There’s some areas in the Netherlands and Germany where they removed all signage, traffic lights and sidewalks to create an open, shared traffic area where all participants need to be careful, alert, and communicate with each other to determine right of way and avoid accidents.
The idea was to create uncertainty about who gets to go first and force drivers to slow down.
It reduced the number of accidents and injuries.
Somehow I think this wouldn’t work in the US.
We have this in my town. Ambiguous zones. The idea is it creates confusion, and slows traffic. However, in my state, pedestrians have right of way on ALL roads. So the car simply slows. Mostly.
They did something similar in a big refurbishment of the town centre of the place I grew up in (in the UK). No road markings, roads and pavements both done with Belgian blocks, and just some big stone bollards to separate the pedestrians and traffic. Turns out drivers kept hitting the bollards so now they all have hi-vis reflective strips on them. Which definitely did not grant me much confidence in the driving skills of my town.
I feel this would work in some areas in the US, i.e. smaller towns, possibly in the residential areas of larger cities. But in rush hour type areas? Hell no, it would be a massacre after people got used to these spaces.
As a us citizen I can’t speak for everyone but I feel like the majority of drivers are responsible enough for it to work with only a few zooming BMWs
Meanwhile I’d probably hold up traffic because if I feel like I can’t make a decision with 100% certainty on the road I don’t execute, better safe than sorry
I may be over exaggerating a bit but mostly with stuff like unprotected left turn and matters that aren’t time sensitive and I have time to analyze I feel like if I have to ask myself “can I make this” and usually the answers no if I’m even asking
It has made me look like an idiot at some blinking yellows but it’s better than being t boned
Thank you for coming to my ramble
This is a good starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space
I think it would be a few months of Mortal Kombat on the off-roads to interstates and at all kinds of junctions as the assholes on the road fight each other to the death. After these guys (it’s always dudes) get out of the way, there will be a long period where statisticians say loudly over and over again that getting a licence before the age of 26 is the most dangerous thing a young man can do. They will run campaigns about it, with Republicans somehow convincing people that the safer thing to do would be to get the 16 year old boys in the country driving as quickly as possible. The higher up Republicans will be saying that the men who are getting into Mortal Kombat are the better drivers and that the ones that die are worse at driving and manning, so the roads are safer as a result of the Road Kombat Accord (RCA), especially for men, even more so for young men. The lower down Republicans will act like the RCA is a great honor to get to fight in and that Road Kombat is how our ancestors have done it for generations. Liberals will be sweating and wringing their hands while weakly citing the statisticians. The Republicans will Uno reverse this line of thinking into a no-brain slogan by the name of, “trust 'Ole Statty” so that liberals are afraid to tell people to look into the statistics for fear of getting told that they are in the pocket of 'Ole Statty. Republicans will tell liberals that they are in love with, “'Ole Holes”, glory holes that Ole Statty is said to frequent. Liberals will then get confused at this bizarre line of attack on their heterosexuality even though they don’t believe that homosexuality is negative or deviant and so all efforts to reverse the RCA will end. Most men would just sigh and not get their driving licenses until they turn 23, with the daring ones only waiting until 20. This would settle into a constant, relatively few, Road Kombats in the end; just a constant statistic of young white trash + minorites getting killed along with a bunch of 20-something’s. Most people end up assuming that the deaths were unavoidable and that there is no way to stop them. People state the stats as if they are the natural order. When people point out that the all-cause road deaths are lower in countries without Road Kombat, they will be treated as unpatriotic and ignored, becoming crackpots in the eyes of the many.
My car was built in the 90’s by swedes who welded I-beams together at 90 degrees. My opponent is my crumple zone. I will be fine.
In NYC, no change
I will be yielding. A lot. I ain’t risking my life any more than I already am by driving just to go to work.
