Safe Speed Forums

Naked Streets



I know it has been mentioned before on SafeSpeed. But is it worth a try?

It appears to be working in Kensington

Sounds like the Tories have woken up to the issue, and their need to distance themselves from the current administration's standpoint.

Whats important here is that there is actually some study conducted into the benefits of the policy, and it sounds like there are already pilot projects, be they intentional or not. None of this 'speed cameras sound like a good idea, lets plant a forest of them across the country's roads without proper research into their pros and cons'.

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 4:14am today:

PR429: Individual responsibility is a key road safety factor

news: for immediate release

Quoted in The Times today, Owen Paterson, shadow roads minister said: "Instead
of the State laying down the rules, we need to give responsibility back to road
users." Safe Speed says that this is a crucial road safety 'truth'.

Individual responsibility is one of the three road safety key factors that have
been squandered by recent policy. The other two are 'skills' and 'attitudes'.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "We have to get back to road safety policies which
recognise and develop the three key safety factors - skills, attitudes and
responsibilities. Road safety is a psychology subject, not a physics subject."

"Widely applied policies based on the idea that 'speed kills' have tended to
remove individual responsibility, worsen attitudes and de-skill the driving
process. This is a deadly mistake that has, on average, made drivers worse and
cost thousands of lives.[1]"

"I'm looking forwards to the Conservative's green paper and have my fingers
crossed that it will properly recognise the true key road safety factors."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

Article in today's Times:
"'Naked' streets are safer, say Tories"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 40,00.html

[1] Based on a simple extrapolation of earlier trends in road risk values,
annual national road deaths would be down to around 2,000 per year by now. Safe
Speed research strongly confirms the hypothesis that the loss of trend is due
to 'bad policy'. The departure from long term trend stated at the same time
that we adopted policies based on the oversimplified idea that 'speed kills'.

Here's the page we published when we found the loss of trend in 2003:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/fatality.html

In the 2005 report. TRL629, TRL confirmed the Safe Speed claims that the loss
of trend was due to 'drivers getting worse'.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I’m not a believer of the ‘make it more dangerous to make it safer’ approach. I’ve frequented European towns where such schemes exist and they do work well because pedestrian/vehicle conflict is infrequent, but I’m not so sure this will translate to busy major roads.

I am all for tearing out unnecessary traffic lights. There is a recent great example south of Commercial Road in Southsea, where the traffic light controlled junction has been ripped out and replaced with Zebra crossings – this is soooo much better; pedestrians get priority yes there is much less congestion (however, the council f***ed up by installing a rather more dangerous pinch point just south of that, pedestrians now run over the road – no crossing has been set up there !!!!!! )

I don't believe that that's a fair description of the intention here - it's simply a journalistic view. These 'naked streets' schemes aren't designed to increase risk - they are designed to increase responsibility and interaction.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It all sounds counter-intuitive doesn't it? Blur the boundaries between the drivers and pedestrians 'territories', encourage pedestrians to mingle with the vehicles and this encourages drivers to take more care.
But, if it works, great!

There's an aspect of these schemes which is very important but not much discussed...

It's about ownership of territory.

We eliminate the ideas

- he shouldn't be in the road (a driver observing a pedestrian)

- he shouldn't be on the pavement (a pedestrian observing a driver)

And this has knock on effects in terms of stress and behaviour. We're quite territorial by nature and inclined to bristle if we think someone is in our space. But with a well designed 'shared space' scheme there's no definition of ownership to imvoke such negative responses.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Lots of regulation = people who are there at the time deciding what is best to do within the confines of ugly distracting restrictions put there by people who aren't there at the time, think they know best and like to lord it over everyone.

No regulation = people who are there at the time deciding what is best to do.

We certainly could do with a whole hell of a lot less restrictions.

People should be able to walk/cycle/ride/drive/park wherever they like, so long as they aren't causing a danger or significant damage/obstruction. Why does it have to be any more complicated than that?

_________________
Andrew.

Absolutely. However, I would like a proper pilot, evaluation and phase in carried out instead of being rolled out willy-nilly on busy or naturally faster roads because it ‘worked well in quiet areas of other countries’. We are dealing with people’s lives here! Statements like “Accidents will fall, study claims” no longer fill me with any confidence.

Sometimes it is good to have boundaries and limits. The irony is that I’ve already learnt to accept all roads as ‘naked streets’ in spirit anyway.

And if it all works, we can look forward to redundancies within the various councils highways departments. Yes.....so, it ain't going to happen, is it ?

What excellent points!

We should NEVER AGAIN roll out a road safety intervention that hasn't been subjected to randomised control trials. (When I say randomised, I mean that no human should choose the subset of candidate sites that are treated.)

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Will they have signs letting you know that the area you are entering will have no signs...

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Andrew.

The trials appeared to work very well in Holland where it is being trialled in depth. The drivers seemed to be more wary and alert.

Interestingly this same awareness of the road and traffic also filtered down to the cyclists and pedestrians. In other word - ey contact and negoitiation and COAST requirements were met by all road users in this situation.

However, it should be rememberred that the trials did not take place in the very busy urbans.. where sheer volume of traffic will require regulations and road furniture.

However, as pointed out when I decided to post up the salient points in the Forward to "Know Your Traffic Signs"



Seems a lesson to be learned from the past

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

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A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.