Funny - this exact concept crossed my mind recently when we had a power outage and I noticed that traffic flowed every bit as smoothly, and perhaps a bit better with motorists taking more care and consideration when crossing intersections.

Neat to see that it might work!

Cool, intriguing, skeptical

i saw this on beyond tomarrow, they need to impliment this here in the US.

To give a bit of background, the regular traffic sign frequency in germany is very high to insane. Thinning the "Schilderwald" (traffic sign forest) would be a good thing, allowing drivers to concentrate more on the traffic itself and less on the signs.

Wow, to think that training drivers properly on well designed roads instead of telling them what to do after a rubber stamped licence on half-implemented city planning roads is a NEW idea...

I just wish the leaders here wouldn't be so thick. You should see the traffic signs here. At one intersection nearby there is 5 triangle signs to tell you to yield, 1 to tell you that you are leaving the residential area, 3 sets of lights and 1 sign to tell you that traffic signs don't apply to people turning right. This is just one way of 4.

Every time I drive I think about what all these traffic signs must have cost.

interesting.

I could see outsiders messing it up, and drunks and stupid kids in the US totally walking all over the idea.

'zebra crossings', hah

I would be quite terrified of that here. I am known for driving fast, but I'm also safe and do it only at times when there is no danger. I can't say that for everyone. I would just be worried that others would decide to be reckless since it would be more difficult to properly place blame in the event of an accident.

I had the opportunity recently to drive on the roads in Germany and Switzerland and I can attest that their road system is a lot smother and better planned than anything we have here in the States. In one small town in Switzerland, Interlaken, they didn't seem to have any road signs either and I found it far easier to get around. You just have to pay more attention to what you are doing.

lithuania is trying to create a signocracy. she used to be so pure and chaotic.
when friends come to stay they are freaked out by the method of crossing the road, i.e. cars don't stop unless you actually start walking across the road, but if you look confident enough, they ALWAYS stop.
pedestrians have priority over cars turning right or left at crossroads, so that means drivers ALWAYS look for pedestrians.
It makes total sense to have less signs, but for some reason we prefer to have a system that LOOKS organised but kills people, instead of trusting ourselves.

I'd just like to point out that it's a bit of a novelty-reaction type thing. You take away all the signs, people are used to signs, so they're more careful. As time goes by, there's no signs, but it's not new or different, so they think they know how the road and/or system works, so they get careless, and accidents go up.

Just a theory.

AHHHHH HAHAHAHAHAH Let's implement that here in boston! Oh wait, we do, half the time the stoplights get busted and all blink red. If anyone has ever been to Boston during rush hour times that by ten in the intersections with busted lights. Hahahahahaha, man, what a crap idea. I'd love to know their definition of "busy road." Yeah this might work in my bum hometown in NH.
Oh, and "a lot more considerate [of cyclists]" is my favorite part. HAHAHAHA.

Anyway, on a more serious note, this will never be implemented in the US because we are simply different drivers, extremely different. Drivers in Germany practice driving as a solo task, they don't eat dinner, shave, and talk on cell phones while driving. In the US, driving has become somewhat of a background task. Also, German's have strict rules that they follow such as no one, and I mean no one ever passes on the right. It's just the way they are. So yeah this prolly works with them... but not here... HOOOO BOY NOT HERE.
HAHA

>> ^iloseatlife:
And why do you think driving has become a background task?

I too think it would be a bad idea to implement this in the U.S., but for two unrelated reasons. One, I think most Americans are inconsiderate bigots/clods, so something that works on ethical principles is doomed to fail (yes DOOMED into fucking HELL. The more religious you are, the more of an inconsiderate and immoral bigot/clod you potentially are). Second, having more traffic jams costs the U.S. economy more, and while I cringe at the thought of the pollution it produces, I like the idea of teaching Americans some economic lessons the hard way. Seems they didn't get it in 1929.

This is fascinating.. it's a lot closer to how traffic is in India. There is no notion of sidewalk - everything blends together, bikes pedestrians, ricks, trucks, guys pulling carts...anything you can imagine. It seems to work, and as someone posted above, a confident pedestrian can cross the busiest road.

This has to be a lot more fuel efficient as well. When I used a GPS logger to quantify my drive to work, was amazed at the spikes and speed and amount of time sitting in lights.. that just kills your mileage. Going slow through town is much more efficient, and less stressful, than a series of traffic lights.

The reason it works better is that everyone is no longer confident they are in the right. The people without signs ar unsure if they have the right-of-way, and so are more cautious. With signs, there is the possibility of someone incorrectly assuming they have right-of-way, being less cautious, and thus the collision.



(edit: Not sure where the next commenter gets off calling me a bigot, but oh well, that's the Series of Tubes for you...)

Payback, you've never driven in Boston have you. When there aren't signs then I have the right away, ME, because I'm the only important person using the road, duh.
About american bigotry, uh, perhaps you were misusing the term, but.... uhhhh... Germany... non-bigotry? European countries have the most open and free-flowing racism you'll ever see. And Germany.... uhhhh.... ever read history books?
But anyway, I've met some pretty asshole Germans, and some pretty nice ones, and some pretty asshole americans and some pretty nice ones... but that's anecdotal evidence, what you're referring to is obviously much more factually based.

sounds to me like they just had signs and lights up in the wrong place. if a congested areas looks like THAT when you take away the lights and signs, then youve obviously set them up wrong.

It's an interesting concept to be sure, but the places I've seen it tried are always sleepy little European towns.

Reading through the comments about how this can only work as long as the culture is ethical, and the people give a damn about driving, I'm a bit curious if something like this wouldn't shape the culture a bit, by requiring everyone to pay attention, and learn to easily communicate with lots of other people non-verbally (and sometimes verbally).

It'd certainly require you to pay attention, or wind up in prison for manslaughter. That might get people to put the cellphones away for a bit.

Not sure I like removing curbs, though.

To be fair, this probably would not work on busy urban circumferentials. But in small towns and maybe suburbs, I can see this working.

In my neighbourhood, we used to have the all roads connecting to the suburb ring road as level crossings: everyone coming from the right had right-of-way. Now they have made the ring road take priority over all connecting roads. It does probably make the ring road go 'faster', but it has definitely introduced a kind of reckless driving, because everyone now assumes they have priority over everyone else, including zebra crossings and groups of kids cycling to school.

Shared space was first brought into attention by a Dutchman called Hans Monderman. There are several examples of shared space already, including one in the US and several in the Netherlands and UK. This works everywhere independent of culture or time. It might be size dependent though, it hasnt been tried in a town larger then 50k I believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

We can live without rules. It just requires a bit of faith in humanity.

It's a pain in the ass for pedestrians to try to cross busy 35mph roads that have no stop signs or stop lights because less than 1% of the drivers around here will stop to let pedestrians cross.

Winkler had a good comment about it being similar to India. But one should also note that India now has the deadliest roads in the world, with 100,000 people killed and around 2,000,000 seriously injured in traffic in 2006 alone. Maybe this can work for small towns like the one shown, but in big cities or on roads with a high speed limit it would be a death trap.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7424026.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7432178.stm

>> ^jwray:
It's a pain in the ass for pedestrians to try to cross busy 35mph roads that have no stop signs or stop lights.


did you even see the video?

>> ^MINK:
>> ^jwray:
It's a pain in the ass for pedestrians to try to cross busy 35mph roads that have no stop signs or stop lights.

did you even see the video?


Yes, and I'm talking about where I live, of course. You must have more considerate drivers over there.

This will never EVER work in the US.
Concepts like "sharing", "considerate" and "thoughtful" are completely absent from the American vocabulary, mindset and worldview. The "ME! NOW! FCKYOU!" mindset is ingrained in our dna.

Hell in some places even Looking at someone the wrong way will get you murdered.

>> ^MINK:
lithuania is trying to create a signocracy. she used to be so pure and chaotic.
when friends come to stay they are freaked out by the method of crossing the road, i.e. cars don't stop unless you actually start walking across the road, but if you look confident enough, they ALWAYS stop.
pedestrians have priority over cars turning right or left at crossroads, so that means drivers ALWAYS look for pedestrians.
It makes total sense to have less signs, but for some reason we prefer to have a system that LOOKS organised but kills people, instead of trusting ourselves.


I love doing that in Toronto. I can stop 4 lanes of traffic. Of course, sometimes I'm shepherd to 100 first-year university students who I'm instructing to crouch down and tie their shoes.

Well, haven't done it recently, but it was awesome when we did.

^bamdrew
'zebra crossings', hah


I bet getting those damn Zebras to cross somewhere else took more than just removing some signs...

>> ^dannym3141:
I'd just like to point out that it's a bit of a novelty-reaction type thing. You take away all the signs, people are used to signs, so they're more careful. As time goes by, there's no signs, but it's not new or different, so they think they know how the road and/or system works, so they get careless, and accidents go up.
Just a theory.


Exactly what I thought. It's the Hawthorne effect at play, drivers are simply temporarily being more diligent and attentive as they acclimatize to the new adjusted road rules. I don't dispute though that removing excessive signs allows drivers to focus more attentive on the happenings on the actual road though, neither do I dispute that it forces drivers to actively focus on the action of driving rather than relegating it to the routine subconscious, although that's not necessarily a bad thing.

^drivers aren't "temporarily adjusting" in lithuania, they've had a system of turning off the traffic lights at night for years, and the system of pedestrians having priority is an old system.

They are also very bad drivers and there's a lot of accidents on the motorway, but in town i feel safe stepping out on to the road, because i know the rules mean that everyone is watching out, and i know that fundamentally nobody wants to kill a pedestrian. So it's cool. All you cynics are just soulless robots who have forgotten the amazing capacity of the human brain.

Heck, some of you even sound PROUD that this "wouldn't work" in your town. Riighht.

I agree, it's definitely not as simple as that.

Sure, nobody wants to run over a pedestrian but some drivers will certainly still drive more recklessly than they should. That, and older drivers in particular are not as effective at concentrating, so for them, a rigid set of road codes may be preferably to a situation where they have to react spontaneously to what's on the road.

You said "don't take away the signs because some people will drive badly"

... as if nobody drives badly now?


the attitude now is "I have right of way and I can't be prosecuted if I hit someone". You don't think that's likely to increase accidents?


and old people? should be banned from driving anyway.

"An area that had at least one serious accident a week now has none."

it's like you're all frikkin blind or something.

This post has been removed from the Philosophy channel by channel owner bluecliff. Please review the FAQ to learn about appropriate channel assignments.

>> ^dannym3141:
I'd just like to point out that it's a bit of a novelty-reaction type thing. You take away all the signs, people are used to signs, so they're more careful. As time goes by, there's no signs, but it's not new or different, so they think they know how the road and/or system works, so they get careless, and accidents go up.
Just a theory.


or a hypothesis