Via Twin Cities Streets for People: Mark Rosenberg, executive director of The Task Force for Global Health, writes about "roads that are designed to kill." Three years ago he found a gravely injured woman lying in an Atlanta street and wrote about the experience.
In response:
Half blamed the runner, saying she should not have been running in the street at that hour. Half blamed the driver, for not paying close enough attention. Not a single writer blamed the road.
I took a photograph of the scene where I had found the runner. When I showed this picture to friends from Sweden they asked, “This is where you live? This is your neighborhood? Your streets are designed to kill people.’’
Rosenberg mentions several design changes to roads in other countries that significantly reduced traffic deaths:
- Sweden replaced red lights with traffic circles or rotaries, and death rates at these intersections fell by 80 - 90 percent.
- The death rate on Swedish roads fell by 70 - 80 percent when Mylar, supported by closely spaced plastic poles and used as a median barrier, effectively prevented head-on collisions.
- Ghana put in rumble strips across all the roads leading into the capital city of Accra, reducing fatalities by 35 percent.
Laws mandating seat belt use and prohibiting dangerous acts like driving while texting or drunk still leave compliance up to the driver. Those approaches may be cheaper to implement than road design interventions, but also appear to be less effective.
I guess it takes a "socialist" country to figure out what "accidents" are predictable and preventable — and then do something about it.
