There’s a school of thought in road design that goes something like this: designing “safe” roads and cars actually makes them more dangerous because drivers are encouraged not to pay attention. This article makes the point very eloquently.
Vanderbilt describes driving along a narrow, twisting road in Spain, where he navigated hairpin turns with few guardrails or warning signs over steep drop-offs. The result: “I drove as if my life depended on it.” But when he reached a four-lane highway with gentle curves, good visibility and little traffic, “I just about fell asleep and ran off the road … Lulled by safety, I’d acted more dangerously.”
I had an experience that reminded me of this today, while boarding the plane. I was reading a web page on my phone as I passed through the gate. I expected to enter the jetway, which is such a well-contained environment that I just kept reading. But because this was a regional shuttle jet, there was just a set of stairs down to a cordoned-off walkway. I had to stop reading and pay attention.
And of course, the whole thing made me think of Burning Man, which is the epitome of environments where you have to pay attention. “Safe” environments usually result in people to turning their attention inwards, which means that we not only fail to see our environment, we fail to see each other. This is one reason why I resist efforts to make the environment at burns safer. When the environment is known to be moderately dangerous, not only are people actually safer, they are more extroverted as well.
Drivers in traffic circles … communicate more with hand signals and eye contact. As Vanderbilt notes, when a traditional four-way intersection with lights was turned into a traffic square, “The responsibility for getting through the intersection was now up to the users, and they responded by communicating among themselves. The result was that the system was safer, even though the majority of users, polled in local surveys, felt that the system was more dangerous!”
Here are some related links:
- Popular Mechanics: Does High-Tech Higway Design Make Us Less Safe?
- Wired Magazine: Roads Gone Wild
#1 by buzinator at December 18th, 2009
Reminds me of a recent experience of driving in Italy. TV shows, books and websitesall like to make the idea of driving there seem like insanity. But since I had no other way to get where I wanted to go I took the plunge and was quite surprised to find I got into the groove of Italian driving quite quickly. It was very much like the Wired article.
At first it may appear chaotic but there’s a huge difference, EVERYONE is alert, paying attention to each other and planning/timing their moves. Unlike where I’ve lived in the US and Australia where people are usually asleep at the wheel with no concept of what’s going outside their little cocoon.
So the trick was not to be afraid, but to simply wake up. I found it very refreshing.