How To Build Roads To Control How Fast You Drive

An anonymous reader writes "They're the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment. And now new research shows that, if built right, they just might work. A new study out of the University of Connecticut suggests that minor reductions in vehicle speed are possible through changes in the street environment. Through the use of roadside parking, tighter building setbacks, and more commercial land uses, road designers can make drivers subconsciously drive more slowly." All of that is gonna work a lot better than my strategy of placing car-sized holes covered with twigs and branches randomly every half mile or so down the interstates.

Comments

So maybe a grid layout isn't such a good idea

[dingen]

Most roads are already quite curvy in Europe and I'm pretty sure new roads are constructed in the same manner to encourage lower driving speeds. Straight lines make people want to speed, lots of turns and twists make people want to break, so maybe making all your roads as straight as possible and thus creating grid-like layouts isn't such a good idea after all.

A side effect of less straight roads could also be a decline in traffic jams, because curved lines are longer than straight ones and thus can hold more cars.