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Comment by gregatragenet3 | Hacker News Reader

IMO these findings that roads are safer without markings, or by being narrower are because drivers have a heightened level of attention and focus when they encounter something unexpected. When they are widespread and commonplace the accident rate will go past that of wide/marked roads. For a fair comparison, if you compared a country with wide/marked streets to a country where narrow/unmarked streets are commonplace (Mexico for example) you'd find marked/wide is much safer.

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I suspect that there would also be some negative effect of consistently increasing the cognitive load associated with driving, as opposed to looking at performance on specific roads on which a given driver probably only spends a small portion of their total drive time. At some point, I would expect the detriment of mental fatigue to outstrip the benefit of "forcing" people to pay attention.

When I drive and see a huge truck driving at high speed from the opposite direction, I tell myself "just keep your lane, he will keep his lane too, and it will be fine" (and I probably unconsciously slow down a bit). Without the lanes I'd probably feel a bit less comfortable.

On the other hand: having visited a number of EU countries, IMO the UK seems to have 2-3x more clutter on the roads (lanes, texts for drivers and pedestrians and what not) than any other of them. They have texts everywhere!

Feeling less comfortable is exactly the point :)

This is an interesting idea. Maybe we should be looking at this as an optimization problem where drivers have a limited budget for attention and we want to concentrate it in the parts where it's most useful by varying the quality of UI assists?

A while back I read a study that agreed with your assertion. It examined intersections that had traffic lights removed. They found that in the short term, accident rates went down but after some time passed the accident rates shot back up. The authors theorized that the temporary reduction was due to the novelty of the change.

Edit: typo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect

> When they are widespread and commonplace the accident rate will go past that of wide/marked roads.

Widespread or not, the lack of rules still forces drivers to be more aware of their surroundings. Drivers are not going to start speeding through junctions because they are used to it, the risks remain the same. As an anecdote, the Netherlands has unmarked crossings everywhere and one of the lowest rates of road accidents.

> For a fair comparison, if you compared a country with wide/marked streets to a country where narrow/unmarked streets are commonplace (Mexico for example) you'd find marked/wide is much safer.

That assumption doesn't hold any water. It is nearly impossible to make that kind of comparison due to the amount of factors involved - fleet composition and age, skill and education, driver attitude and behaviour, pavement quality, speeds, etc, etc.

The Netherlands also has priority for pedestrians and bicycles everywhere. That's different from the UK, where many car drivers feel the road is entirely theirs and anyone else shouldn't be on the road.

> That's different from the UK, where many car drivers feel the road is entirely theirs and anyone else shouldn't be on the road.

I'm not sure what happens elsewhere but in the UK we pay a vehicle tax (or excise duty), colloquially known as 'road tax'.

It's a common (misguided) belief that the roads are funded exclusively via this tax, hence the sense of entitlement.

Ref: Is there any such thing as 'road tax'? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23694438

When I was in the Netherlands, my coworker literally would hurry into the crosswalk to force cars to stop. When we questioned him about it, he said, "They have to stop. It's the law!"

My Polish coworker and I were not so anxious to enforce the law with our bodies.

The lack of markings also makes it really dangerous to be anywhere near the road without a steel cage of some sort. I can't count the number of times I've nearly been run over in a crosswalk by people turning into it at a red light. I can't imagine how much more dangerous they would be if we took all the markings off and relied solely on their flawed judgement.

This is in the US, by the way.

A big part of that is the corner-building tendencies that US civil engineers have. Often they'll build the corner in a broad sweep that makes it easier to turn at high speed. If it was built aggressively to force traffic to slow, it'd also be a shorter distance for pedestrians to cross.

Pedestrians also really need to pay attention. I have never had a close call because I treat traffic as the highly dangerous place it is. Yet, I see plenty of people practically throw themselves into oncoming traffic the instant the crosswalk changes.

It would behoove pedestrians to pay attention simply so they don't die.

Claiming they are obligated to, however is entirely wrong. (And in fact, in my country a car hitting a lesser traffic member is at fault be default, with only some percentages removed if the other member actively caused an accident.)

Cars are obligated to ensure they don't kill anyone even when that other one is behaving irresponsibly.

I once saw a pedestrian step in front of a speeding police car with lights and sirens. I couldn't believe it.

I recently saw someone walk in front of a train that had just started to leave the station. There were warning lights and bells on the train, which was slowly approaching the crosswalk. (There were no pedestrian boom gates for this level crossing.)

The person did a huge jump backwards when the engineer blew the train's horn.

I still couldn't believe that someone would cross train tracks without looking.

> the crosswalk changes.

Alternatively, car drivers need to recognise the fact that they're in control of a lethal bit of machinery and drive appropriately - and this means stopping at the lights.

"Turning into a red light" - lack of markings is coupled with removal of traffic signs and different road and sidewalk designs. Turning a blind corner in this setting is the equivalent of closing your eyes and stepping on the gas, there's a huge chance it will end up badly, whereas with stop lights drivers think there is "enough time" assuming everyone else is paying attention to the rules.

What is safe for the motorist is generally unsafe for bicycles and pedestrians. Like well-marked wide lanes where you can mindlessly zoom forward with no disruptions. That's the traffic engineer's definition of "road safety". And that does indeed apply nicely to highways which are roads that only motorists are admitted to.

Yet in a city such a "zoom lane" is the direct opposite of what you want. You want trees around, people walking and crossing, bicycles eating up part of the lane, cars parked and cars passing way too close, sudden surprises, and very active, observant, and careful drivers.

The problem actually often is that there's not enough happening for your brain to stay focused. That's also the reason why in Germany roads aren't built straight.

"When they are widespread and commonplace the accident rate will go past that of wide/marked roads." Do you have a study to cite on this?

Everyone who believes that correlation = causation eventually ends up dead.

And so do the rest of us.

Not proven. Only about 93% of humans have died. The correlation between being human and dying is remarkably weak in recent decades.

Likely cause of death: A thousand cuts from Ockham's razor.

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