Safe Speed Forums

Could have sworn I'd seen a post about this in another thread, but can't find it now.

It must be me age or me eyes.

Or what's that other thing?


Will The First Naked Street Make Drivers Slow Down?

By Ben Webster, The Times Transport Correspondent

06 January 2005

Road signs, barriers and even traffic lights could disappear from Britain’s streets if an experiment on one of London’s most famous thoroughfares is adopted around the country.

Exhibition Road, home of the Science, Natural History and Victoria & Albert museums, is to be the showcase for a street design in which cars and pedestrians will be encouraged to mingle.

All traditional signals and barriers used to separate the carriageway and pavement will be removed and the question of who has priority will deliberately be left open. Even the kerb will be eliminated as part of the scheme to create Britain’s first such “shared space”.

The theory is that all street-users are equal. Drivers will be forced to slow down and establish eye contact with pedestrians because they will no longer be able to assume that they have right of way.

Traffic managers traditionally have taken the view that pedestrians and vehicles must be separated at all costs. But research from the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany has shown that traffic lights and road signs deter road-users from taking responsibility for their actions. A driver simply looks at the colour of the light rather than at people wanting to cross. Far from making junctions safer, the array of signs and markings on modern roads distract road-users from the task of safely negotiating a route past other people.

The concept of “shared space” was pioneered in the Netherlands, where traffic lights and signs were removed from several junctions. Despite widespread predictions of chaos and carnage, the approach has reduced the number of crashes and made car journeys quicker.

The maximum speed through the shared space will fall to 20mph, as it is impossible to establish eye contact when travelling any faster, but drivers will save time by no longer having to wait for a green light if there is a gap at the junction. Pedestrians will be able to cross anywhere.

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an urban designer who has helped to draw up the plans for Exhibition Road, said that motorists would still have full access to the road, but it would be like driving through a campsite. “You don’t need signs everywhere on a campsite telling you to give way or stop or slow down, because its blindingly obvious what you need to do,” he said.

Drivers would also be more responsible for any accidents as they would no longer be able to argue that people “just stepped out into the road”.

Kensington & Chelsea Council, the lead authority on the Exhibition Road project, also plans to apply shared space principles to Sloane Square by removing the roundabout and creating two large pedestrian areas outside the Royal Court Theatre and Peter Jones department store.

Wiltshire County Council has tested removing white lines from the centre of urban roads and found that accidents fell by 35 per cent.

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 60,00.html

My emphasis


What these self styled "experts" forget is that on the continent pedestrians are taught to cross the road safely or get fined.

If they're lucky.



They also forget that these places also have proper road infrastructure for traffic to travel on.

Streets that have this kind of treatment are access roads, not the major highways!



Denmark has a third more motorway per acre and nearly three times the length of motorway per head

Germany has more than two times the length per acre, nearly two and a half times the length per head and more than three times the total length of motorway (as well as nearly three times the length of national standard road).

The Netherlands has nearly three times the length of motorway per head and four times as much per acre.


Oh, and weren't those Wiltshire stats rubbished when they first came out?

_________________
http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

No Kerbs? It's All Dutch To Me

By Damian Whitworth of The Times

06 January 2005

Writing as a veteran of the continental traffic revolution, I can offer some advice to those who wish to try negotiating junctions without road signs, lights and markings: be afraid.

Two years ago, a number of towns in the Netherlands revolutionised their traffic systems by removing traffic lights, signs and road markings. In the interests of drivers everywhere, I went to Drachten, a town in the northern province of Friesland, to test the system.

In the centre of town is a junction from which the traffic lights and all other road signs have been removed. Traffic approached from the right, left and straight on, as well as trying to turn across me. Pedestrians launched themselves off the pavement. Cyclists were weaving through the traffic.

There was no sign telling you to give way or stop, nor anything to indicate who had the right of way. The whole scene was complicated further because the road was merged into the pavement.

When a gap appeared in the traffic, I crept forward a couple of yards and signalled to turn left. I stared hard at the other drivers to try to determine their intentions. I seemed to have the all-clear, and pressed the accelerator to advance — only to slam on the brakes as a cyclist appeared from nowhere. He stopped and waved me on. I turned carefully and proceeded down the road at about 8mph.

The Netherlands’ traffic revolution was based on planners’ theory that dangerous means safe. Adherents believe that by relying too heavily on traffic lights and road signs, motorists do not make their own assessments of potentially dangerous situations.

Without traffic lights and signs, all road users become equals, forced to slow down and calculate what is going on. Does it work in practice? On the basis of two days spent in Drachten and other Dutch towns, I must say yes. After my first encounter with the Drachten junction, I then drove it a dozen times without mishap. Nor have there been any serious accidents in the past two years.

But Drachten is not London, and the town’s drivers do not have to contend with black cabs or White Van Man.

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 67,00.html


My emphasis.

_________________
http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

See Also:


........there are no speed limits......

From: http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/stor ... 77,00.html



........Hamilton-Baillie, who wasn't described as a former senior member of the cycling lobby group Sustrans, had presented his study findings at a conference entitled "Fatally Attracted to Speed", which was supported by those paragons of impartiality, the Slower Speeds Initiative.

Actually, the Friesland area of Holland, to which this study relates, is so rural that it is best known for the black and white cow of the same name. It was one of the few Dutch regions where traffic accidents had risen in recent years, so the current decline in accident statistics is predicated on a high baseline.

Second, the infrastructure was already regarded to be totally inadequate, to the extent that large areas of carriageway did not have cycle tracks (this is Holland, remember). The improved road network has been re-engineered to be "safe, self-explaining and forgiving", introducing roundabouts and traffic priority. Hey presto: fewer accidents. This is a slightly different story to the one reported in the papers.......

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/mai ... ixmot.html



All from:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?f ... 1025003532

_________________
http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

You're right. I posted something about this a few months ago, it was a trial proposed down south, Hampshire I think it was but can't swear to it.

This scheme has a lot in common with the most dangerous road in paris, which also has no lane markings