When operated at true designed speeds, the roads kill people.
I would actually attribute that more to people speeding and driving recklessly, as was endlessly documented.
I also agree that most speeds are too high to begin with, but it’s way more attributable to people just choosing to drive like maniacs post-pandemic.
The road deaths have continued to rise, as the congestion has risen again with it.
So it’s not just the congestion keeping us safe. It’s literally some people have just straight given up caring or never understood physics to begin with.
Nah, we know this isn’t the reason because in other countries that have better road design that actually takes psychology into mind for design speeds, they did not see the same uptick. Also, other countries are seeing gradual decreases in road deaths while the US continues to see increases.
You can also look at e.g., the dangerous by design reports and see very clearly WHERE the road fatalities are happening. During covid it was all over the map. Post covid, it is clearly skewing away from the blue cities.
It’s a very clear natural experiment with an obvious conclusion: the US has fundamentally unsafe road engineering. We focus on speed over safety in our designs, which in low congestion works perfectly (i.e., makes roads fast and unsafe) and in nominal conditions achieves neither.
Load up all of AASHTO into rockets and shoot them into the sun.
I’m not really trying to argue, because I don’t disagree about our road designs, however…
Then why are road deaths still increasing on roads where congestion is the norm, say I-5 in Seattle, for example?
I personally think it’s also a cultural thing in the USA, not just that the roads are designed more dangerously. You also have more people willing and ready to drive dangerously.
Also saw significant increases in road fatalities.
Because it turns out the main thing keeping many of our roads safe was… congestion. When operated at true designed speeds, the roads kill people.
I would actually attribute that more to people speeding and driving recklessly, as was endlessly documented.
I also agree that most speeds are too high to begin with, but it’s way more attributable to people just choosing to drive like maniacs post-pandemic.
The road deaths have continued to rise, as the congestion has risen again with it.
So it’s not just the congestion keeping us safe. It’s literally some people have just straight given up caring or never understood physics to begin with.
Nah, we know this isn’t the reason because in other countries that have better road design that actually takes psychology into mind for design speeds, they did not see the same uptick. Also, other countries are seeing gradual decreases in road deaths while the US continues to see increases.
You can also look at e.g., the dangerous by design reports and see very clearly WHERE the road fatalities are happening. During covid it was all over the map. Post covid, it is clearly skewing away from the blue cities.
It’s a very clear natural experiment with an obvious conclusion: the US has fundamentally unsafe road engineering. We focus on speed over safety in our designs, which in low congestion works perfectly (i.e., makes roads fast and unsafe) and in nominal conditions achieves neither.
Load up all of AASHTO into rockets and shoot them into the sun.
I’m not really trying to argue, because I don’t disagree about our road designs, however…
Then why are road deaths still increasing on roads where congestion is the norm, say I-5 in Seattle, for example?
I personally think it’s also a cultural thing in the USA, not just that the roads are designed more dangerously. You also have more people willing and ready to drive dangerously.
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