90 miles per hour, girl, is the speed I drive

I was directed towards this article about removing traffic signs and creating a "shared space" to reduce accidents. I had read this article many times in the past, and sure enough, a quick check on Wiki confirmed- Bohmte, the town in question, enacted this policy in 2007. By all accounts, it seems to have succeeded so far.

Ah, well, it's not the first time that my attention has been diverted towards a rehashed topic. In fact, I've thought quite a lot about traffic in the past couple of years, and I'd like to share my thoughts in a couple of blog entries.

The pith of the shared space concept is that signs are less effective than properly designed intersections. I can see several intuitive reasons for at least the initial success of this program.

First of all, I strongly believe that informational signs are becoming part of the ignored content that the brain automatically filters out. Much like ads on a frequently visited web page, which are so glossed over by the reader that the authors may as well remove them (more on this another time, I hope), signs just aren't read by most commuters. Apparently, this problem is worse in Europe.

Second, there may be a correlation between the amount of information provided and the responsibility felt by the commuter. By responsibility, I don't mean that commuters literally feel that they are absolved of accident guilt. It is more of a responsibility to pay attention and not drive on autopilot.

Personally, I sometimes drive for minutes on my home town roads without really thinking about anything. I know each turn, each blind driveway, and each intersection, so I know where I have to worry about cars coming, and I know where I can pass bikers safely...right?

Not necessarily. Most accidents happen due to unexpected events. The less I have to think about the act of driving, the slower I am to react to out of the ordinary events. If an animal wanders into the road, I'm sure I would be able to react better if I had been scanning the road for bikers and pedestrians and other cars actively than if I had been driving on autopilot.

This is sort of like a theory some of my high school teachers followed: move the kids around the classroom throughout the year, and they pay better attention. I may write a full post on this sort of subject, so I'll keep this tangent brief, but I absolutely believe that humans are far more alert in new situations than in ones done a hundred times before.


So, should we start tearing down signage across America? No, I don't think so. First of all, the concept of shared space relies on efficient road design, which is sorely lacking in America. Removing signs is not enough: you have to redesign the traffic flow to allow for the actual use cases. Shared space suggests rotaries, something that Americans (or at least New Englanders) struggle with quite a lot. Plus, I feel like this idea would completely break down in cities.

Still, I can't help but wonder. Part of my driving philosophy is to aggressively yield and maintain large gaps, so I'm all for anything that encourages such conscious effort by everyone. Again, this is a whole other post, but a lot of traffic problems could really be solved with a simple change in driving style.


What do you think? Should we start implementing the shared space plan in some rural towns? Or even throw it into a section of, say, downtown Portland, Oregon?