Traffic calming measures, as we wrote in our last column, have grown popular recently as a way to improve the pedestrian experience. It’s an article of faith that traffic signs and signals also keep pedestrians (and other transportation modes) safe. Yet there’s growing evidence that they make life more dangerous, while increasing congestion, raising costs, and confusing all parties. It turns out that engineering roads through heavy government involvement just strips away the intuition that drivers would otherwise use.
While this notion may seem absurd, there are multiple examples of how traffic signaling does more harm than good.
Highway safety data show that 40% of American car collisions occur at intersections, reports a study in the Journal of Safety Research. One study from New York City found that installing traffic signals caused a 65% spike in collisions.
Countdown timers—which tell pedestrians how long they have to cross a street and when to stop—particularly fail the safety test, the Journal of Safety Research study found. Where green signal countdown timers have been installed, they “appeared to lead [to] an overall increase in rear-end crash risk at intersections” because drivers would speed up more quickly and brake faster when they perceived that they had the unchallenged right-of-way.
An article worth your time.
