Free to Move
ACCIDENTS ARE NOT ACCIDENTS
Boris Johnson thinks it’s “insane” that traffic lights cause needless delay. Who doesn’t? But it's equally insane to think technology is the solution. We were born with the necessary equipment: innate intelligence and an instinct for co-operation. What is needed is a change in culture.
Like everyone else with the power to do something, Boris misses the point. He is blind to the central flaw which makes roads dangerous in the first place: main road priority.
Most “accidents” are not accidents at all. They are events contrived by the rules of the road. In other walks of life we take it in turns. It’s how we act as social beings. But in the public realm, motorists are licensed to ignore the needs of others and plough on, regardless who was there first.
Priority confers superior rights on main roads at the expense of other traffic and pedestrians. It creates a culture of intolerance. It produces a “need” for lights: to break the priority streams of traffic so that other road-users can cross, in relative – but not guaranteed – safety. Traffic lights are the visible manifestation of the spanner in the works: priority.
Every expensive traffic engineering intervention that followed the disastrous introduction of main road priority, including pedestrian countdown, are doomed attempts to cure problems inflicted on us by traffic “experts”.
Priority sets up intolerable conflicts. What do you do if you’re approaching a green light at a legal 30mph and a child appears in your path, but an unsighted 10-ton truck is on your tail? It hardly bears thinking about.
Here’s the answer. Remove priority. That way you remove the “need” for lights and the need for speed, enabling everyone to do what is natural, safe and efficient: approach carefully and filter. In the US, this system, or absence of system, is known as the all-way yield. In the Channel Islands it's known as filter in turn.
Roads fit for people. Fit for children. Not a traffic sign, signal or camera in sight. Drivers watching the road, giving way, filtering in turn. No fear of danger or reprisal. Roads and streets a safe, convivial public realm where all road-users co-exist in peace. What is this – a dream?
No. A world of civilised shared space could become reality if policymakers harnessed human nature instead of hampering it. We complain about the traffic and blame other drivers, but could it be traffic controls that are the problem?
“One thing we know for sure,” says the US Best Highway Safety Practices Institute, “is that when given a choice, the vast majority act in a co-operative manner.” Trouble is, the current system deprives us of choice. We have evolved over millennia to negotiate movement based on social context. In dictating our conduct, the system negates our instincts.
The system puts the onus on children to beware vehicles. Is that reasonable? When lights are out of action, or in “shared space” towns such as Bohmte, the onus shifts to where it belongs: drivers beware pedestrians. A new hierarchy emerges with vulnerable road-users at the top. Even blind people can go in safety, because on roads free of anti-social controls, people can act according to context, compassion and commonsense.
We should re-think the current brutal system, and back a culture of kindness through equality. That’s the only way we will make Roads FiT for People.
Like everyone else with the power to do something, Boris misses the point. He is blind to the central flaw which makes roads dangerous in the first place: main road priority.
Most “accidents” are not accidents at all. They are events contrived by the rules of the road. In other walks of life we take it in turns. It’s how we act as social beings. But in the public realm, motorists are licensed to ignore the needs of others and plough on, regardless who was there first.
Priority confers superior rights on main roads at the expense of other traffic and pedestrians. It creates a culture of intolerance. It produces a “need” for lights: to break the priority streams of traffic so that other road-users can cross, in relative – but not guaranteed – safety. Traffic lights are the visible manifestation of the spanner in the works: priority.
Every expensive traffic engineering intervention that followed the disastrous introduction of main road priority, including pedestrian countdown, are doomed attempts to cure problems inflicted on us by traffic “experts”.
Priority sets up intolerable conflicts. What do you do if you’re approaching a green light at a legal 30mph and a child appears in your path, but an unsighted 10-ton truck is on your tail? It hardly bears thinking about.
Here’s the answer. Remove priority. That way you remove the “need” for lights and the need for speed, enabling everyone to do what is natural, safe and efficient: approach carefully and filter. In the US, this system, or absence of system, is known as the all-way yield. In the Channel Islands it's known as filter in turn.
Roads fit for people. Fit for children. Not a traffic sign, signal or camera in sight. Drivers watching the road, giving way, filtering in turn. No fear of danger or reprisal. Roads and streets a safe, convivial public realm where all road-users co-exist in peace. What is this – a dream?
No. A world of civilised shared space could become reality if policymakers harnessed human nature instead of hampering it. We complain about the traffic and blame other drivers, but could it be traffic controls that are the problem?
“One thing we know for sure,” says the US Best Highway Safety Practices Institute, “is that when given a choice, the vast majority act in a co-operative manner.” Trouble is, the current system deprives us of choice. We have evolved over millennia to negotiate movement based on social context. In dictating our conduct, the system negates our instincts.
The system puts the onus on children to beware vehicles. Is that reasonable? When lights are out of action, or in “shared space” towns such as Bohmte, the onus shifts to where it belongs: drivers beware pedestrians. A new hierarchy emerges with vulnerable road-users at the top. Even blind people can go in safety, because on roads free of anti-social controls, people can act according to context, compassion and commonsense.
We should re-think the current brutal system, and back a culture of kindness through equality. That’s the only way we will make Roads FiT for People.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ian Perry on
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Some 30 years ago, when I was rather shorter than today, an old farmer told me that animals have priority on the roads, then people and finally cars. He was right about this, as he was about farming methods... If he was alive and still farming today, many people would visit him to learn from him - though all those years ago, he was seen as old fashioned and inefficient. He delivered milk by walking the village, with a hand cart...
Perhaps we should once again give priority to animals on roads - after all there are still sheep in places that believe this is the case!
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