The folks at Strong Towns argue that when the streets are designed for speed (wide lanes, no obstacles like trees near the curb, no curbside parking), the drivers generally feel safe to drive fast, regardless of the speed limit or billboards, so they do; and when that expectation is violated by, say, a pedestrian, people die. (See, for example, http://www.strongtowns.org/jou... : when the infrastructure is designed to make drivers who make mistakes safe, it makes it dangerous for pedestrians who make mistakes or are merely in the way of a driver's mistake.)

TFA says that the bulk of accidents occurs at relatively few intersections, so I wonder what characterizes those (other than heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic).