Time to call a halt to stop signs?
Toronto Star article:
Several communities in Europe and the U.S. have removed signs, sidewalks, traffic lights. The result? A 40 per cent decline in pedestrian fatalities.
Traffic signals and speed limits stop us thinking and so we drive less safely, prof says
Jim Kenzie
Special to the Star
Jul 05, 2008
The Atlantic Monthly is not a car magazine. It's all about politics, society, literature, the arts, general interest. Used to have short fiction and great cryptic crossword puzzles too. Sadly, both now gone.
I have been reading it cover-to-cover for, oh, I dunno, maybe 30 years, and every time I finish an article, I think to myself, "Yeah, I knew that.''
The pieces are always so well-written, the information seems lodged in your brain as if it was always there.
The Atlantic Monthly doesn't often have articles on automobiles, but when they do, they really nail it. A piece some years ago about futurist/environmentalist Amory Lovins and his "hypercars'' changed my entire way of thinking about the future of the automobile.
But I now have a new favourite writer. His name is John Staddon, and he is not, apparently, a car guy at all.
He's a professor of psychology and brain science at Duke University in North Carolina, and an honorary visiting professor at the University of York in England.
He has a story in the current (July/August) issue entitled "Distracting Miss Daisy," which I link to in my blog at Wheels.ca (thestar.blogs.com/kenzie/).
The secondary headline – the sentence right below the title – is, "Why stop signs and speed limits endanger Americans."
You just know I'm gonna love this guy.
Staddon rails about the proliferation of stop signs on American roads (virtually everything he writes about pertains to Canada too). Stop signs disrupt traffic flow, and harm the environment, what with unnecessary idling and stop-start driving.
Yet they don't make our roads any safer.
He reserves special condemnation for four-way stop signs. This plague has reached such proportions that many intersections that do not have four-way stops now add another sign: "Cross traffic does not stop.''
(That one always makes me wonder if good-natured traffic does stop.)
Staddon's point is that too many signs of all kinds not only distract drivers from actually looking at the road – sort of where you'd think they ought to be looking – but also cause drivers to adapt to the driving environment in "profoundly unhealthy ways.''
For instance, all those stop signs teach drivers to be less observant of the traffic flow – as long as they just obey the sign and stop, nothing else matters. If someone runs the stop sign in the crossing direction, it's their fault.
Yeah, but you're just as dead.
Staddon adds, "Speed limits in the U.S. are perhaps a more severe safety hazard than stop signs.''
No, really, I did not write this story.
He notes that speed limits on this side of the ocean are usually determined to reflect the worst possible conditions, yet are typically enforced in the best possible conditions, when higher speeds are indeed safe as church.
Which, of course, explains why said enforcement has nothing at all to do with traffic safety, as regular readers (except certain subsets of our police departments) know perfectly well.
Staddon says he is not necessarily suggesting a traffic free-for-all, although several communities in The Netherlands, England and even Florida (West Palm Beach) have done just that, with fantastic results – pedestrian casualties down by 40 per cent or more, for example.
Why? Because removing the signs, sidewalks, traffic lights, etc., forces drivers and pedestrians to take personal responsibility for their own safety.
Guess what? They do.
It's like I always say about raising children: You don't get the behaviour you demand; you get the behaviour you expect.
We expect our drivers to be stupid, and they seldom disappoint.
Expect them to be intelligent, and, surprise, surprise ...
Staddon recognizes that his proposals may be too dramatic for widespread adoption in North America. Instead, the England-raised professor (a brain scientist, remember) suggests we adopt just some of the U.K.'s policies, such as:
Replacing most stop signs with yields, indicated in England by a dotted line across the intersection. Note: painted on the road, where you're supposed to be looking, not off in the bushes somewhere, like so many stop signs.
Roundabouts instead of traffic lights (yay!). Even when installed in the U.S., roundabouts reduce collisions by about 40 per cent. (Why has there been a single conventional traffic-light intersection built here in the last 40 years? Why isn't somebody suing somebody?)
Realistic and consistent speed limits that reflect the type of road, rather than some local politicians' or police officers' whims.
Staddon has proffered these solutions to many audiences in the U.S, and usually gets the same response: "Couldn't be done here."
To which he replies, quite reasonably in my view, "Why not?''
He notes that they generally drive faster in England, on narrower, twistier, generally less-safe roads, in smaller, generally less-crash-proof cars.
Yet as of 2003, statistics show that per vehicle-mile travelled, fatalities are 36 per cent higher in the U.S. than in the U.K.
Thirty-six per cent!
Now, there are a few things Staddon doesn't mention that might influence these statistics, both positively and negatively.
First, seatbelt wearing rates in the U.S. remain stuck in the low-70 per cent range, while in England (and Canada) they run in the low- to mid-90 per cent range.
That alone should be enough to explain why we in Canada kill about 2,700 people on our roads each year versus over 40,000 in the U.S., when the numbers should be closer to the 10-times factor of our respective populations.
This probably explains a lot of the differential between the U.S. and the U.K. too.
Second, England is a more densely populated country than the U.S. (or Canada), and medical assistance may be more rapidly deployed there than here.
Trauma specialists refer to the "golden hour'' – if treatment doesn't begin within an hour of the impact, survival rates plummet. Emergency care might get to most traffic victims quicker there than here.
Third, is there something special about U.K. drivers?
Well, yes. They are vastly better trained and more stringently licenced than drivers over here. Which again, in my view, suggests another reason why their numbers are better than ours.
But is there anything inherent in British people that might make them better drivers? Does a steady diet of fish 'n' chips, chip butties and tea (or, more likely these days, curry) have an influence?
Not so's anybody's proven.
It's the old demand/expect thing again. The British expect their drivers to learn how to drive before getting a licence, and so they do.
Now, not much, if any, of this will be unfamiliar to regular readers, not even those aforementioned subsets of the police departments (I know you're out there).
I have been saying all of the above for most of my 25 years in this business.
But of course I am merely a speed-crazed car-freak lunatic (or so I have been characterized by some).
John Staddon is a professor, a brain scientist, and an expert on human adaptive behaviour, fer cryin' out loud.
And, he is writing in one of the most august publications in the world.
Maybe the powers-that-be will listen to him.
