to slow to walking speed to make the turn. It's as if it tries to shake you off the bike strip, and of course the turns also make it impossible for pedestrians to stay off it (and they don't pay attention anyway which is fine, it is a sidewalk after all).
Oh, and to make matters worse sometimes a straight part will lead head on to a tram station only to make a sharp turn a few meters before you'd hit the kiosks there. Of course when a tram stops and people get out they flood the bike strip. People actually died there!
Another one I loved was a bike strip that spit you out into a rather big intersection, still on a painted strip which would then suddenly vanish in the middle of the intersection and also not start again on the other side. It's as if they want to kill you on purpose.
Regarding your point "cyclists must pass to the inside of turning traffic, going from the driver's blind spot straight into the car's path" I must say that since I moved to Berlin I don't cycle anymore but drive by car (city is too big for me), and these situations are not only horrible for bikers but for car drivers too. Having biked myself I know that I have to look out, and it's fucking impossible. Bikers without headlights in bad weather or darkness also don't help. I often think it's just a matter of time until I kill someone. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in fact the bikers have the right of way since they go straight while the car makes a right turn. I am all for privileging pedestrians and bikers over cars, but this is the most stupid traffic rule ever devised! It would be better to make clear to the biker that it's impossible for the car driver to reliably see the biker and so the biker should fucking let the car through, it's better for everyone.
</rant>
Re:Having lived in both Germany and the US (Score:3, Interesting)
Also DUIs account for less than half [ama-cycle.org] of fatal accidents in the US, and 7% of total accidents [dot.gov]. But maybe your definition of "most" is different from everybody else's.
Re:Unsafe is safe, war is peace... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kinda. If you meant right out, ie no flashing lights or anything, then youre right. But if the signals are broken, but flashing, those with red flashing must stop, and those with amber flashing continue on.
This actually came up during my driving test. I came upon a broken light flashing red (power had just gone out), and the other way had flashing amber. The drivers coming the other way kept stopping, and expecting me to go. Although legally, I couldn't. After sitting there for a while my tester just got fed up and told me to go on ahead, swearing about peoples' incompentence.
Catching drunk drivers in the U.S. (Score:1, Interesting)
Manhatten needs a $20/day congestion charge [nt] (Score:3, Interesting)
Residents don't pay when their car spends the whole day in a parking spot they *own*.
May Improve Traffic Flow: Case In Point: China (Score:2, Interesting)
with the proviso that about one of five drivers will honk if blocked. At night, neither cars nor motorcycles turn on their lights in general.
This appears chaotic but works extremely well. We saw only one accident in a week's time, and that involved very little damage (car bumped a truck on the side), although the consequent crowd that developed (everyone has an opinion in China) did not disperse for 2 hours.
Once we realized that we were safe on foot, we plunged fearlessly into traffic. Sure enough the river of cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles parted like the Red Sea around us, beeping all the while. But the ultimate sense is surprising: that one is sheltered in the hands of many careful drivers.
Traffic speeds are slower than in the U.S. and it appears that drivers are more attentive. In fact I believe that it is impossible for American drivers to be as attentive as Chinese drivers: after so many years of acclimation to the "rules of the road" they are most likely unable to pay attention enough to be good Chinese-style drivers. In America, drivers hit you first and then call a lawyer and an ambulance (in that order); in China they just don't hit you.