Hey, engineers: "Forgiving design and the forgiveness of slow speed are two very different approaches because they serve two very different needs."

I'll keep saying it until someone in the Down Low City Hall Bunker starts paying attention.

FORGIVING DESIGN VS. THE FORGIVENESS OF SLOW SPEEDS, by Jon Larsen (Strong Towns)

When something works in one situation, it often gets applied to many situations, and sometimes this choice is a big mistake. In the transportation world, it’s common to apply safety standards and designs from high-speed highways to city streets. Ironically, these “safety features” can be downright dangerous. Today, I’ll explain how we got here, why this is a problem, and what we can do about it.

The concept of forgiving design was developed by transportation engineers to lessen or avoid the impact of “run off the road” crashes. The general premise is that highways should have broad shoulders with gentle slopes and a roadside clear zone which is free of fixed objects such as light poles. These design elements provide drivers time to make corrective action if they start to drift off the road, and if they do crash, it is less severe.

Civil engineering students across the country learn these principles when studying about the geometric design of highways. They learn about the impact of shoulder widths, clear zones, slopes, and drainage features, as well as how to mitigate the dangers of fixed roadside objects through the use of barriers and crash attenuators. I have no doubt that lives have been saved on our high-speed highways as a result of these concepts, but they have been misapplied — resulting in negative unintended consequences — elsewhere.

I think at least part of the problem stems from the fact that minimal attention or training for engineers is given to the design of urban and local streets, resulting in a tendency to apply highway design principles to these streets in the name of safety. 

This backfires, because forgiving design features encourage speeding in places where people should be driving slow. When drivers see wide, straight stretches of pavement with no obstructions on either side, they intuitively think that it’s safe to drive fast. This is a big problem on streets (as opposed to highways or roads), because streets are places where people walk, bike, shop, live, work, etc. These activities are incompatible with and downright dangerous when mixed with high speed traffic. The bottom line is this: On streets, the design objective needs to flip from forgiving design to the forgiveness of slow speeds.

The concept of focusing on slow speeds for streets is something that is explored regularly here at Strong Towns, including my most recent article, which discussed how to create a system of safe, human-centered streets. The good news is that traffic engineers are increasingly talking about forgiving design vs. the forgiveness of slow speeds and Strong Towns is at the forefront with the #SlowtheCars movement. Attitudes are changing worldwide as we realize the power of slow ...

Lori Sympson's campaign for safe streets: Sign the petition, and "like" the Fb page.

Lori Sympson has started a Facebook page, and it is self-explanatory.

Safer Streets/Justice for Chloe Allen

A dear friend of mine was hit and killed trying to cross the street. My goal is to get New Albany's streets safer; in honor of my friend and her family.

She also opened a petition at Change.org, and we don't expect to see Warren Nash's name there any time soon.

Safer Streets for Pedestrians In New Albany Indiana

The people who cross the streets need to feel safe! In honor of my friend Chloe L(Babcock) Allen. She was hit by a driver at the corner of E. Spring and Vincennes St. As a community we need to come together and make sure nobody else dies. Join with me for everybody's safety. Our mayor and street dept could make this happen.

Be a malcontent,  and help penetrate the purposeful unresponsiveness of Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker with a signature.

ON THE AVENUES: On the crass exploitation and politicization of tragedy.

Dangerous intersections: Something for Greg Phipps to consider, though it's unlikely they will.

Watch this moving video from the late Chloe Allen's friend: "If anything good can come of this, it'll be that this intersection is made safer."

ON THE AVENUES: Requiem for the bored.

City Hall crassly exploits the death of a walker in order to brag about its achievements.

"New Albany has a long way to go on street safety," says Broken Sidewalk in an understatement for the ages.

R.I.P. Chloe Allen.

"For we are the killers. We blithely tolerate a street grid with 48-foot-wide streets that pedestrians are expected to navigate without the sanction of government protection."

Reframing language so that we can talk about safe streets.

I'm just trying to imagine a world in which Chris Morris comprehends any of this.

Hunter S. Thompson on sportswriting: "It keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all."

Meanwhile, from the Pacific Northwest comes some very useful information that will never be seen in the local newspaper.

Let’s Talk About Safe Streets (Seattle Greenways)

Language is powerful.

The language we use everyday has the ability to change how people think about the world. Our ideas about reframing the language of traffic violence are starting to take root nationally! ...

... This handy cheat sheet distills the our knowledge of what language resonates and what doesn’t.

Public meetings are often when things can get heated. At these meetings, our leaders have learned that it is critical to talk about hyperlocal issues using your neighborhood’s language, and to focus on people and their needs (quiet street to raise a family, walking to the bus stop, being safe dropping off their kids at school, etc), rather than on modes of transportation.