I wonder what the field of study is called that prepares people for this kind of traffic management/design job and whether is includes average driver/distracted driver/lowest common denominator design considerations. Putting new concrete barriers out without bright paint and reflectors surprises me; people driving their cars right up on them does not.
When my hometown put in their first traffic circle, they incorporated a pedestrian tunnel under one of the entry/exit points. Within the first two weeks, a driver got confused going around the circle for the first time, went over the edge, and dropped their car 8+ feet into the pedestrian tunnel. Fortunately, there were no pedestrians in the tunnel at the time and the driver was ok. They added a guardrail along that edge of the circle.
There were also people going the opposite direction around the circle from the intended flow. And drivers ping ponging between lanes as they went around the circle unsure what lane they should be in, including a cop car I personally witnessed doing it multiple days in a row. And cars that would just plow straight through the middle of the circle until they packed it with brick planters, flowers, and an art installation.
Even if 99.9% of drivers are attentive and safe, 0.1% is a lot of chaos and accidents. I would hope designing for that 0.1% gets a disproportionally weighty amount of attention.
For a country that is so incredibly carcentric, USA really seems horrible at driving cars, as someone (fortunately) looking in from the outside.
It’s not really about being bad drivers. It’s about being anti-education.
Even just teaching people general critical thinking and risk evaluation would get them thinking “Gee, upturning this 8-ton metal vehicle would be really bad. Maybe I won’t risk that yellow light a block away.”
I think because it’s so car-centric lots of people have to be able to drive to hold a job or go to school. So it’s seen almost more like a “right”. Compared to my friends in London or Sydney were the view seems much more that proficiency should be worked towards and licensure earned.
There is probably some parallel to gun culture, though that actually is a “right” here. A person who has no business around weapons can still buy enough to kit a small army. Beat their spouse? Meh, they can still own guns. Road rage? Psh, that’s no reason to pull their drivers license or their guns.
Also, I was 13 when I got a license to drive. My state had the lowest age I am aware of for kids who lived in rural areas and didn’t have school bus service so they could drive themselves to school. So yeah, 13 years old and I drove a car from home into the city of 300k people to get to my school. The only accident I have ever been responsible for was wiping out a mailbox when I slid on some ice. Motorcycle license at 15 years old after a short written test and riding the bike about six city blocks. I’m technically a successful example of the low age limits and I think it was fucking stupid.
This is true, every time I drive just a few miles, i witness dozens of traffic violations. Rolling through stop signs, turning illegally into the wrong lane, running red lights, etc. When I was a teenager there were traffic cops, today you’ll see people break the law right in front of a cop and the cop does nothing.
Cop is busy watching tik took videos
Honestly we’d be better off if they did that more.
I think it’s because it’s car centric the complacency set in so fast than their logical thinking can course correct. The whole place is made just for car and no other mode of transport, it train people to not ever think about others and doing thing their way, as driving are so easy it barely challenge anyone to make a conscious move.
There’s a lot of variation by locale, too. In Arkansas, for example, at one point the age to start driving was 15 and there were effectively zero other qualifications for obtaining a license.
Local city made a new “safe” crossing for a priority cycle path where it crosses a local road with medium relatively slow traffic. The local road now has a mini very soft speed bump, lots of white and red paint and a sign saying you have to yield to the cycle path. On the cycle path they actually even put the “you have the priority” sign. None of this solves the issue of it being a for the cars super unexpected weird priority to give, and the view on the incoming cyclists being super obstructed by level difference and bushes. Not even mentioning distracted or drunk or foreign drivers. I tried emailing the city CYCLING INFRASTRUCTURE responsible person about what a death trap they conceived there. He’d have none of it, saying it’s super save now because of all the paint and the signs. Meanwhile, parallel street to this one actually already has a non-level conflict free crossing over the cycle path… Which they’re closing to cars and thus sending more cars towards the super dangerous level crossing… I’ll experience a very weird mixture of sadness and “I told you so” in a few months to a few years I think… At a similar crossing a bit further it already happened, car hit cargo bike with 2 kids in it (they were severily injured). The car driver “oversaw” them while visibility is better there than at this new crossing :( It’s incredible how much traffic planners assume car drivers to be good drivers at all times.
Tell the dude that if a cyclist dies in that crossing that you’ll send a copy of the email chain to the local news outlets, so that they’ll know he was on notice that it was dangerous and still did nothing.
I consider trying to contact another person in the administration before it happens… It’s just so stupid, the super expensive hard to build piece of infrastructure to make it safe is there already at the next parallel street (a concrete street bridge over a railway that runs right next to the priority cycle path, that bridge is wide enough so the cycle path also crosses underneath the street together with the railway). Yet for some to me really impossible to understand reason they choose to redesign the streets around it to guide more car traffic from the neighbourhood around it away from this safe crossing of the cycle “priority route” and towards the dangerous level crossing with it. Putting up the extra “you have priority” signs for the cyclists is just the crazy drop too much. Yeah, you have priority but you should be extremely fucking careful here anyway because you are crossing a street with cars that just drive straight for the 800m before it and 800m after it! Nothing but paint and signs in the middle of long straight street… especially at night or in fall/winter when there’s often a thick low hanging fog in this city, cyclists should absolutely not be encouraged to blindly take their priority there!
I wonder what the field of study is called that prepares people for this kind of traffic management/design job and…
Civil engineering, and traffic engineering specifically.
whether is includes average driver/distracted driver/lowest common denominator design considerations.
Sort of, but not really. I’m sure there are some traffic engineers somewhere that do research on distracted driving, and their findings get turned into recommendations about signage placement and such. But I think most engineers actually doing the road design ‘assume’ drivers are mostly rational actors and are not overtly defensive in their design. Instead, they wait until crash data collected after the fact forces the issue.
most engineers actually doing the road design ‘assume’ drivers are mostly rational actors and are not overtly defensive in their design. Instead, they wait until crash data collected after the fact forces the issue.
This is absolutely wild to me. I’m an engineer, mechanical background, related to traffic in the air rather than on roads, and we have SO MANY REMINDERS pushing the idea of proactive safety measures and mistake-proofing any potential safety hazards. From industry standards to regulatory body and customer requirements, to internal procedures, backed by tools and specific courses in engineering coursework. Folks would be in jail if they acted like this, like, "yeah, that plane door might fly open if some idiot goes at it the wrong way but *shrug, we’ll tweak the design once someone actually does it and kills a planeload of people.
Don’t get me wrong: traffic engineers aren’t out there designing whatever they want with reckless disregard for [driver] safety. In fact, I would say that they’re probably more conservative than other types of engineers in terms of following established practices (especially since civil and especially traffic engineering is often more about customizing known-“good” designs to the circumstances of the site, rather than trying to innovate/improve performance the way a mechanical engineer working on a new airplane design might be).
The trouble is, the established practices themselves are wrong and bad in a lot of ways, in particular that they have a very 1950s view of what the goal of the engineer is (moving cars as fast as possible) and don’t take enough consideration of the ways that an urban street is very different than a rural highway.
Chuck Marohn of Stong Towns does a very good job of explaining it. He’s got a book and long-form videos, but I like citing his “30 days of confessions” playlist of short videos. In particular, as someone working in aviation, you might be interested in “#8 Plane Crash vs. Car Crash”, but I recommend watching them all.
This will honestly be some guys excuse to get a lifted truck. Why can’t they just put in jersey barriers like normal civil engineers. Even crazier idea, actually design bike infrastructure instead of some awkward mini barrier in the middle of a road
To me, at least, jersey barriers seem like a temporary thing, something that belongs in a construction zone, but not the finished product. If I’m being nit picky, I want the separation to be low enough that a pedestrian can step over it, too.
Best case scenario is obviously grade separation and distance between cars and bikes, but in a confined space, I dont think these barriers are horrible. Maybe the best move would be full-height barriers at the ends, and these low ones in the middle?
I ride on this street fairly often. So let me tell you from direct experience: for Atlanta, this bike infrastructure is actually pretty damn good.
Ironically, the next bike crossing over I-20 further East, at Bill Kennedy Way, has Jersey barriers and urbanists are complaining about them because they’re done wrong. GDOT refuses to anchor them into the street properly (claiming bullshit about “maintenance problems” or something), so when cars hit them they get pushed into the multi-use path.
Someone should tip those over the other direction, make it a problem for cars that they aren’t anchored properly.
