Why safety and vehicle speed are incompatible goals for street design
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- čas přidán 5. 04. 2022
- Nearly all transportation agencies will tell you that safety is their absolute top priority, but if you look more closely, you’ll discover that-in practice-it takes a backseat to moving as many vehicles as possible, as quickly as possible. How can street design be used to slow down vehicles and make all people safer? How would our streets look different if we truly prioritized safety ahead of speed? Why must transportation agencies choose only one top priority on their streets: Speed, or safety.
Read more about Dangerous by Design from Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition:
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Beautiful. Keep on preaching! Also, isn't it so funny that townships prioritize throughput and then wonder why people aren't supporting business in their township? You're literally creating slip and slides to push people through and out of your town. Slowing traffic and relaxing zoning are really all we need to create memorable, safe, walkable, and financially sustainable places again.
This is why I scoff at people who say life is priceless. We put a price on life every time we make streets less safe, not just for pedestrians, but for other drivers as well. If the way we design streets is any indication, not only are American lives not priceless, they're pretty darn cheap.
The problem isn't that you can't have both speed and safety. The problem is that we assume people must travel using cars, and then wonder why there are so many fatalities and so much traffic.
It's not impossible to have efficient, safe transit. It's just that cars don't fit that requirement for cities and suburbs.
My city here in germany has one intersection with a slip lane and this intersection killed ~1 person every year until a crosswalk and a red light when people are crossing was added. It reduced throughput on this ugly intersection but it also saves lifes.
Here from Strong Towns. Great video - the point needs to be reiterated over and over again.
I agree even as an engineer.
But there’s one crucial element that wasn’t mentioned. It’s also very important to separate the different modes of transport and thereby also make the distinction with streets and roads.
U can’t hope to just add bike lanes and pedestrian paths on roads and hope for the best. That doesn’t work. Roads r only meant to move traffic efficiently and that’s it. They must be placed carefully to ensure that there’s no dangerous mix. Streets on the other hand r indeed meant to slow down drivers and mix all modes.
Many countries, not just the US have a poorly designed streets and roads network to begin with that often doesn’t make this distinction or have roads that try to be roads when they clearly shouldn’t (or the other way around).
You know what would massively improve the speed of people moving around where they want to go?
Mass transit.
Just directed to this video from Strong Towns. Indeed, as they suggested, your video is highly underappreciated. Thank you.
Absolutely fantastic analysis with illustrative visuals.
There is a solution to dangerous intersections.. They are called roundabouts and come in all sizes. Small one lane roundabouts with crosswalks either under it in a tunnel or at all the entrance/exits makes a safer and more efficient traffic solution.
Traffic lights are still much better for pedestrians much of the time, and can be more convenient if cars are travelling at lower speed due to shorter signals.
@@adinrichter6034 Dude, what are you even on about? Speed doesn't matter, traffic will always get stuck in a traffic light while they can just go in a roundabout. Why do you think there are so many of them in EU? The traditional traffic signal provides zero protection for pedestrians while the roundabout slows down traffic but allows continuous flow.
Roundabouts can still be dangerous if done wrong expecially 2 and 3 lanes roundabouts are just impossible to use safely in a bike.
In my experience, drivers get annoyed so they try to maximize their speed through the round about cutting in front of cyclist or using the 3 lanes to make the turn easier, making them less safe.
Though the Netherlands do them good enough: 1 or at most 2 lanes with sharp turns to enter and exit the roundabout at low speeds.
@@Basih cars getting stopped at a light is the goal here, it forces drivers to take a look at their surroundings and by timing signals you can force slower speeds. Roundabouts lower visibility and never force a driver to stop, making them dangerous for anyone else to navigate, and tunnels are far too expensive to install at every intersection. Not to mention that roundabouts take up a lot of space and leave lots of unused wasted space making them completely unfeasible in cities. If you had actually paid attention to how they're used here in Europe you would have noticed that they mostly show up in rural low traffic areas or larger roads used exclusively by cars outside of cities where there are tunnels for everyone else. You'll only find a few examples of roundabouts inside of cities and usually they're famous landmarks, and several have been removed because they are dangerous.
The main benefit of roundabouts is to slow traffic without forcing vehicles to stop.
Fantastic video! Thanks!
Very informative and englihtening. Thanks
insightful video
well done!
Great video🎉
Very interesting! On a similar topic, you can have a look at “Why should speed depend on a road's purpose?” from Urban Mobility Explained
It’s time to end right turn slip lanes, starting in all urban areas and neighborhoods.
What's the name of the song used during the majority of the video?
Very well done! This beautifully summarized challenges we face on our streets and the kinds of solutions we need to work towards to make them safer 💯
Or, here me out, we SEPARATE the fast traffic from businesses and livelihoods. If we need fast regional connections, build a limited access road or highway. Or maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to drive EVERYWHERE.
No mention of the ridiculous and dangerous north American idea of allowing vehicles to make a right turn on red.
The current state of development in the US makes me angry. Every time I see a hideous stroad lined with strip malls and nowhere for people to walk safely I just think "What have we done to this country? This place is ugly. This is a place no one would care about." It's a development pattern that should be abolished.
Living in an actual town on a street grid with a thriving main street shopping district and places to walk to from my front door has had such a positive impact on my mental and physical health. We should be building traditional towns everywhere instead of soulless strip malls and labyrinthine cookie cutter subdivisions that are completely cut off from the surrounding area. We're building cities the wrong way now and it's hurting this country so much.
@8:07 "prevents potential deadly encounters with police for black and brown people."
Translation: black and brown have not self control and need special lanes.
I have to argue that sweeping right turns are necessary for Trucks, not higher speeds. I mean semis and delivery trucks.
Large trucks shouldn't be on the same streets as people walking. Ban large trucks from local streets and do deliveries in smaller trucks or vans.
@@jessta314i wish the infrastructure in the US was good enough for bike delivery. there’s so much new biking technology making it easier for people to haul large loads. i remember seeing a quadricycle delivery bike on youtube.
8:06 You just ruined the video.
I'm jealous of most of the country for having such wide carriageways available. The road network in Northern Virginia is derived from colonial era horse trails and its streets are ridiculously narrow. The clip at 7:33 is 2 miles from my house. Even with the "improvement" to the intersection, I wouldn't want a child biking there. I'm not even comfortable biking there. To get complete streets, we would have to raze entire neighborhoods and start over.
Narrower streets are safer because it subconsciously indicates to drivers to go slower.
@@mariusfacktor3597 yes but you still want to be able to physically separate vehicle and non-vehicle traffic, especially on connecting roads.
A lot can be done without razing entire neighbourhoods. When I look at american roads I am just shocked to see how much space there is. And most of it is wasted. There is plenty of space for bikelanes, boardwalks.. But of course increasing the density would greatly improve accessibility for many people and the efficiency of infrastructure.
@@co7013 It depends on the neighborhood. Did you look at the street I flagged? Streets that are barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic are common in Alexandria and South Arlington. Some neighborhoods lack anything resembling a grid so there are no alternate routes. What can you do if you're a city planner?
@jyutzler prioritize bikes and smaller vehicles
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This is what is driving up housing costs, now that cars cant go as fast/far its more expensive because now everyone has to live in the same areas closer to the work district.... Used to be that many of the people could live in the country side, but they also started charging them 2 hours of working pay just to drive the car into the work district downtown... designing streets for a town of over a million as if it was a town of 100k is just wrong.
This makes no sense. Places that are not infested with cars are more expensive because cars suck and ruin qol. Cars and cities and fundamentally incompatible and this is even more true at higher population, it just doesn’t scale well.
what's with the "deadly encounters with police for black and brown people" comment at 8:11?
that caught me by surprise, youll need some statistics for that claim too
Without the numbers, his claim here seems to pay short shrift to white, red,, and yellow people, and to the officers themselves. Because let's face it: doing a traffic stop on a busy, high-speed road is dangerous for officer and motorist alike, even moreso for the officer because the officer has to get out of his vehicle to approach the detained motorist. Another motorist can come along, get his attention distracted by the traffic stop, and run right into them.
Yeah, this portion of the video disappointed me. The producer had to put in a politically correct statement without facts- disgusting. Makes me think less of the entire video. Vomit!
Finding other means to control traffic than enforcement by patrol officer tends to be safer for everyone involved (even for the officers; we've had multiple officers killed in my area in the past year and they were all killed during a traffic stop). Though I think what they were getting at here is that the outcomes of a police encounter statistically are worse for people of color (and they and their neighborhoods can also tend to be targeted more for enforcement leading to more encounters in general). That's of course a whole thing to unpack on it's own... but the bottom line being streets that enforce safe behavior by design create less need for the higher risk activity of a "traffic stop".
Yeah I have the same question.
I’m currently assigned to the traffic enforcement unit at my sheriffs office… we just conducted two huge traffic details during the holiday weekend and I encountered numerous “black and brown people.” Not one of those encounters were “deadly.”
This ridiculous comment angers me no end.
I’ve been following videos about traffic enforcement and roadway designs for a while now but this video has made me questions this guys credibility.
Airpods, mobiles, increased population, SUV's and imigrants coming from countries that dont have laws/dont listen to laws for pedestrians is why an increase in deaths.
No.
Even with airpods, you decrease deaths by decreasing speeds.
Even with mobiles, you decrease deaths by decreasing speeds.
Even with increased population, you decrease deaths by decreasing speeds.
Even with SUV's, you decrease deaths by decreasing speeds.
Even with immigrants who follow different laws, you decrease deaths by decreasing speeds.
It's the speed. Speed kills. Speed needs to be *deprioritized.*
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