If you drive in Sweden you will occasionally come up to a form of speed reduction strategy that may seem counterintuitive. They all add to make driving harder and feel more dangerous in order to force attention and lower speed.
One is to merge opposite directional roads into a single lane, forcing drivers to cooperate and take turn to pass it, one car at a time.
For a combined car and pedestrian road (max speed of 7km/h) near where I live, they intentionally added large obfuscating objects on the road that limited visibility and harder to navigate. This forces drivers to drive very slow, even when alone on the road, as they can't see if a car or person may be behind the next object.
In an other road they added several tight S curves in a row, where if you drive anything faster than 20km/h you will fail the turns and drive onto the artificial constructed curbs.
In other roads they put a sign in the middle of two way roads while at the same time drastically limiting the width to the curb, forcing drivers to slow down in order to center the car in the lane and squeeze through.
In each of those is that a human driver with human fear of crashing will cause drivers to pay extra attention and slow down.
In Bulgaria we have a similar speed reduction strategy but we are a bit ahead of Sweden: We use medium-radius but very deep potholes. If you lose attention for even a split second, you are forced to a full stop to change a tire. Near schools it gets more "advanced": they put parked cars on both sides of the road, and the holes positioned so you can't bypass them. For example, two tire-sized holes on both sides of the road right next to the parked cars. You have to come to a complete stop, then slowly descend into the hole with the front wheels, climb back out, and repeat the process for the rear wheels. Occasionally, even though we (technically) have sidewalks, they are covered in mud or grass or bushes, so pedestrians are forced to walk in the middle of the road. This further reduces driving speed to walking pace and increases safety in our cities. Road markings are missing almost everywhere and they put contradicting road signs so drivers are not only forced to cooperate but also to read each other minds.
Same in India! We go one better, we let people drive in the opposite lane as well!
That’s genius but one has to ask: how much does it cost to maintain these speed restricting features?
In the UK, the cost of owning a car is high yet our potholes, while frequent, are small enough to survive. Thus being more of an annoyance rather than a speed restriction.
That's the best part, the holes maintain themselves. Heck, they even appear without a site survey or paperwork.
It's fairly common at least in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland too. In Switzerland they also place street parking spots on alternating sides on narrow streets, which also makes you more attentive and lower your speed.
I've heard that that is why roundabouts are safer than their alternatives: counterintuitively, they're safer because they're less safe, forcing the user to pay more attention as a result.
>they're safer because they're less safe
Roundabouts are safer. They're safer because they prevent everybody from speeding through the intersection. And, even in case of an accident, no head-on collisions happen in a roundabout.
They're safer specifically for vehicles, as they convert many conflicts that would be t-bones (worst for passengers) into getting rear-ended (maximum crumple zone on both vehicles).
Roundabouts are worse for land use though, which impacts walkability, and the safety story for pedestrians and bike users with them is decidedly not great as well.
> and the safety story for pedestrians and bike users with them is decidedly not great as well.
The what now? Seriously, what in the world are you talking about? Roundabouts are heaven. They physically force drivers to slow down when approaching or leaving them, creating a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists.
For example, there's no such thing as "running a red light at full speed" at a roundabout, no speeding up to "make the light", etc.
For cyclists specifically, they're amazing, because they eliminate the deadly left-turns. Every turn is a right turn, which is super safe.
As a cyclist, I'm not a big fan of roundabouts, because I'm always worried I'll get hit on the side by a car entering/leaving the roundabout whenever I don't take the first exit, mostly because I feel like I have less visibility in the direction from which the car might come from, compared to a standard crossing.
Though I've never been in an accident either on a crossing or roundabout, so I can't really judge how true my impression is.
>Roundabouts are worse for land use though, which impacts walkability, and the safety story for pedestrians and bike users with them is decidedly not great as well.
They're much safer for pedestrians than intersections. You're only crossing and dealing with traffic coming from one direction, stopping at a median, and then crossing further over.
Unlike trying to navigate a crosswalk where you have to play guessing games as to which direction some vehicle is going to come at you from while ignoring the lights (people do the stupidest things, and roundabouts are a physical barrier that prevents a bunch of that)
In Waterloo Region I used to cycle through multiple intersections that were "upgraded" some years ago from conventional stoplights to roundabouts and imo it was a huge downgrade to my sense of safety. I went from having a clear right of way (hand signal, cross in the crosswalk) to feeling completely invisible to cars, essentially dashing across the road in the gaps in traffic as if I was jaywalking.
I could handle it as an adult just walking my bike but it would be a nightmare for someone pushing a stroller or dependent on a mobility device.
Roundabouts are relatively "busy"/"complicated" situations, so I suspect many drivers have less attention left over to check for pedestrians.
IMO you are absolutely playing frogger with the gaps in the traffic.
To an extent… drivers tend to accelerate when leaving roundabouts which can make crossing difficult for pedestrians
Especially bad when crossings are like 30cm from the roundabout. Some are better with at least one car's length between the two.
Otherwise you either risk getting run over by a car exiting the roundabout without seeing you; or getting run over by the car that stopped, but was rear-ended by another inside the roundabout.
>from one direction, stopping at a median, and then crossing further over.
This assumes a median, which is not present at most smaller roundabouts in the US.
One-lane-roundabouts are very safe. I lived in Hannover (Germany) in the 80s and 90s, they had 2 or 3 lanes in the roundabouts. There were large signs that counted the accidents (200+/year) to raise awareness and during the trade fairs (anybody remembers Cebit?) the number of accidents peaked. Today they are all a lot safer because of a lot of traffic lights.
I thought that the idea of roundabouts was that they lead to slightly more accidents than before, but they are of much lower severity than before (the 90 degree intersections they replace).
Same with driving in the winter. Anecdotally I always observe more accidents when the roads are clear.
I recently visited a friend that lives in Sweden (couple hours south of Stockholm). Something he said while I visited stuck with me:
"Sweden hates cars."
There must be a happy medium somewhere in between.
It's true, Sweden isn't quite bike and pedestrian friendly enough yet, but they'll get that balance someday!
> There must be a happy medium somewhere in between.
"""
- Gavin, you know our shameful history of worker suicides. Since the renovation? Not a single one.
- Not even one? Ok. But there's gotta be like, a middle ground here...
"""
(https://youtu.be/EyyIrpf68SM?t=57)
I would say it depend on where you are. City driving is generally not a great experience and its not that uncommon to see a speed bump before almost every crossing, to the point where you get surprised if there isn't one. That said, as long you don't leave the designated main roads that goes through the city areas it is not that bad. They do demand a lot of attention.
Street parking has mostly been turned into exclusive residential parking, so parking houses are often the only choice. As a result they are quite expensive, and you got to walk to the destination.
Parking and access is much better in the country side, and the highways are fairly good and similar to those found in the west Europe. It not as straight or wide as authobahn, but not as much traffic either.
Major cities in the world where driving there is fun:
*
why not just put in speedbumps if all you're trying to do is slow people down? Are you sure this was the purpose of these designs? sounds a little too freakonomics to me.
Speed bumps suck for both the driver and passangers of the car and generate road noise.
They also are rather expensive to maintain, because the leading ledge gets many repeated stresses. And in nordic climates like Sweden there is a snow plow in the winter to remove snow - those occasionally snag on the speed bump - which tends to chip of big chunk, triggering rapid wear.
It's a runaway process of prioritizing safety over convenience -- and it's wrecking their road base just before self-driving cars would allow them to have both.
I was wondering how much convenience is worth one kid's life. This thread reminded me of some interesting terms like "value of statistical life." It appears that all those annoying low speed limits and purposeful obstructions in residential areas really do save lives.
> An evaluation of 20 mph zones in the UK demonstrated that the zones were effective both in reducing traffic speed and in reducing RTIs. In particular child pedestrian injuries were reduced by 70 per cent from 1.24 per year in each area before to 0.37 per year after the zones were introduced
https://www.rospa.com/siteassets/images/road-safety/road-saf...
The "Vision Zero" program was started in Sweden, and is becoming more widely adopted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
20mph residential is pretty close to standard. Note the Waymo car was going slower than that. That's far from the 5mph GP was reacting too, or the super tight curves.
What an American framing. My convenience at the cost of your eventual safety. I guess this is why we also have toddler death machines with 5-foot grills that we call “full size” vehicles.
If you've ever driven more than 5 miles an hour, you risked hurting someone for your convenience.
Acknowledging life has risk tradeoffs doesn't make you an American, but denying it can make you a self-righteous jerk.
> If you've ever driven more than 5 miles an hour, you risked hurting someone for your convenience.
Taken literally, that's clearly not true.
For example you can easily drive 150mph in the flat desert where there is nothing for a hundred miles and you can see many miles ahead. You have zero risk of hurting anyone else unless they somehow teleport in front of you.
But driving 5mph in tight street full of elementary school kids running around can be extremely dangerous.
It's all about context.
You’re egocentric instead of system-centric. Life has risks, but risk is to be managed, not accepted blindly with disregard of available options. A systemic approach to minimizing risk of injury on roads looks exactly like inconvenience to the individual.
In many civilized countries and locales, even bringing up the word “convenience” in the context of road safety would be considered tasteless. Maybe a phrase like “excessively obstructive” or other euphemisms would be used, but the word “inconvenient” regarding safety measures that would e.g. help prevent the death of toddlers today would be appalling.
There’s this techbro utopia mindset leaking through as well, just like it does for climate change topics, that pragmatic solutions that work for us today are deprioritized because some incredible technology is right around the corner. This is also distinctly American, specifically Silicon Valley, culture.
Gosh, no, the self-driving cars will be forced to drive at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors as opposed to voluntarily driving at safe speeds in pedestrian corridors. How awful.
> prioritizing safety over convenience
this sounds like exactly the right tradeoff, especially since these decisions actually increase convenience for those not in cars
Of course it sound right, because you cut off the word "runaway".
It is possible to go too far in either direction.
When the “safety” bit is “avoiding killing people”, I’m not actually totally convinced that it is possible to go too far.
Does the phrase "5mph speed limit everywhere" convince you it's possible to go too far? If not then I don't think you're in alignment with most of the world.
It is, but it's laughable to suggest it's happening anywhere. Our world is dominated by cars. You likely can't see it precisely because it's so normalized.
“Just before” … this would mean all cars would be required to be self driving and that they’re forced to adhere to the set speed limits. You think this is just around the corner? In a country like Sweden with a lot of snow? Let’s talk about that this when we’re actually close to hitting 100% of self driving cars on the road.
And it’s not “runaway”, it’s exactly the right prioritisation. I’d encourage you to spend some time on Not Just Bikes and the say whether you’d like to live in a Nordic or an American neighbourhood. The Nordic style is also about convenience because car centric infrastructure makes a lot of things less accessible and convenient.
Those things all sound easy to remove in some hypothetical future where there are enough and safe enough self driving cars to have both. Makes sense to design for human driven cars for now though.
If they're actually self-driving they should be able to drive around the obstacles just as well or better than human.
Does it actually work though?
Many roads in London have parked cars on either side so only one can get through - instead of people cooperating you have people fighting, speeding as fast as they can to get through before someone else appears, or race on-coming cars to a gap in the parked cars etc. So when they should be doing 30mph, they are more likely doing 40-45. Especially with EVs you have near-instant power to quickly accelerate to get to a gap first etc.
And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here.
Madness.
> Does it actually work though?
Yes. They have made steady progress over the previous decades to the point where they can now have years with zero road fatalities.
> And putting obstacles in the road so you cant see if someone is there? That sounds really dangerous and exactly the sort of thing that caused the accident in the story here.
Counterintuitive perhaps, but it's what works. Humans adjust their behaviour to the level of perceived risk, the single most important thing is to make driving feel as dangerous as it is.
I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk!
From experience they will adjust their behaviour to reduce their total travel time as much as possible (i.e. speed to "make up" for lost time waiting etc) and/or "win" against other drivers.
I guess it is a cultural thing. But I cannot agree that making it harder to see people in the road is going to make anything safer. Even a robot fucking taxi with lidar and instant reaction times hit a kid because they were obscured by something.
> I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk!
Sure they do, all humans do. Nobody wants to get hurt and nobody wants to hurt anyone else.
(Yes there are few exceptions, people with mental disorders that I'm not qualified to diagnose; but vast majority of normal humans don't.)
Humans are extremely good at moderating behavior to perceived risk, thank evolution for that.
(This is what self-driving cars lack; machines have no fear of preservation)
The key part is perceived though. This is why building the road to match the level of true risk works so well. No need for artificial speed limits or policing, if people perceive the risk is what it truly is, people adjust instictively.
This is why it is terrible to build wide 4 lane avenues right next to schools for example.
> I think the humans in London at least do not adjust their behaviour for the perceived risk!
The evidence is that they do though. E.g. the Exhibition Road remodelling (removing curbs/signs/etc.) has been a great success and effectively reduced vehicle speeds, e.g. https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/documents/...
There are always going to be outlier events. If for every one person who still manages to get hit—at slow, easily-survivable speeds—you prevent five others from being killed, it’s a pretty obvious choice.
I know the research and know that it's generally considered to be effective (at least in most European cities where it is done). I wonder whether there are any tipping points, e.g. drivers going into road rage due to excessive obstacles/trying to "make up for the lost time" etc., and whether it would work in the US (or whether drivers just would ignore the risk because they don't perceive pedestrians as existing).
Does physics work? If it does, then these physical obstacles work too. Go ahead, try to drive faster than 10mph through a roadway narrowed so much it's barely wider than your car, with curbs. And yeah, I'm describing a place in London.