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Comment by gok | Hacker News Reader

"If we make driving less safe people will drive safer"

Yes. This is absolutely true. People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights. So I'm not clear what your point is.

A better way to frame it is do we want to optimize everything for automobile travel speed and convenience? That's what the US has done for the last 100 years, and the result is poor public transit, unwalkable neighborhoods, urban cycling as extreme sport, and an epidemic of road rage.

Rather than making roads visibly more dangerous, there are better options.

One I heard long ago on a motorcycle forum is: get rid of seat belts, mount the driver in a plexiglass bubble in front of the front bumper, and put a bloody great spike in the middle of the steering wheel.

I wonder why that idea hasn't caught on?

> People don't speed around mountain passes on snowy nights.

I don't follow. Driving on a snowy mountain road is still incredibly dangerous though, even after I've adapted my behavior.

You're implying that slippery, curvy roads are safer?

No. The implication is that driver behavior adapts to road conditions, and that slippery curvy roads demand higher attention and care to navigate. In many instances, improved driver attention compensates for the increased risks of dangerous road conditions: more "dangerous" roads may not have proportionally increased accident rates or fatalities.

In the extreme case where a road appears life-threatening, a driver with that knowledge chooses not to drive.

The most dangerous conditions occur if the road appears safe but has unforeseen or transient hazards.

That's actually one of the most basic principles of traffic design.

Roads built in the Netherlands and Germany are designed so that you absolutely can't drive safely at speeds higher than the supposed speeds - it feels unsafe, and you just don't.

For example, in areas before schools, you usually limit the road to one lane, and switch which side that is every 50 meters, requiring cars to drive slalom, which in turn requires cars to slow down (or crash into concrete).

You don't make it actually unsafe (there's enough space that it won't ever cause any fatal accident), it just has to feel unsafe.

EDIT: More examples:

Another example are the emergency lanes and outer lane markings on the Autobahn: they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again. Another example would be speed bumps.

they are a lot louder to drive on intentionally, so if you accidentally steer onto them, you'll hear a very loud noise, and your car will vibrate just slightly - if you fell asleep and steered onto them, you'll instantly wake up again.

These are present in the US too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip#Continuous_should...

I've seen a similar principle in the Alps. Every town is preceded by a really sharp turn. Works much better than any speed limit sign.

Yes, this is part of what is not just good, but great design. It just works, thanks to subconscious influence.

If we'd spend more of our resources on designing such systems that any human instantly gets, I'd assume humanity would be a lot better off.

Yes.

It will. And it does.

Massachusetts roads are infamously lined with trees, rocks, and all sorts of other barriers that make it a very bad idea to drive carelessly. Drive like an idiot and you'll send a body shop owner's kid to college.

However, that steep price for careless drivers makes life a lot safer for those of us biking or walking in MA.

I don't know where this is coming from; I've been in MA for a long time and never any road obstacles like the above. Now having said that driving backroads is not easy to do fast simply because they are windy and narrow.

I guess if you compare to someplace like Arizona where if you spin out you just end up in sand instead of hitting a tree, sure, but why single out MA instead of just anyplace with trees? :)

I am not kidding about this: there are places in the Midwest where people have been required to remove trees from their front yards in order to make things safer for drivers who might drift off roads.

My grandmother lived o a very wide but otherwise normal street in South Bend, IN. She had a row of GIANT oaks in front of her house. There were at least 3 crashes I heard about that killed drivers. People would drive down the street way too fast, hit a slight bump about 40-50 feet down the street from her house and lose control. The city offered to cut down the trees after 4 teenagers died a while back. She declined though, because they would end up in her living room if they didn't hit the tree.

That being said, there's only one tree left, cause that last accident killed the tree they hit.

I'm from Minnesota and have put in 100,000+ miles of driving there, much of it in the winter. I'm not sure how I feel about removing trees and other side-of-the-road obstacles, but just wanted to point out that it's possible in very bad conditions to drift off the road, spin out on the highway, rear-end the car ahead, etc. even if you're being extremely cautious. I hit black ice at 30 mph on the highway and my car rotated a full 540 degrees, but fortunately didn't end up in a ditch. Sometimes conditions and visibility can be so bad in Minnesota, that I don't think any outsider can understand how difficult it is just to stay on the road. I've taken drives where you see cars in the ditch every quarter mile. I rear-ended a guy once, but he wasn't even angry because he saw my car slide slowly toward him from at least 50 feet away.

I once hit black ice at 10 MPH, just as an old man was crossing. Luckily for me, the black ice ended 12 feet before I'd have hit him.

At that speed, I'd rather have hit a tree.

Point is, when the roads are narrow, and you know that any mistake will cost you money at the body shop, you don't travel at dangerous speeds.

I understand the need for life to go on in places with hostile weather, and also that unexpected situations come up.

But at some point, a reasonable standard must be set, and if you can't drive safely you shouldn't be driving. Clearing obstructions on the side of the road won't really help if you're spinning out of control on a busy highway.

That's to make the safety zone larger. You know, so drivers can safely drive off the road. https://youtu.be/P9BUyWVg1xI

In greater Boston, the DCR (Department of Conservation and Recreation, formerly the MDC) maintains many arterial roads such as Storrow Drive, Memorial Drive, VFW Parkway, the Jamaicaway/Arborway, etc.

These roads are considered "pleasure roads" and date back to the day when a drive in the outdoors was primarily recreational. The roads connect and traverse major parklands.

DCR is not part of MassDOT (Department of Transportation). These roads are not necessarily built to traditional highway standards.

For example, trees along Memorial Drive and the Jamaicaway are closer to the roadway than would generally be recommended. These characteristics are linked to the historic character of these roads and their surrounds. Periodically, there will be plans to change the roads in some way, but they are usually met with significant pushback (neighbors, parks people, preservationists). On the other hand, the DCR for years resisted standard pedestrian crossings as well.

Currently, I think there is a slow trend to make these roads more standard where possible but also slow traffic speeds and improve pedestrian access.

I'm assuming you haven't had much chance to compare, so I'll give you my impression (having driven rural roads in CA, NV, NM,UT,CO, AZ, KS, MO, IL,TN,PA, and every East coast state except FL in the past six months.) RI, CT, and MA are very uncomfortable because it's common to have narrow roads with rocks and trees no more than 18 inches off the roadway. In VA, for a contrast, trees grow everywhere, but along rural highways there is only relatively short grass for the first 15 or so feet off each side. And everyone who drives VA enough hates the state for its police (which I've heard frequently from people living in every state from new York to south Carolina.) There are also places in VA where that dynamic doesn't exist (west of the Appalachian trail) because, like you said, the winding roads, rather than police, do the job of slowing cars down.

And admittedly AZ is easy. Passing in the oncoming lane while going 90 is a pretty comfortable thing there.

Yep. Traffic fatalities increased after clearing the sides of intersections to remove obstacles.

If your field of vision is covered with trees, you drive much slower. If you feel like you're driving on an open road, you drive much faster.

Obviously there are some cases where the increase in safety outweighs the increase in recklessness, but not all cases.

This relation is often true, but not always. For instance, if a driver can't see past an obstruction and needs to pull into a crosswalk to look for oncoming traffic, he or she may neglect to look for a crossing pedestrian because of a prioritization of risk.

Progressive traffic engineering is required to balance these competing interests and safety needs on a case-by-case basis.

"A crowded society is a polite society."

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