{"id":5367,"date":"2015-02-23T05:37:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T19:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=5367"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:11:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:11:49","slug":"where-the-streets-have-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/safety-2\/where-the-streets-have-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Where The Streets Have No\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"signfail_zpsadb34be5\"<\/a>Do you get fed up with the multitude of traffic signs and signals that constantly bombard you as you drive around town?\u00a0 Have you ever missed a turn-off or some vital piece of information (like a speed limit sign) because it\u2019s just another sign amid hundreds?\u00a0 Or, to take another tack, do sometimes wonder if the people who put up signs think that you\u2019re an idiot (e.g. the sign saying \u201cCaution: Flooding\u201d smack in the middle of a temporary lake caused by heavy rain\u2026 as if you hadn\u2019t noticed that there was six inches of water covering the road)?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s time that the authorities gave us all a bit of credit for having at least a modicum of common sense.\u00a0 No driver wants to hit another driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian, after all.\u00a0 This was the view taken by the authorities in the town of Bohmte, a town in western Germany that had been struggling with a bit of a traffic problem.<\/p>\n

The traffic authorities of Bohmte had tried everything to stop motorists doing dumb things that endangered the lives of pedestrians and cyclists in the middle of the town.\u00a0 Speed traps, carefully designed crossings and all the usual measures just weren\u2019t working.\u00a0 So they tried something completely different.\u00a0 Instead of sticking up more signs and more signals, they ripped them all out.\u00a0 They also took out the cycle lanes and the pavements (what our American friends call sidewalks).\u00a0 Only three rules were in place for this special \u201cshared zone\u201d: (1) everybody \u2013 including pedestrians, wheelchairs, skateboards and heavy trucks \u2013 has to give way to anything coming at you from the right at an intersection, (2) don\u2019t park your car smack in the middle of the road and (3) you had to keep to the speed limit of 30 mph. (That\u2019s about 50 km\/h and the usual urban speed limit in Germany \u2013 it\u2019s only on the Autobahns that the no speed limit thing applies.\u00a0 A German hitchhiker we once offered a sofa to tells us that the no limits rule on the Autobahn is only fun if you have a big Mercedes<\/a> or Audi <\/a>\u2013 if you\u2019re puttering along in a tiny wee Fiat <\/a>hatchback, you want to cringe as they all sweep past you\u2026 but I\u2019m getting off topic.)<\/p>\n

\"Bohmte<\/a><\/p>\n

The authorities were nervous.\u00a0 What was going to happen?\u00a0 Were motorists going to continue to barge ahead and cause at least 50 accidents a year in this particular section?<\/p>\n

The thinking behind this \u201cshared space\u201d concept was that if the usual familiar signs weren\u2019t there, motorists would get a bit nervous and would become more alert to what was going on around them.\u00a0 When the traffic lights are green, you usually just surge on ahead, confident that nothing\u2019s going to be in your way\u2026 until some idiot running the red light T-bones you.\u00a0 The fact that you weren\u2019t at fault is small compensation for a spell in hospital and a broken bone or two.\u00a0 It\u2019s even less consolation if you were a cyclist or a pedestrian.\u00a0 But if there\u2019s nothing at the intersection to give you the green light, then what would you do?\u00a0 You\u2019d slow down and check that there was nothing coming, kind of like pedestrians and cyclists have to do all the time (oh, yes you do have to check all the time if you\u2019re a cyclist \u2013 cyclists are legitimate road users in the eyes of the law but not in the eyes of a lot of motorists.)<\/p>\n

The idea first cropped up in the 1970s courtesy of a Dutch traffic engineer named Hans Monderman, who challenged the conventional thinking that people become safer drivers with more signs, speed humps, etc.\u00a0 Instead, he took the view that road users aren\u2019t stupid and they don\u2019t want to crash, so if you took away the things that say \u201cif you don\u2019t have a motor, get out of the way,\u201d drivers would stop taking the road and their right of way for granted. To quote Monderman, “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behaviour…The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”<\/p>\n

And the concept seems to be working.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, the idea is spreading.\u00a0 It\u2019s even made it all the way over here to Australia.\u00a0 There\u2019s a shared zone in Bendigo, Victoria, where there are no sidewalks\/pavements for pedestrians and there\u2019s a reduced speed limit in the city centre.\u00a0 Similar designs have cropped up in towns in Sweden (where traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were replaced with fountains and park benches), the Netherlands (where they took out the lane markings), Florida, the UK and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\"shared-space-in-haren-(nl)\"<\/a>Shared zones usually have a bit of a different look to them.\u00a0 A lack of pavements and traffic lights is only the start.\u00a0 Usually, there\u2019s something a touch more decorative on the road surface \u2013 interesting patterns of brick or stone, for example.\u00a0 There may be a bit more street furniture and other pretty things.\u00a0 It\u2019s all supposed to scream \u201cspace designed for human beings not just machines\u201d.<\/p>\n

The idea does have some downsides.\u00a0 The biggest criticism comes from organisations for the blind, on the grounds that with a proper pavement, a blind person knows that he\/she is safe from traffic.\u00a0 A blind person can\u2019t see the traffic they\u2019re supposed to give way to.\u00a0 The other criticism has come from a few cycling organisations, especially in the Netherlands, who have reported that some drivers have a tendency to bully cyclists, refusing to give way when they ought to yield to the cyclist on the grounds that if it came to a car-on-bike conflict, the bike always loses.\u00a0 Mind you, this sort of thing happens all the time even with all the traffic lights, lanes and Give Way signs in the world, as any cyclist will tell you.<\/p>\n

But on the whole \u2013 I think it\u2019s a great idea!<\/p>\n

Safe and happy driving,<\/p>\n

Megan http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/microzaymi-blog-single.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you get fed up with the multitude of traffic signs and signals that constantly bombard you as you drive around town?\u00a0 Have you ever missed a turn-off or some vital piece of information (like a speed limit sign) because it\u2019s just another sign amid hundreds?\u00a0 Or, to take another tack, do sometimes wonder if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11791,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions\/11791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}