Fit v Unfit

Road Safety

Professor John Adams writes:

"Many streets have good accident records not because they are safe, but because they are so dangerous that children are forbidden to cross them, old people are afraid to cross them, and fit adults cross them quickly and carefully. Accident records are purchased at the cost of community severance. For highway engineers, who deal not with people but PCUs (passenger car units), shared space ideas are anathema. Since the advent of the car, engineers have assumed that drivers are selfish automatons who need protecting from their own stupidity, and pedestrians are vulnerable automatons who need protecting from cars and their own stupidity. In the engineer's ideal street, the selfish-stupid are segregated from the vulnerable-stupid, as on motorways. Where segregation is not possible, their compromise solution is the confusing jumble of signals, stop signs, barriers and road markings that blight most urban environments. Hans Monderman observed that on the whole, road-users were not stupid or selfish. So he removed rights of way and integrated road-users in a shared context. The results were transformative. Motorists no longer blasted their way through junctions because they had a green light. They gave way to others who were there first. Given a chance, motorists don't insist on their right of way at the cost of mowing down pedestrians. Removing the s ignals, signs and barriers that are the tools of the engineers' trade not only enhances the streetscape but, by elevating the status of the pedestrian and cyclist, makes streets safer and more convivial."

How can a device that takes our eyes off the road, encourages speeding, and forces sudden stops, be a recipe for safety? Accidents are avoidable events arising from conflicts contrived by the rules of the road. More people have died on the roads than died in two world wars.

The safety claims made for lights have been exposed yet again by the death of yet another female cyclist [name TBA], killed as she waited at lights. If traffic had been moving and interacting on the junction, she would be alive today. TfL tried to suppress a report which stated that cyclists who obey lights are at greater risk.

At least half of 'accidents' occur at signal-controlled junctions. I suffered a broken hand on my bike because someone couldn't wait for me to pass a side-road, so desperate was he to beat the green light 20 yards away.

Is it surprising that children are growing up with no road sense? How can a system that puts the onus on children to beware drivers live with itself?

Without lights, the stage is set for cooperation. We watch the road, interact with other road-users, respond to the context, behave with civility.

When drivers are free to watch the road, pedestrians are seen as fellow road-users rather than obstacles in the way of the next light. A new hierarchy emerges with vulnerable road-users at the top.

Since lights were removed in Drachten, accidents have become a thing of the past. By removing kerbs, railings, road markings, traffic lights and signs, i.e. designing streets in a way that integrates rather than segregates different road-users, pioneer of shared space, Hans Monderman has made a safe, civilised environment for all.

In September 2007 the German town of Bohmte removed lights and adopted shared space.

[Similarly, when speed limits are removed, lane courtesy improves and accident rates fall (Montana paradox)]

I'm looking for a council who will agree to switch off traffic lights across a whole town so we can compare driver behaviour, congestion, journey times, accidents and air quality. An official told me that liability is not an issue with trials conducted in the service of the greater potential good. He quoted the cycle lane over Blackfriars Bridge, which has claimed at least one life. While a cycle lane in the middle of the road between lights is a lethal idea, FiT ideas are safe.

TfL refused a trial. When a council agrees, we'll conduct the trial and publish our findings in film and book form.

I predict that when we're free of the burden of outside control, mutual tolerance between all road-users will flourish, and road-users will be able to co-exist in peace.

Environment

About 25% of our emissions is from traffic, of which about 40% is from traffic idling. Half of that 40% comes from idling, often pointlessly, at red. Every litre of fuel burned produces 2.4kg of C02*. Multiply the minutes of enforced idling by the hours in the day, by the days in a year, by the number of vehicles, and it is clear that policymakers are responsible for environmental damage on an astronomical scale.

Europe's biggest single source of CO2 - Drax power station in Yorkshire - generates a quarter of the CO2 produced by traffic. Scrapping traffic lights thus equates to shutting down Drax.

Imperial College research shows that air pollution in London is almost permanently off the safe scale. Ground ozone regularly exceeds EC levels, helping impair lung growth and function in children. A lethal cocktail, ground-level ozone is from sunlight acting on NO2 and other man-made pollutants such as petrol and diesel. Deaths from illness exacerbated by traffic emissions are 38,000 compared with 3,200 road deaths a year. Whichever way you cut it, policymakers have blood on their hands.

From 2001 to 07 outside Camden Town Hall on the Euston Rd, lights operated full-time even though the junction with Midland Road was closed for work on the tunnel link. Euston Rd carries 98% of the traffic, but gets 50% green time. Camden environment chief, John Thane, refused to discuss the matter. So did TfL, despite its duty to reduce seven key emissions. These collect at the ideal level for babies in prams to inhale.

DfT says that driving smoothly will reduce emissions by 8%. Who produces the circumstances for wasteful stop-start driving in the first place?

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that energy efficiency is the key. It advocates a range of measures in energy supply, transport, building, agriculture, forestry, waste, industry. Stern says the world is facing catastrophe. Under Kyoto and EC directives, we have a duty to cut 1990 levels by 8% by 2012. But emissions are on the up. Stavros Dimas (EU environment commissioner), Sir David King et al wring their hands and propose complex carbon offset schemes. Nowhere do any of them mention the serious gains that can be made NOW by reforming the traffic control system.

The electricity alone that's required to power the UK's galaxy of 24hr lights produces 57,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

Add manufacturing, delivery, installation and maintenance costs. Add the delay, congestion and extra emissions they cause. What better place to start meeting carbon-reduction targets?

The CO2 figure for the hybrid Lexus is 192 g/km; for the Citroen C1 it is 109. Which one is congestion charge exempt? The Lexus.

Livingstone proposed to change all traffic light bulbs to LEDs. How many light bulbs would he have had to change? What difference would it have made?

*The CO2 from burning 1 litre/kg of petrol exceeds 1kg because the carbon in the petrol (a compound of hydrogen and carbon) combines with the oxygen in the air. Carbon makes up the bulk (atomic mass - 12 for carbon, - 1 for hydrogen). Each carbon atom bonds with two 02 atoms (atomic weight - 16) from the air, thus 2.4kg of CO2 is produced from 1 litre.

If 40% of journeys are spent idling, why do we measure g/km but not g/m (per min/idling)? Manufacturers can't even supply the figures. See No Idle Matter
for more on this.

Psychology

To what extent are traffic controls - traffic lights, speed cameras, speed limits - counterproductive? If pedestrians can negotiate movement on a busy station concourse; if teens of all stripes can avoid conflict in a busy skateboard park; if traffic can filter without incident or delay at junctions where the lights are out of action - why do we need traffic lights?

Lights are based on a bad idea: priority, which confers rights-of-way on one set of road-users at the expense of others who were there first. Removing priority and the distinction between major and minor roads (which ditched a thousand years of common law respect for equal rights and responsibilities), allows us to do what comes naturally - approach junctions carefully and take it in turns.

Who is the better judge of when it's safe to go - you and me at the time and the place, or remote lights programmed by an absent regulator? Why are we capable of judging when it's safe to go if we're on foot, but incapable the moment we're on wheels, despite proof of proficiency in form of driving licence?

Traffic controls interfere with our innate skills. Our traffic control system forces us to obey an inappropriate network of man-made controls. Human nature is thwarted. Behaviour is regimented and controlled against our better judgement, resulting in alienation and frustration.

Free of external controls that foster intolerance, road-users are free to co-exist in harmony. In Drachten, people have developed subtle signals to communicate. A mother pushing a pram need only raise a thumb to indicate her intention to cross. The driver of an articulated truck, keeping both hands on the steering wheel, needs only raise his thumb in reply to say, "I've seen you. Off you go."

Do lights make drivers less or more aggressive? Do we behave better with or without controls? Is commonsense a better guide to behaviour? Our trials will tell.

Speed

After Chad Dornsife, Montana's chief traffic engineer, removed speed limits, there was a drop in accidents and average speeds. "The desired effect of speed limits is achieved by removing them", he writes. "The idea that in the absence of speed limits, people will drive in a manner to endanger their own and other people's lives, or in a reckless irresponsible manner, is pure nonsense."

Dornsife abolished daytime speed limits outside urban areas altogether, insisting only that drivers travel at a speed that was 'reasonable and prudent' for the conditions. This situation continued until 1999 when, under pressure from the Governor and the courts ("who depend on citations for federal safety grants, revenue or job justification"), a 75 speed limit was introduced on strategic routes and 65 on other rural roads. During the period of no speed limit, road deaths on rural roads fell to the lowest ever recorded, despite an increase in traffic volumes of over 12%. In the first year after the reintroduction of rural speed limits, fatalities rose by over 40%.

The improvement in safety during the period of no maximum speed limit was most likely due to greater awareness and vigilance among road users, as responsibility for adopting a safe speed was passed back to drivers. With the reintroduction of speed limits, drivers once again felt absolved from that responsibility.

Speed does not kill. it's inappropriate speed that kills, or speed in the wrong hands. At best, speed limits are irrelevant, at worst, counterproductive. No-one can judge the appropriate speed for the context better than the aware driver at the time and the place. In fog I'll drive at a snail's pace or not go out at all. So the legal limit is irrelevant. The other day I was caught in a cloudburst on the M4. Everyone had slowed to a crawl. Twenty minutes and ten miles later, after the storm had cleared and we had long since picked up speed, a gantry warned: SPRAY! SLOW DOWN!

Another point Dornsife makes is that no limits improves lane courtesy. It cuts out the aggressive-defensive diving of people who sit in the middle or outside lane at 75mph playing Mr Plod.

My 82 year-old mother was caught recently by a speed camera. She is the world's most careful driver.

One-size-fits-all rules cater for the lowest common denominator on suspicion of hypothetical deviance, and to satisfy official paranoia. We have enough to manage as we go from A to B, without officials manipulating our every move, hijacking our concentration, and striking fear into our subconscious. Controls play havoc with our state of mind. How can that be a good thing?

The 'road safety' ad where the film is reversed and the dead girl comes back to life is specious. The message is that she might have survived if the driver had been doing 30 instead of 40. Look closely and you'll see it was shot in a residential street where 30 is equally inappropriate. A limit implies a universally safe speed. No such thing. One size might fit policymakers - who make roads unsafe, then criminalise and penalise us when it's too late - but it is not fit for people.

As an advisory service, speed signs are useful, but they often cry wolf. You're approaching a bend on a country road with a huge sign saying MAX 25, and you could take it at 45 without spilling beer from a pint on the bonnet. When you come to a really steep bend, they've run out of superlatives.

Roads are littered with instructional signs - but where are the directional signs when we need them?

If it's against the law to use a mobile phone because it's distracting, shouldn't limits and cameras be banned for the same reason? To what extent is our concentration fragmented and road safety compromised by the barrage of controls that interfere with our job of watching the road?

Shared space practitioners advocate 20mph limits in urban areas. They rightly say that injuries sustained near the speed at which a fit human can run - about 20 - tend not to be life-threatening. But would you want your child, mother or self to be hit by a truck at 20? To my mind, limits license speed at that limit. They encourage people to watch the speedometer, signs, cameras and cops when we'd all be safer if they were watching the road and acting according to context.

People advise me to stick to the more easily substantiated case against traffic lights, but FiT philosophy extends to other areas where damage is caused by undervaluing human nature.

When drivers are free of limits, and free to watch the road, they can speed up when there's no-one around - a perfect trade-off.

The Law

Traffic controls involve infringements of civil liberty and freedom of movement, detention without due cause, abandonment of common law principles of equal rights, and injustice from fabricated crimes such as 'speeding' and jaywalking. Intelligent discretion is against the law, normal conduct is criminalised, innocent omissions or misdemeanours attract excessive punishment, and above all, the rules of the road make roads dangerous.

Under EU treaty and Kyoto directives, the government is under a duty to pursue policies that reduce emissions. By pursuing policies that increase them, is it in breach of international environmental law, and failing in its duty of care to our health, our time, the economy and the planet?

Imperial College research at monitoring stations on the Marylebone Road show that concentrations of PM10s (particulate matter from exhaust fumes) in the air exceed EC legal limits - by a huge margin. See Illegal air pollution levels for more.

To detain us as we go about our lawful business the authorities must demonstrate a need. But no government body has ever shown a need for detaining us at lights when there is no conflicting traffic.

If, as predicted, a monitored trial reduces accidents and journey times, policymakers will have to act. Or will they? When I explained to a councillor numerous ways in which congestion around Cambridge could be eased, he kept nodding. When I asked why nothing was done and if there was a hidden agenda, he replied, "There's nothing hidden about it. We want to make it so inconvenient for drivers that they leave their cars at home." For one thing, there is scant public transport in outer districts. For another, who licensed traffic managers to enter the field of social engineering? In the absence of public transport that's as convenient in all circumstances as personal transport, is this attack on our civil liberties legal?

No-one objects to sensible laws, but bad laws erode respect and bring the law into disrepute. Is that a good thing?

Liability issues surrounding trials are surmountable.

The UK adopts a "stick" approach. In Japan they have air-conditioned buses with delightful attendants.

Quotes

"Treat people like zombies and they'll behave like zombies" - Hans Monderman

"We should remove all white lines and traffic lights. When you got to a junction you'd just squeeze in and out. It would be frightening to begin with, but it works in other countries and cuts accidents and congestion enormously." - Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Mark Whitby

"Traffic signals compress an hour's traffic into half-an-hour of green time and halve all headways. They make drivers go fast and keep close to the vehicle in front for fear of missing the green light, their eyes in the air rather than on the road. The combination of high speed, tailgating, diverted attention and sudden stops causes rear-end collisions. The pedestrian's unshakeable faith in the traffic signal is entirely misplaced - as many get run down walking with the green light as against red." - Kenneth Todd

"What we know for sure is that when given a choice, the overwhelming majority act in a responsible manner ... The idea that in the absence of speed limits, people will drive in a manner that endangers their own and other people's lives is pure nonsense. The desired safety effect of speed limits is achieved by removing them." - Chad Dornsife

"Shared space exploits the natural skills of humans to negotiate movement, resolve conflict, and engage not only with each other but with their context." - Ben Hamilton-Baillie

"Liberated from the burden of external controls, we can respond to our co-operative instincts and exercise more meaningful self-control." - Martin Cassini

"You've just got to be a bit more careful on the junctions, that's all." - London cab driver

"Evidence from before-after comparisons and cross-sectional studies does not support the idea that traffic controls have a beneficial effect on safety." - De Wilde, Target Risk

"Deregulation is a good route to increasing the safety and status of vulnerable and disenfranchised users of our roads such as cyclists and pedestrians, marginalized unforgivably since Buchanan, and even earlier. I sound a note of caution because there haven't been long-term tests." - Dr Ian Walker, University of Bath

On 7.1.05 at a meeting of the IHT (Institute of Highways and Transportation) and CSS (County Surveyors' Society), urban designer, Ben Hamilton-Baillie, said he had never seen evidence that lights helped road safety or traffic flow. After some throat-clearing, someone said, "Well, they would work, if it weren't for the problem of pedestrians". Ben asked if anyone could quote any evidence and left his contact details. He heard nothing.