Thursday, August 07, 2014

Speed kills.

Once upon a time I was having a discussion about speeding on city streets. I'm not making this up.

I was told that the solution for speeding was heavier law enforcement.

My reply: Speeding is a design issue, not an enforcement issue; merely drive on a two-way street with narrower lanes, and you'll see what I mean.

His riposte: "But that would take me longer to get to work."

Read this, will you?

A normal life, by Charles Marohn (Strongtowns)

... When we mix high speed cars with stopping and turning traffic, it is only a matter of time until people get killed. It is statistically inevitable because we are all normal people living normal lives. When things get bad on one spot – when a random sample of accidents becomes the inevitable statistical aberration in one place or another, the mistaken signal within the noise – professional engineers will propose some turn lanes or a lane widening or a greater clear zone. They will never propose the two things that would matter: designing non-highways in such a way that people drive more slowly and removing dangerous accesses from those highways where we want people to drive fast.

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