Confusing roads are safer though, it forces drivers to pay more attention

PaulRobinson 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Kinda.

In South Kensington, they spent a fortune trying to use this non-delineated road setup where its not clear quite where the pavements (sidewalks for the USians), and road borders are, and in theory it means everybody just becomes very hyper aware of each other.

The theory goes something like how cycle lanes - just the a white line down the side of the road - can cause drivers to pass much closer to cyclists than they otherwise would without that border there, where a driver might slow and move a few feet out to the side on a single carriageway.

In reality, it's actually kind of anxiety inducing, particularly if you're in a larger crowd (common at this time of year, as Royal Albert Hall where proms season is coming to a close is at one end of this area), because drivers don't really seem to know what is going on.

I suspect it means cars are, on average, slowing down, but I can't find stats on whether its reduced accidents or not. I know it makes me nervous though.

	▲	avianlyric 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s South Kensington, part of council that’s notorious for its hatred of anything that even vaguely looks like a bike or a bike lane. Their attitudes to road design are despicable, with a clear priority for cars over any other road user. It often feels like they only provide pedestrian or cycle infrastructure as a grudging acknowledgement of the fact the vast majority of people walk or cycle, and car users are in the minority. All of that is a long way of saying that any road infrastructure South Kensington designed is going to be a long way behind best practice for pedestrian safety, even when they’re trying.

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piker 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

More importantly, it selects against a lot of nervous, disabled, young, drunk and other bad drivers.

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CalRobert 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah, better to be confused and drive in to a ditch at 20 mph than confident and t-bone a family at 50.

Not sure what you mean about disabled?

If nothing else a confusing road will get drivers to put the goddamn phone down.

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potato3732842 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Yeah, better to be confused and drive in to a ditch at 20 mph than confident and t-bone a family at 50.

This shouldn't be subjective at all. It's very easy to calculate out minutes lost to traffic from minor accidents vs death causing accidents and compare the two and see where the crossover points are depending upon their relative rates and impacts.

To use an extreme hypothetical example, I don't even know how old you are but it's probably perfectly justifiable 10x over to just shoot you (or me or anyone short of the pope) and throw you in the Hudson if the alternative is "the George Washington is closed for 6hr" or something.

And on the other end of the spectrum roads get closed for months on whims for maintenance reasons in rural areas all the time and probably have less cumulative life lost than, idk, some mundane waste of time.

I'm not privy to the numbers for all the real world situations that exist in the middle ground but I'm sure they're out there and once you've got them it's simple math to decide what configuration results in less life lost. Obviously you can pro-rate the years, account for disability and injury, add money to the equation, etc. But that's all easy if you've got the numbers (which we generally do for auto accidents).

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piker 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

By disabled I mean, for example, my father has polio and has driven his entire life in the US but would be unable to do so physically in the UK because of the demands the civil engineering would impose on him here.

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closewith 6 days ago | parent [-]

To be honest, that sounds like he's not safe to drive in the US either.

	▲	piker 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		He had one accident in almost 60 years of driving, so I think he'd be on the safe end of human statistics. But then again, what human is safe to drive? [Edit: I should note that he's stopped driving over the last couple of years.]