Roadway design in the United States prioritizes the comfort of the driver over the safety of pedestrians. While this makes sense on highways, where there are no pedestrians, it does not make sense...
Roadway design in the United States prioritizes the comfort of the driver over the safety of pedestrians. While this makes sense on highways, where there are no pedestrians, it does not make sense on city streets, including arterials, nor most suburban streets, where there are pedestrians. Pedestrians and cyclists are considered "Vulnerable Road Users" (VRU) and great care must be taken to protect them. Drivers are protected by a physical shell of metal and decades of regulation mandating vehicle crumple patterns. In most cases pedestrians are protected by literally nothing. This is not a balanced conflict.
Among other factors, infrastructure safety hazards include very wide car lanes, which "increases a driver’s room for error and sense of comfort." That sounds nice, but unfortunately these policy and engineering decisions encourage automobile users to drive faster and more dangerously, a phenomenon well-recognized in traffic fatality data. The wider and more inviting it is to speed along a roadway, the faster drivers go. The faster drivers go, the more pedestrians and cyclists they kill.
Crash data shows that pedestrians are extremely unlikely to survive being hit by a car at speeds of over 35 mph. Even speeds above 20–25 mph pose a remarkable threat to survival rate, especially with large vehicles. In addition, even if they do survive, pedestrians may be paralyzed for life or otherwise severely injured. We should not tolerate this.
This study from Johns Hopkins University proposes that cities and towns narrow all lanes and streets by default to protect Vulnerable Road Users like pedestrians. When absolutely necessary, such as to accommodate a high volume of freight traffic, wider lanes can be installed. This is the opposite from current practice, in which wide lanes are installed by default and essentially never narrowed.
A 10-foot lane, at the widest, should be the “default setting” for any sort of urban street: a place lined with homes and businesses, where traffic should flow slower than 35 mph. This should be understood as the risk-averse approach. If the engineer wants to make the lanes wider, they should have to justify the choice.
The researchers found a significant increase in crashes—approximately 1.5 times higher—when the lane width increases from nine feet to 12 feet. There was no significant difference in crash rates in very low speed zones of 20–25 mph. But in the 30–35 mph range, “traffic lanes with 10-, 11-, and 12-foot lane widths have significantly higher crashes than lanes that are nine feet wide,” according to a summary of the study published by Johns Hopkins.
The study strongly recommends a default width of no more than 10 feet for streets intended for speeds of 35 mph or under. Priority should be placed on making this change on urban streets in the 20–35 mile per hour range without significant bus or truck traffic. Where many large trucks are present, 11-foot lanes might be appropriate: this can be a context-specific consideration.
Yes, SUVs also contribute significantly to traffic fatalities. Vehicle mass exacerbates the force of an impact in a collision in the same way that speed does (force equals mass times velocity). Additional factors contribute, such as the high grill height of SUVs. Please feel free to discuss SUVs in relation to vehicle speeds, but this thread is about vehicle speed specifically and ways to slow down automobiles of all kinds, including sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks, light trucks, and heavy trucks. For more discussion about SUVs, see my previous thread Study: Yes, SUVs are deadlier than sedans — but on fast arterials, pedestrians die no matter what.
Roadway design in the United States prioritizes the comfort of the driver over the safety of pedestrians. While this makes sense on highways, where there are no pedestrians, it does not make sense on city streets, including arterials, nor most suburban streets, where there are pedestrians. Pedestrians and cyclists are considered "Vulnerable Road Users" (VRU) and great care must be taken to protect them. Drivers are protected by a physical shell of metal and decades of regulation mandating vehicle crumple patterns. In most cases pedestrians are protected by literally nothing. This is not a balanced conflict.
Among other factors, infrastructure safety hazards include very wide car lanes, which "increases a driver’s room for error and sense of comfort." That sounds nice, but unfortunately these policy and engineering decisions encourage automobile users to drive faster and more dangerously, a phenomenon well-recognized in traffic fatality data. The wider and more inviting it is to speed along a roadway, the faster drivers go. The faster drivers go, the more pedestrians and cyclists they kill.
Crash data shows that pedestrians are extremely unlikely to survive being hit by a car at speeds of over 35 mph. Even speeds above 20–25 mph pose a remarkable threat to survival rate, especially with large vehicles. In addition, even if they do survive, pedestrians may be paralyzed for life or otherwise severely injured. We should not tolerate this.
This study from Johns Hopkins University proposes that cities and towns narrow all lanes and streets by default to protect Vulnerable Road Users like pedestrians. When absolutely necessary, such as to accommodate a high volume of freight traffic, wider lanes can be installed. This is the opposite from current practice, in which wide lanes are installed by default and essentially never narrowed.
Yes, SUVs also contribute significantly to traffic fatalities. Vehicle mass exacerbates the force of an impact in a collision in the same way that speed does (force equals mass times velocity). Additional factors contribute, such as the high grill height of SUVs. Please feel free to discuss SUVs in relation to vehicle speeds, but this thread is about vehicle speed specifically and ways to slow down automobiles of all kinds, including sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks, light trucks, and heavy trucks. For more discussion about SUVs, see my previous thread Study: Yes, SUVs are deadlier than sedans — but on fast arterials, pedestrians die no matter what.