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There have been experiments in the UK where all road markings and signs and lights and pavements have been removed. Vehicles and pedestrians are free to move as they wish. These areas tend to be safer for everyone because the uncertainess forces car drivers to slow down and look out.

An average speed of 12MPH seems high for central London!

> Transport for London's latest figures state that for the first quarter of 2011/2012 the average traffic speed on major London roads for the 12 hours between 7am to 7pm was 19.33 mph and over the same period was 8.98 mph across Central London.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jun/30/uk.transport

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

http://www.rospa.com/RoadSafety/conferences/congress2006/pro...

This makes me wonder though, do they slow down because the signage that used to be posted has been taken down and they're now unsure of what to do in that area?

Many of the "driving problems" I've seen involve drivers in areas where they feel comfortable. Eg, the last bit before home. Part of me wonders if after a period of time, the same behaviours would resurface as people became acclimatized to the lack of signage.

Well, yes, roundabouts reduce fatalities for the same reason. Unfortunately most people's intuitions about what is safe on the road are out of sync with reality.

Removing cars from the city centers would probably also reduce the rates quite noticeable :)

I don't think city centers are very prone to deadly accidents..

Edit: I'm talking about potential car-less city centers, which are limited to a very small section of most cities. City centers are generally less prone to deadly accidents anyway as shown for example here for the US: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/TeenDrivingDeaths/

"Most pedestrian deaths occur in urban areas, non-intersection locations, and at night."

http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/Pedestrian_safety/

So, jay-walkers in non-reflective clothing, at night?

No. Well educated and innocent pedestrians who cross at crosswalks but are clobbered by hurried drivers who don't recognize that they actually need to look out for pedestrians in between gawking at their cell phones and eating an Egg McMuffin.

They said at night. That's not early in the morning when they're eating a McMuffin and too busy to be doing their real job of driving around. This is at night.

There's probably an equal number of:

    * giggling drunkards crossing the street
    * jaywalkers who think it's the middle of the night
      and obviously no car would be coming
    * people who think black is reflective as they walk
      into the road to cross a street on a dark road
    * giggling people not paying attention
    * pedestrians staring at their phones crossing the
      street without looking

And

    * inattentive drivers
    * sleepy drivers
    * drivers looking at their cell phone

It's not always the driver's fault, especially in cities where speeds tend to be lower. In some cities, people meandering around inattentively are VERY hard to predict movement of.

Please note, I'm not saying that it's never the driver's fault either; but, the whole situation is a give and take for everyone. No cars in city centers except maybe public transit of some description would be pretty great, I think, in general.

Note that "jay-walking" is something that the US car industry came up with in order to drive pedestrians off the road and clear the way for vehicular traffic so that they could sell more cars.

In much of the rest of the world, the concept barely exists & many people find the idea that pedestrians are somehow automatically at fault simply for being on the road when someone drives their vehicle into them almost offensive. Why should the driver's right of way be preferred to the pedestrians'?

"jay-walking" is not, in fact, a law in many parts of the world, and even where it is, it hardly excuses a lack of attention.

...and incur great expense in constructing infrastructure [1] to replace the roads and parking areas which previously occupied those city centers.

[1] Buses, trains & tracks, bike rentals & bike paths, etc. Choose as you may, it still requires a redesign of the city center.

> But the only palliative measure that would make a real difference is a drastic reduction in speed. Cut down the speed limit to twelve miles an hour in all built-up areas, and you would cut out the vast majority of accidents.

That is not actually true. It would reduce injury and death, but it would increase accidents.

Every bit of statistics has shown that accidents are correlated to time on the road, not miles and not speed. Half the speed limit, double the time, double the accidents.

Injuries are different, those are correlated to speed.

I think we should probably take "accidents" to mean "accidents leading to serious injury or death" in this context.

I get the point, but that's not entirely true; improvements in car design have also reduced fatalities in ways other than forcing people to slow down.

At the time he was writing, cars dominating traffic was relatively new. He was talking about the next year, not the next hundred years.

The greater purpose of the article is (IMO) to point out bullshitting, "our unwillingness to face facts and our consequent readiness to make gestures which are known in advance to be useless."

People talk about reducing road deaths. One life when it is a specific person is supposedly worth any cost but in practice we agree to a system that strikes a balance between death and convenience. All sorts of things are possible at a cost, but we often BS because we don't want the cost and we also don't want to know that we weren't willing to pay it.

Well, we introduced the VSL(Value of a Statistical Life) for a reason. I would quite say that the government openly says saving a life if only worth a certain amount, if you read real policy documents.

Who supposes that one life is worth any cost? Clearly no one even values their own life infinitely. If they did, for every decision they would choose the least risky option.

And your argument is to give the speeders, the drunkards and the plain unsafe, unobservant drivers free reign? As it stands right now?

We're not even close to approaching the point where any further safety measures would have to be balanced with some time or convenience metric.

>in practice we agree to a system that strikes a balance between death and convenience

Not necessarily. Being unable to travel also causes deaths. Even if you value lives infinitely higher than convenience itself, you end up in a similar spot.

accidents != fatalities

Here's a special version just for you:

> I get the point, but that's not entirely true; improvements in car design have also reduced accidents in ways other than forcing people to slow down.