Two European towns have proven that you don’t necessarily need road signs, curbs, sidewalks and stop lights to have safe intersections where motor vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists can share the road. Though this seems counterintuitive, for the Dutch town of Drachten and Bohmte, Germany, it has worked brilliantly to reduce accidents and provide an all-around safer atmosphere for everyone.
I first heard of the idea on NPR back in January, as Kyle James explained Bohmte’s reasoning for removing all traffic control implements in an attempt to manage a busy, often jammed intersection where 12,000 cars and trucks pass through on an average day. Drivers who pass through the area now that it’s been revamped say that traffic moves slower, but in a more orderly way as every person is more aware of those around them. Instead of a free-for-all where each person tries to cut in front of the other in order to get ahead, drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists actually communicate through eye contact and hand gestures to safely navigate the streets.
From NPR:
Advocates of this traffic-management philosophy, called Shared Space, say it works. Ben Hamilton-Baillie is a leading Shared Space advocate based in Bristol, England.
“If you’re faced with a traffic signal, you don’t have to think anymore. Whether you go depends on whether the light is red or green,” he says. “In the absence of such things, we’re perfectly capable of reading and understanding the situation so that if grandma’s in the road ahead of you, you don’t run her over.”
He compares the Shared Space concept to an ice skating rink. It might look chaotic, but people usually navigate the shared area pretty well. In a traffic context, it means cars, bicyclists and pedestrians are in much closer proximity than they usually are.
But common sense and courtesy, as well as drivers feeling more a part of the space they’re moving through, is supposed to cut down on accidents.
OntheCommons.org also explored this idea, citing the case of Drachten, where the main thoroughfare sees 22,000 cars per day. Once they adopted the ‘shared space’ approach, casualties at one junction dropped from 36 over the previous 4 years to only 2 in the 2 years following the removal of traffic lights. Traffic jams no longer occur at all.
From OntheCommons.org:
The idea is to return public spaces to people in order to encourage them to take greater personal responsibility. Monderman explained, “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior….The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”
I think this is a great idea, in that it forces people to stop talking on their cell phones, daydreaming, fiddling with the radio and other things that distract them and actually, you know, DRIVE. Being aware of your surroundings is a huge factor in traffic safety. Navigating the streets of America, you’ll most often find that everyone is so engrossed in themselves and where they need to go that they hardly pay attention to everyone else – they weave in and out of traffic at will and expect everyone else to get out of the way. Removing traffic signs would certainly be one way of making sure people were alert.
One thing that I wonder, though, is how much the training of drivers plays into the success of these programs in the Netherlands and Germany. After all, both countries are known for the rigorous training periods that potential drivers must go through before receiving a license. Many drivers in Holland must take up to 25 two-hour driving classes before obtaining certification. In Germany, a license costs $1500-$2,000 and requires a minimum of 25-45 hours of professional instruction plus 12 hours of theory.
In America, you barely have to meet the low standards of DMV employees for 10 minutes and pass what basically amounts to a memorization test in order to get a license. It’s mind-bogglingly easy to get and retain a driver’s license here, opening the roads up to all sorts of half-blind idiots who don’t even grasp the concept that the left lane is for passing. So, I’m not sure that such a concept would work here without a retooling of the whole driver licensing song-and-dance.
It’s a great theory, though, and I’d love to see more cities adopt it all over the world so we can get a better idea of exactly how well it works. We certainly need some kind of push for drivers to be more conscious of bicyclists and pedestrians, so that the roads are safer for all of us.
Link [OntheCommons.org] + [NPR]
Photo credit: Khuê Pham for NPR
