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Are Roads Safer With No Central White Lines?
Press2ToContinue writes: White lines along the center of roads have been removed in parts of the UK, with some experts saying it encourages motorists to slow down. So is it the beginning of the end for the central road marking? You are driving along the road when the dotted white line that has been your companion — separating your car from oncoming traffic — suddenly disappears. One theory is that you will slow down, making the road safer. What could possibly go wrong?
This is just another example of the sort of nonsense that we have to put up with all over the world, where idiots get into positions of power, and then decide, without asking anybody, to change everything. In this case, the idea is beyond stupid - if people are speeding, then they should be prosecuted by the police. This is very dangerous and stupid, and there will be more accidents (and possibly even deaths) because of it. Will the asshole who came up with it be held responsible? Of course not, they'll get away with it.
Silly old Bubsy. Bobcat's can't drive.
Snow covers them in the winter, and the paint is rarely visible in the summer unless it's a new road. What I've found is roads with single lanes in each direction do just fine without lines. Multiple lanes, turning lanes, or lanes that are about to end often fuck things up, however. This isn't the kind of wholesale change I'd recommend doing on purpose, but I can definitely see the value in certain streets as long as they aren't windy (where drivers will tend to drift towards the center and may not have much time to correct for oncoming traffic after a bend).
...when they finally go big time, given that the white lines currently are used to guide them on multi lane roads.
It seems similar to what i believe they did in the netherlands where they removed any distinction between the road and the pedestrian areas which apparently slowed down traffic. However what ALL these schemes forget is that 99% of people are not driving for the fun of it - they're doing it for a reason and the more you slow them down the slower society will run at the end of the day. So what you say? Well you won't be saying that if your doctor is 30 mins late because of traffic calming or the police/amulance/fire took longer to reach a call despite the blue lights because of the backed up traffic they had to squeeze through.
On dark nights with heavy rain, the white lines are invaluable for knowing where exactly the road is, and making an unexpected departure from the regular route.
Why are they slowing down? The "theory" in the article posits that the removal of the line is the cause. However, like most things in "real-life", it's probably more complicated than such a simple and easy answer (CAPTCHA: headline)!
Another theory could be given that, hey, people who are plopped in an unfamiliar environment act cautiously. Here, they aren't familiar with a road without a visible divider, and hey, better be more cautious! This results in slowing down, for now.
But then in the future, when people are familiar to roads without lines, they resume their original speed. However now, this time, they can't guide their trajectory on the line and accidents increase.
Boom! All of a sudden, in our internet-crazy, fast-inciting lifestyle of simple theories we are poised on making a decision that seems good but will actually cause more accidents over time!
Damn, maybe things aren't really so simple in the real world after all. Maybe someone who actually puts some effort into the cause and effect of the situation will come along and produce a real set of theories to explain the drivers' behavior...
Most German rural highways (read: not the Autobahn, but still arteries between cities) are already like this.
It wouldn't surprise me. There have been studies showing that removing speed limit signs actually improve safety as well, because people tend to drive at a safe speed. When weather is bad, people tend to still try to drive the speed limit. When weather is good, it actually increases the variation in speeds. And it's less speed that kills, it's variations in speed.
That being said, I don't know if the effects would stack - it might be better to have no speed limit AND the white line, or no white line with a speed limit, but having neither or both is less safe. Or it might be situational.
I just hope that self driving cars renders it all moot, though the mental processing involved is interesting.
I don't read AC A human right
Remove the pavement and keep the white line. You can't drive as fast on soil. Problem solved.
For what I can tell, the only difference when changing the speed limits, that is, reducing the the general speed of vehicles does not lead to fewer crashes, only less fatal ones. Of course that is a good thing, but I think the idea is to actually have less accidents, and removing guidance seems to do quite the opposite.
Switching sides is rather trivial except for two things: Roads without centerlines and roundabouts. With the UK being quite close to countries where they drive on the other side of the road (i.e. the rest of Europe), indeed, what could possibly go wrong...
In my neighborhood, we have a 15mph speed limit and no central white line. Consequently, people drive curves on the wrong side of the road at 30mph. The 30mph part is totally safe for the curve, but crossing the middle line is crazy (blind curve). I desperately want a middle line drawn on the curve.
And in general, people will slow down at first, but speed up when they get used to an area.
In France a lot of roads are without markings, especially in big cities. ...
As an everyday motorist in Paris, its mostly a pain not having those markings as it's increasing slowdown, creating problems in case of accidenfs,
When I drive, my biggest question (after the speed limits) is "is there one or two lanes there?". I don't imagine whose responsibility it is in case of accident...
My opinion is it's mostly an economic reason for the towns over the safety part.
Though most are so narrow that they are effectively only 1.5 lanes wide. Where you'd put the lines is a bit of a puzzle there .... both cars slow down, drive on the gravel strip either side until passed, and yes, certainly 'slows the traffic down'.
Even on a motorcycle they take steady nerves and good reflexes ;)
White lines let you make an assumption that any oncoming traffic will be on their side so you can boot on regardless. Same with traffic lights, if you get rid of them traffic flows better but you have to be more careful navigating the junction. If you do have traffic lights people plough on without looking because the light has given them the go ahead
Put a sharp and pointy object in the center of the steering wheel instead.
Road House
partition a straight road into two sides, is a danger to other trafficants, with or without the white line in said road.
Also, note that on the pictures in TFA they widened the bicycle paths and thus effectively put the opposing lanes closer to each other. I imagine that would have an effect on average speed as well.
Sure, why not!
Add lava-filled potholes too and spikes that popup at random, that'll surely slow them down!
The change is probably making drivers more cautious because it's a change and they're not used to it. But once they get comfortable, speeds will be back up.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I suspect this is less about "road safety" and more about saving a few bob. Any slow driving is quite obviously explained by uncertainty due to a change in existing circumstances. Once road users get used to the lack of white lines, speeds will soon go back up again.
But then the current UK government has abandoned any attempt to even appear like making sense. Take the recent "if we leave Europe, France will put refugee camps in the UK" idiocy. How exactly the EU is meant to influence the UK if it *leaves* the EU was again right there out in the open and obvious, they're just not bothering to even come up with rational excuses any more.
Where I live this would result in @ss hats sitting in the middle of the road. It happens all the time when they resurface the road and have not repainted the lines. Since each job is contracted out the contract to paint the lines could be still getting bribes... I mean *incentives* and can sometimes lag up to six months after the road is resurfaced. During that time lots of people just drive smack bang in the middle and sometimes you have to hug the side of the road to get past them, and then they give YOU a dirty look like you were on their side of the road.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
There was a reason they put them down in the first place. This is a stupid idea.
...when they finally go big time, given that the white lines currently are used to guide them on multi lane roads.
No need to wait for autonomous vehicle.
Current safety devices use it already:
- Lane Departure Warning:
vehicle uses the contrast of white lines on dark asphalt to guess where the lane is, and can either alert the driver (e.g.: Volvo cars) or correct course (e.g.: BMW) to stay in the lane. The driver needs to explicitly switch on the turn signal to tell the car that he indeed intend to turn the car.
No lines, not easy for the car to tell what exactly the trajectory should be. Whereas humans can more or less guess based on the surrounding and know where the "virtual lane" should go (and TFA's idea is that this guess-work will force drivers to be more prudent and slow down. My own feeling is that the first 2 weeks, the drivers will be watchful, then they'll get used it, and then everything will be back to normal)
- Forward Collision Avoidance:
vehicle have a forward facing radar that can detect other vehicle in front. So the car can see if the other in front breaks (when they are both in the same lane, i.e.: a traffic jam) and automatically slow down the cruise control (and in some car, resume driving once the traffic jam clears and the car in front starts again).
Also, the cars can detect incoming vehicle or vehicle that are on a crash course and prevent by applying breaks.
For that to work, again the car's computer need to have some basic idea of where lanes are. Other wise, there's a risk that the car will hit the break, even if the stoped/slower vehicle was in another lane, or the incoming car is in the other half of the road (like in TFA's case).
It seems similar to what i believe they did in the netherlands where they removed any distinction between the road and the pedestrian areas which apparently slowed down traffic.
...well at least, pedestrian and cyclist collision avoidance (more usually called "City Safety" by constructor, and currently slowly becoming a strandard option on most vehicle in europe), is entirely Lidar-based or shape-recognition based.
(i.e.: the car doesn't stop on its own because you're dangerously close to a pedestrian area or a bicycle lane, but because it recognised the object in front of you).
So at least *that* idea isn't disrupting existing safety device. But still...
I'm more proponent of some European city which have buried some of their highway network underground.
I don't think that forcing people to think about the security themselves by removing safety marking will actually work on the long term.
I strongly suspect that people will slowly adapt and get used to the missing markings, and start driving as carelessly as before.
If you think about it, large swaths of road miss markings, specially in developing countries. And those countries aren't exactly known for lower incident rates (though other reason, like vehicles to broken to be road-safe, missing driving education, etc. are other factors in play).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Two lane roads cost about about $1M/kilometer to produce... I don't think the cost of line markings makes up a large portion of that, even having to repaint them every couple of year.
That's exactly the point! Putting responsibility in hands of the drivers.
Good drivers don't rely on the central white line anyway. They know how wide their car is and avoid oncoming traffic on one side and cyclists on the other, and drive at an appropriate speed. If taking away central white lines removes a false sense of security for poor drivers and makes them slow down, so much the better. And it is a false sense of security, too: buses and heavy trucks quite regularly drive well over the central white line near where I live because the roads are pretty narrow. If you rely only on the white line you'll plough into one sooner or later. There's usually enough room to squeeze through, but sometimes you just have to stop and pull in touching the hedge to let them past. Like I said, good drivers don't need the central white line.
On my commute to work (41 miles each way) there are at least 7 miles of single track road, with passing places (or as there aren't really enough, also with sufficiently soft verges that cars can usually just about squeeze past each other anyway). There is also a single track bridge and a bit where the road goes under a railway bridge round a sharp enough corner that buses etc. WILL be well across the central line.
Anything that takes away comfort blankets from poor drivers and makes them focus on what they are doing is fine by me. Less regulation, but a harsher line by the courts towards those driving without due care and attention.
Driverless cars shouldn't be relying solely on white lines either: they can get eroded by weather, potholes, poor maintenance, removed during roadworks, covered by mud or snow etc. Rural roads may not have any white lines in the first place. Perhaps the ones at the side of the road might be more helpful, but there has to be a combination of inputs to recognise where the carriageway is, including recognising where oncoming traffic is and steering appropriately to avoid it.
Yeh, that's basically it.
They've got a stat that says slower = safer, so now they're optimizing for slower because its an easier metric to measure.
There's my pet gripe: the roads where they alternate parking left and right to create a zig-zag road. It's made a slight INCREASE in child road deaths, because it creates all these hiding places where kids can pop out at any time, and that is despite the traffic moving slower. The man who introduced it, said it was "statistically as safe" (i.e. the dead kid in the report he was responding to was within the limits of error). But that's because road deaths were so scarce per little piece of road, that they couldn't actually determine if their experiments worked or not, they could only measure speed and replace the metric they really wanted to measure (safety) with speed.
I-495. The gridlock that would occur might even be beneficial.
Passionately Indifferent
I see the insurance company fighting to see who is responsible to not pay what they should pay... It is already an hassle when it is clear cut, imagine when the circumstances are a little bit less evident...
The physical design of the road has more to do with crashes then lines. Its why people crash more on curvy and winding roads then on straight roads. Its why 4 lane divided highway is also better. People crash not because of lines, but because of drivers being under the influence of something, sleepy, or inattentive in maneuvering their vehicle. The argument could be made that lines would make a driver more complacent and lazy by simply following lines. But that also could simply go with a driver not having good driver skills. If you look at some people who drive, they are incapable of staying in their lane without lines. They wonder, and need some sort of reference.
I've been told that the white line is needed for a tipsy driver to follow.
Also, when said driver is pulled over, the quality of the YouTube videos will decline based on asking the guy to walk on the white line
are Germans. They don't slow down from 100km/h (60mph) on those narrow roads and pass oncoming traffic, also doing 100km/h, with less than an arm's length between the cars. If you want to argue that removing the middle line slows traffic, German country roads are not the example to cite.
I say remove head lights and darken those windshields. People will be sure to drive real slow.
I assume these roads never have poor driving conditions such as fog? Because when I've driven in such conditions, I welcome any and all of the hints where the road is (edges and centre) and more importantly where it's going. Reflective markings, sticks along the edges - these make it way safer.
When I was growing up, some of our smaller -- but paved -- farm roads (sometimes called farm-to-market roads) here in rural Texas were single-lane roads with no center stripe. That seemed to work pretty well, granted that the traffic was very light. People who lived out in the country were used to driving on single-lane dirt roads -- county roads -- anyhow, so the wider and paved road was a comfortable step up.
Then an order came down from above that all paved state roads must be at least TWO LANE. And since there was no money available to actually widen any of them. . . Yep, they just painted a stripe down the middle of the one-lane roads and called it two lanes! Two very narrow lanes. Thus, where before we had crowded to the edge of the road when passing somehow, now we are crowded to the edge of the road all the time. And there's no shoulder. This is NOT an improvement.
"...What could possibly go wrong?"
"You were on MY side of the road!"
"No I wasn't!!"
"Yes, you were!!"
"Well, according to MY eyes you were, since we don't have clear markings any more to follow!"
"Well, you need to get your eyes checked! I had plenty of room on MY side!"
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong. Are you fucking kidding me with that? This law looks like it was proposed by lawyers and car manufacturers, since those are the two organizations looking to grow and profit the most by removing safety features from our roads.
Oh and by the way, humans have become way too fucking impatient to feed your bullshit theories about slowing down.
hundreds of drivers soiling their trousers on roads that are now officially pants-shittingly terrifying. Which will also make the roads slicker.
We need the line to assign fault in a collision so that we can figure out who pays. They don't have the line in Panama (cities and Interamericano aside) and people do not slow down. They instead glide towards the edge just as you meet, unless they're drunk and then there is a collision. They do have interesting traffic laws there, though. If you hit a horse during the day, you are automatically at fault. But if you hit one at night, you're automatically not at fault...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is what happens when you let our faggaty gay idiots get the reigns of power, what next , gay marriage?
You are signing us all up for that bullshit with your hairbrained plan.
Note what I said: studies have shown. IE the real-world results of tests removing speed limit signs was fewer accidents. So you don't get to presume that 'outliers will cause more accidents'.
Matter of fact, you just pass some law about unsafe driving and let the cops worry about that, the outliers get busted even faster.
If anything I expressed was 'self driving cars render it all moot'. IE we don't have the accidents because people aren't driving(outside of race tracks and such).
I don't read AC A human right
...is a good thing. Would you believe people are getting ticketed for obeying the speed limit here in some U.S. States because it slows down the law breakers? Personally I wish all speeders dead.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
In the US white lines indicate traffic moving in the same direction, where as yellow lines indicate opposing traffic
This is just another example of the sort of nonsense that we have to put up with all over the world, where idiots get into positions of power, and then decide, without asking anybody, to change everything.
You are so right, my anonymous friend. I call it the Kindergarten Effect. It begins early on, as the teacher has all the children sitting in a circle facing each other and walks around asking each something like, "How would you make the world a better place?" All answers and speakers are praised and each receives a pat on the head, it is a ritual to nurture spontaneity and social development. Raise-your-hand discussion is encouraged but the teacher is ever steering into the realm of the positive, the kids watch the teacher for emotional cues, and none dare risk a raised eyebrow or stern word.
By middle school this ritual should have evolved into a real round table discussion where everyone feels free to interject negative responses and opposing views as well as the positive. I suspect this has not been permitted to happen.
By high school it should be a real roller coaster ride for the intellect and emotions, your peers able to dish out applause or catcalls or even throw non-lethal objects. You can win or lose big. But you better not even open your mouth until you're prepared to explain yourself well, defend your idea, debate worthy responses or and reward trite comments with your own brand of scathing wit even it is a loud shaddap. I suspect this has not been permitted to happen.
In fact, I think that many educators in the last 30 years have become secretly convinced that children grow sharp quills as they approach maturity and are inherently dangerous to society unless those quills are plucked out or ground down. Disagreement is the new aggression, the teacher's raised eyebrow becomes detention and demerits, and those who think an idea is just plain lousy must just remain silent.
This leads directly into adults who not only fail to consider the consequences of their ideas, they don't even think it's 'their job' to do so. And if others point out that an idea is lousy they are seen as simple naked aggressors, people-obstacles to overcome or shout down. So others around them whose quills have also been plucked out, defer to hierarchy of dominance.
We as a society are falling prey to The Kindergarten Effect. Things that should have been laughed out of the room, like the idea voting should be electronic without any forensic paper trail, were not laughed out of the room. We now reap this foul harvest.
The confidence that encourages speeding and reckless passing is fed by the width of the road how much oncoming traffic is present, not the presence or absence of a dividing line. Good drivers (even reckless ones) make subconscious use of dividing lines to place themselves within lanes when the roadside has too much visual clutter. Bad or distracted drivers do an 'oopsie' only when they see the dividing line veer into them. Removing lines from wide roads places everyone in harm's way.
Many people who speed are in fact skillful drivers, and some who keep within the limits are actually driving with their whole minds set on it, who'd endanger everyone if any useful features were removed. The position that keeping people from exceeding the speed limit is the prime focus of the 'focus group' and trumps all other concerns, should have been laughed out of the room.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I can say, from experience, NO.. A road that once was already a dangerous road because of the tree's actually only being 20cm from the tarmac itself, and only barely 2 cars in width, but with a line in the middle.. After reconstruction/renewing of the tarmac, they put only lines at the side of the road, actually if you are on the lines itself and only swerve a little bit you're in the shoulder, and kissing a tree, but now without the line in the middle.. More cars have hit the tree's now, and more cars have hit each other's mirrors, due to not being able to clearly determine the middle of the road.. and just one extra, it's an unlit road...
Any modification on an environnement will make people to change their behavior to a more acceptable one!
I live in a country where road line disappear 3 to 6 months in a year, every year, because of snow and road deicing, and since is normal for us to not have line, drivers act like asshole with or without line !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Your post referring to "SJW" lynch mob is an example of seeing an opinion you don't agree with, then assigning it to the group you don't agree with with no proof or relevance. Typical Republican/Democrat/etc thing to do.
It's turtles all the way down.
As anyone who lives in a country with actual seasons, and drives in Winter, already knows, driving without a centre line is perfectly fine if not better. For several months every - or almost every - year the line isn't visible because it's under snow and/or ice.
in England, even roads with a "central white line" are almost universally only wide enough for a single car at a time to drive down them by any sane measure. When there is no white line, cars will often drive down the middle of the road, and "slow down"/"move over" when another car approaches, entirely out of necessity.
When there *is* a white line, most cars won't do this, despite the same necessity still being there.
England's roads (the ones they are talking about) are basically foot-paths which were widened over time enough to allow horses through, but which were never widened or maintained enough to allow multiple cars through in any case. Two American cars would literally not fit side-by-side on these roads.
What is actually needed is wider, better-lit roads, with real shoulders and barriers at the side. But that costs money, so instead we get proposals like "what if we don't bother to even repaint the lines anymore?" and "people will slow down if we stop lighting the roads entirely"
As for "slowing down", the speed limit on most roads (even ridiculously tiny roads) is "meh, whatever". If they really want people to slow down, reducing the speed limit would be the *first* thing I'd try. It seems not to have occurred to anyone in England, though.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
That sounds like a terrible idea.
I already encounter plenty of people who, upon encountering an obstacle on their side of the road, will happily veer over into my side of the road, even if it means crossing a yellow(*) line. They don't seem to grasp that if they have an obstacle on their side, they should slow or stop instead of just veering into oncoming traffic like a moron.
If with a big strip down the center of the road which indicates "your side/my side" people will still cross into oncoming traffic, there is no way in hell I would trust them without the damned line. Hell, I routinely see places with two left turning lanes where half the drivers just stray into their neighbors lane like +- 15 feet is just fine.
Trusting the average driver I see to know where the middle of the road is without some form of guidance seems idiotic, because they can't do it now. I can't tell you how many people I see who seem to think they need 15 feet of space on their right to clear a parked car, which puts them firmly onto the side of oncoming traffic and are apparently too stupid to realize they can't do that.
As TFA says, "Absurd, barmy, crazy".
It's not a shared space, I get a lane, you get a lane, you stay the hell out of mine. You don't get to make use of my lane just because it's there and you don't know where your car is.
This sounds really really stupid.
(*) we use solid yellow lines to separate from on-coming traffic for you Brits, instead of dashed white ones -- white ones are to separate you from people going in the same direction.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It looks like removing roads encourages motorists to slow down...
You're welcome.
Here we can watch the term "SJW" evolve into a synonym of "something I dislike".
It's great when you don't need to think, because... thinking is hard.
Same thing here I suspect as with:
*Double daylight savings time stats for the two periods in history when it was tested in UK.
*Cubic spline curves on highway exits to reduce normal road entry speeds.
*Progressive noise strips on roundabout entries.
*Removal of curbs on shopping streets
etc.
All these 'experiments' that 'proved' their worth statistically, partly relied upon the introduction of something unfamiliar to the road user, which in turn promoted unease and inherently better observation. Unfortunately, after introduction and a suitable period of use they became familiar and their benefit was either nullified or in some cases resulted in greater road carnage.
Someone once said that over time the motorcar has become safer with seat belts, airbags, disk breaks, wide tires etc. Which resulted in such a feeling of well being that drivers drove progressively faster and more dangerously. The suggestion then was to remove the seat belts and airbags and replace them with a 6 inch metal spike sticking out of the steering wheel. This would theoretically cause drivers to be much more cautious of speed lest they be impaled. Anyone want to do a double-blind statistical study?
They do this in Ontario, Canada on a lot of rural roads. Well, they installed them without lines, rather than remove them. People still go 100 km/h on those roads instead of 80 km/h, because they're straight and not busy.
So because the road seems weird to what a driver usually expects they'll slow down...but humans being smart they'll soon speed back up.
So in theory the change causes people to become more cautious? because the real danger is speed? (let's ignore the autobahn because it defies the "speed kills" thought camp. Yes accidents at higher speeds are more deadly, but accidents rates are the mass killers, inexperience, drunken driving etc - not speeding)
Of course what a genius idea it is to change roads randomly to see if people are more cautious for testing. Why not change them all the time? make contra-flow lanes, make them glow in the dark and put scary signs. Everything will be so much safer right? -err at least initially when drivers will be worried about this odd section of road.
If speed is such a concern why not limit the speed of vehicles to the national speed limit? -plenty of heavy goods vehicles are speed limited why not everything else?
Traffic police want to fine us. Make money off speeding drivers. They know it's not speed that directly causes accidents but merely a factor (sometimes not even that).
What did speed cameras achieve? more fines and drivers that know where the cameras are that speed between them. Toll roads that have drivers speed all the way to the rest stop and have coffee for 30 minutes.
Accident rates are lowered by better drivers. Survivability is increased with better technology and judgement of better drivers.
Yes, better roads and signs are a factor but what is more important is consistency. If you use the same system everywhere you know what to expect everywhere but I digress.
In my opinion the driving test only forces you to learn how to pass it. You only really learn to drive on the road, with time and experience. Most drivers drive nothing like they did on their theory test day. (for better and worse)
It would be nice if governments focus on *offering* (not imposing) refresher and advanced driving courses every so many years. That they focus on prevention by enhancing driver skills and setting legal limits based on scientific, testable conclusions that are long-lasting. That safety agencies use new electronic measures to limit acceleration and top speed in areas of increased risk. (read school ahead!). To legislate certain reasonable limits for vehicle power to weight ratios for commuting.
Lastly, that governing bodies come up with a no BS plan to combat congestion and other driver frustrations. Encourage different start times, flexible working hours, put schemes and initiative because everyone wins when traffic flows.
All of these can be solved with an autonomous shuttle. A self-driving vehicle. It does not get tired, it does not get angry, it is always driving in accordance with legal requirements, it keeps its distance, it accelerates responsibility and has technology to mitigate collision damage. Best of all the data can be used to make every driver less car as safe as an experienced cautious driver. -scores of people die in traffic accidents every day. They don't have to.
Personally I'd rather be reading slashdot on the way to work than watching the bumper of the car in-front of me. I hope you will agree that the time for driver less cars is now and possibly long overdo.
(I started off writing with a point in-mind but it became a stream of consciousness type thing. Thanks for reading.)
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Does anyone remember when they first got their driver's license how they drove cautiously all the time because everything was new? I don't have any evidence but I suspect this line removal makes people drive slow in the short term because it's something they've never seen before. Once they get used to it I assume they'll go back to old habits.
If you are unsure about the oncoming car, you should slow down, even stop, to allow the other car pass. If not, it's your fault as much as the other driver's fault if something happens.
(if you get hit while stationary it's hardly your fault)
That is all bullshit on Freeways, in fact it IS illegal in the U.S.. Going too slow is legally a hazard on roads and you can be ticketed for it.
Increasing stress while driving, especially for long daily work commutes, is completely unacceptable. People have crappy spacial judgement at any speed. Unless you are fine with turning 60 mph Freeways into 15 mph Freeways and turning the work commutes for entire regions into 4 hour trips each way instead of 1 hour trips then removing white dashes/lines is utterly insane. Road Rage will go through the roof as will accidents (no matter what you say) and I would be one of an endless number suing the fuck out of the dimwits who made it happen as well as voting them all out of office.
This kind of bullshit might work in the small villages of Europe where everyone works 2 miles from where they live but not in the U.S.
> the vast bulk of the cost of your choice to drive (as opposed to say - taking the train) is not paid by you but by other people (and that's without considering climate change costs). A lot gets amortized over everybody else who drives (they all take longer to get there - time has value) ...
> If you had to personally bare the full cost of driving, far fewer people would choose to drive
Suppose you're right that the cost of your choice to drive is spread amongst all drivers. We'll call the cost of one person driving X.
Suppose one million people drive, so X is spread over one million people. Each driver pays X/million in lost time, cost of insurance, cost to build and maintain roads, etc.
HOWEVER, according to your theory, because you drive, you also pay x/million for each of the million other drivers. There are a million other drivers, so in total you pay a million times x/million, which is of course X : precisely the cost of your driving.
In other words, if THEY share the cost of your driving, YOU also share the cost of their driving. For "cost per driver" X and "number of drivers" Y:
X / Y * X = X
Each driver pays the cost of one driver.
So pretty soon road safety engineers will be advocating for opaque windshields, probably made of steel.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Heavy traffic is less safe than light traffic. One of the dominant factors in traffic heaviness is how many cars can traverse a given stretch of road over a given time period. If everyone reduces their speed, the obvious result is heavier traffic.
This reminds me of a recent case I'm still miffed about with red-light cameras in my area. They're using them to ticket for failing to fully stop when turning right-on-red. They're raking it in because at one large intersection here, it's common for everyone to flow right on red without stopping when that flow is protected by left-turning cars coming out the opposite way. It's not legal, but it's normal and nobody was getting ticketed for it before. Now everyone's has to stop on this right to avoid a ticket regardless, which is causing further traffic clog behind the light, leading to less-safe conditions. There's no safety reason to stop under these conditions, and further there's a pro-safety reason (due to reduced traffic) to *not* stop, but the law is now monetarily encouraging unsafe behavior.
Remove the pavement from the road and motorists drive even slower. LOL.
First off, this is totally stupid. The lines aid in driving in reduced visibility.
Why not just let the lines fade away? Are they actually spending money on removing the paint? In my experience it doesn't take very long for the paint to wear off from normal wear and tear.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Having spent a large part of my life living in Devon (a very rural part of the United Kingdom, lots of farms, tiny villages, small roads/lanes - often not wide enough for 1 car in each direction, except at specific "passing places" - with high hedges to the side limiting both long range visibility of the road ahead and the run-off/avoidance options for traffic coming in the opposite direction), I can say that driving on a road with no central line marking, which is also narrow and with limited visibility, does tend to lead to either slower speeds (the careful drivers) or much higher speeds (the drivers who fantasize about being a rally driver, and who assume nothing will be coming the other way).
Take away the line down the middle of the road, and the road feels narrower, at least to me. But there may also be an assumption that the road is a (very wide) one-way street, so the result would be that drivers move to the middle of the road. That would make life interesting if you come around the corner on such a road, and see a car driving in the middle of the road. Maybe I am not giving my fellow drivers enough credit, but when my father taught me to drive, he always reminded me "assume every other driver on the road is an incompetent idiot with no control over their vehicle"... sadly I have seen a lot of evidence that backed up his statement.
Another element came when driving the E10 highway in northern Norway and Sweden with my girlfriend (very competent driver, in a landscape that was sometimes the typical alpine "wall of rock on one side, sheer drop down the other"). She was perfectly happy and capable of driving when there was a line in the middle of the road, even with large semi-artic trucks coming in the opposite direction at 80+km/h (50+mph), but as soon as the lines disappeared because the road narrowed a bit, or there was a stretch of newly resurfaced road with no markings, she was very uncomfortable and wanted me to drive, because the road then felt restrictively narrow, especially with the trucks driving on it (there was space for the truck plus our car, but not a huge margin for error in car positioning).
This seems like a subtle way to discourage automatic cars from making it to the roadways. The current crop of primative driverless cars uses lane markers as an easy-to-parse guide to finding the road edges and lane, and staying in them.
It will also make driving on wet roads, at night, much more exciting!
Anyone who thinks people will slow down has never actually driven to work in the morning.
People tend to drive at the highest speed at which their estimate of the danger is still negligible.
Increasing the real danger by removing the lines, mandating zig-zag parking etc. causes the drivers to slow down to maintain their estimate.
The result is slower traffic at the same or even higher danger level than before the change.
I live in the Netherlands, where a few years ago a new class of road was introduced. Secondary roads outside urban areas were divided in two classes:
- the existing class, speed limit 80 km/h with a line down the middle, will now be reserved for roads with no houses on either side, and no bike traffic.
- some roads (with houses) were converted to the new class, with a speed limit of 60 km/h and no line down the middle, but lines at the edge making the road appear smaller than it really is.
In the Netherlands, this works reasonably well.
In the UK, something similar has been done in some areas, but:
- the posted speed limit often isn't lowered
- the road is narrower to begin with
- the edge of the road is full of potholes
The central line was helpful in keeping your vehicle close enough to the center of the road to avoid the worst potholes, without running the risk of colliding with oncoming traffic.
Without it, in wider vehicles you end up micromanaging your position on the road. In a van, I spend more time making sure my side mirror won't get smashed than I am monitoring the traffic situation. My situational awareness drops when there's no central line, and I have to slow down.
Cars don't have this problem as much, so the speed difference between classes of traffic (and the annoyance level at having slower traffic in front of you) rises.
Maybe they should paint pictures of scary things on the road. That should slow people down right? If people are driving slow and in fear they must be safer right? Engineering based on the expectations of human reaction to a stressful situation (ie. people driving on the road in low visibility conditions) is utter horse $### and the people responsible for making this decision should henceforth not be allowed to make decisions that effect other people. Can we put them in charge of cats maybe?
If you want to make people drive slower, there are several effective methods that do not increase danger.
1) Large bumps in the road.
2) More and sharper turns in the road.
3) Jagged lines painted in the road.
4) Curb extensions/road narrowings.
5) Rumble strips
6) Traffic Islands
None of which make it physically harder to drive, they just make you pay attention.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Those white lines do a good job of keeping you steering in the right direction on a dark and stormy night.
Lowering overpasses so trucks slow down, (completely).
> Even if you only ride tge train your taxes still help pay for roads - so they cost more.
In actuality it's the other way around. Of every $100 in gas taxes, about $70 pays for roads, $20 pays for mass transit, and $10 goes elsewhere. Train tickets cover 10%-20% of the cost of trains in the US.
Additionally, the above figures (gas taxes pay for roads + trains) considers only the gas taxes paid directly by consumers. Gas taxes paid by producers, refiners, distributors, etc add substantially more - covering more than 100% of the cost of mass transit in the states I checked.
Obviously you can have your opinions about how you wish things were, but your trying to make up your own mathematics. That doesn't fly.
In TFA, why does the photo show a point of view of driving on the right side of the road... in the UK?
Sounds to me like they're trying to stop the autonomous vehicle movement before it really starts. What better way than to take away the indicators that the cars use to keep their position?
Cars in the 1970's were big, slow to get up to speed, slow to stop, and handled like they were riding on marshmallows. And the United States had a 55MPH speed limit across the country. Cars got better, much better, and the speed limits have gone up accordingly. Horrific looking accidents are far more survivable now because of massively improved safety standards. In many regions, time spent in traffic is improved because people are free to drive up to 75MPH on many interstates while staying in sync with the flow of traffic. Getting people moving faster allows the highways to allow more vehicles to travel on them per day. We should be figuring out how to safely get the speed limits up, not down.
I don't know about other countries, but in the US the redaction of the white line will give a license for a whole new level of passive-aggressive driving (as well as more overtly aggressive). We already have problems now with people who hog the fast lane, or who speed up and slow down to prevent other motorists from overtaking them or otherwise joining their lane. I can see that same class of jerk swerving back and forth to hog more of the road for themselves.
Sounds like a great recipe for increased accidents, road rage, and congestion. No, thanks.
In residential areas where there is a 25MPH speed limit, is it safer to drive on the far right side of the road or is it safer to drive near the middle of the road? Obviously, you pull to the right to pass on-coming car, but what is there is little to no on coming traffic? The 'unexpected' tends to come for the sides of the roads and driving near the center of the road increases visibility and gives you more time to react. There is no real danger of hitting an on-coming car, both drivers have plenty of time to move to the right.
I think it is partially nonsense.
The "partially" is that if the angular change over time seems fast - then people will naturally slow down as it takes longer to evaluate the situation. Thus it would make more sense to put small bushes near the roadway at irregular intervals (like 5 feet off the road, and a tree at 8-10). Distance off the road depending on the desired/posted speed limit.
The nonsense part is removing the dividing line. Without it there is no legal liability for being on the "wrong side of the road" as there IS no "wrong side".
That would be a ridiculous idea in the US, with more and more and more fat trucks and SUVs that already can't fit in half the roads' width.
TFA: "In medieval Dutch villages, with little through traffic, it can work well and pedestrians and cyclists can interact with drivers," Mr King said.
Nowadays those kind of interactions usually wind up in the hospital and/or the morgue!,
If they take everyone's cars away and replace them with bicycles, it guarantees that the traffic will be slower. However, that doesn't mean it's a good idea!
Wouldn't help safety at all here in the US. We have too many Libertarian drivers here who drive in any damn lane they please, because they can and they aren't going to ever get a ticket for it; even when there are signs posted "slower traffic keep right". And these aren't amateur drivers either, taxi drivers and truck drivers who are supposed to be professionals also do it.
We need to be encouraging people to drive faster, not slower.
No.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Is it really safer, or is that yet again something the govt just tells you to justify saving money on paint?
Next question?
For the most part speed doesn't kill compared to crossing into the other lane and hitting someone head on. Not to mention this really hinders all the new cars with their line following/lane changing tech.
why not experiment with roads that throw unexpected obstacles into your path, I bet that would drastically reduce speed too and by their logic increase safety ^^
>So you reduced my final estimate with that correction by what ? 1% ? 1.5% in some regions ?
What final estimate? You said train riders pay for cars, when it's the other way around. 1%, you ask? Your claim was 100% wrong.
> what the hell is your alternative explanation for traffic jams ?
If you use Google maps much, or any traffic app really, you may have noticed that most major traffic jams occur at traffic accidents and construction blocking a lane. We COULD build four lanes of freeway where we only need three during rush hour, in order to reduce traffic problems when accidents occur, but a) that's expensive and b) rubber-neckers slow down to 20 MPH on both sides of the freeway whether their lane is clear or not, so the extra lane wouldn't really solve the problem. You'd need entire spare freeways. We're not willing to double our freeway cost in order to reduce traffic jams.
In fact, we're not even willing to come in to work an hour earlier and leave a few minutes earlier in order to avoid most of the rush-hour traffic.
Beware of the unintended consequences. The reaction of drivers encountering an approaching vehicle encroaching into their lane is to steer towards their shoulder. Never mind the painted bike lane. And even at 'slower' speeds, that can be fatal for a cyclist.
Have gnu, will travel.
>What could possibly go wrong?
My first thought was five times as many head-on collisions at an average five miles per hour less than before.
I wonder if the missing lines help the ambulances get there faster?
The center lines have already quit existing for many US drivers. Just watch one yapping on their cell phone while they head down the road in their SUV.
This doesn't seem to decrease crashes (these are not "accidents").
Government tries to save money by not painting roads. Conjures up possible safety reason to justify it.
When I drive, I frequently take one street home. It's hilly. On it, for maybe half a mile, there's no center line. It is two way, and there are cars parked on one side; the other side has a barrier, with park beyond it.
Oh, and did I mention that a city bus line runs on it, and the space for two vehicles is somewhat narrow?
mark
PS: I challenge Google's self-driving car to master *that*. They can contact me, if they wish, and I'll show them the street on google maps.
This may well just be a temporary effect that vanishes and becomes the opposite once people are used to it. Unless they can rule that out reliably, this is a broken analysis.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There are millions of miles of roads in the rural U.S., both paved and unpaved, with no lines what so ever, most barely wide enough for two cars. The same goes for suburbia, and people aren't running into the ditch or into each other in droves because we know how to stay on the road and on our side. If you need a little white line to tell you where your side of the road ends, then you should probably not be on the road to begin with.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
One each standard regulation pony, USP.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlpfanart/images/4/47/Wildfire.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130530152807
Removing speedometers will make drivers even more cautious. Let's remove some instruments from airplanes so that pilots are always alert. Blindfold all of them for the best results.
I'll never understand why people would rather make up numbers than look them up. As I told you, road transportation expenditures by government in the US are about 70% of the revenue they get from consumer gas taxes. In other words, for every $70, gas tax in the amount of $100 is collected from consumers. gas tax pays for transportation infrastructure plus a lot more.
Sales taxes don't pay for roads, they just don't. Wish it all you want, that's not what happens, not in the US.
Good day,
There is a plan to change driving sides, should you be currently driving on the right, we will standardize to the left. It will be progressive.
Busses and trucks first, next week it will be passenger cars.
good luck one and all.
Why isn't the goal "ensure rapid travel subject to reasonable safety?"
What about removing paving?
Seriously - just do it. Ban them.
Then when there is an accident you can sue Google. Simplifying everyone's insurance claims.
win/win
That's all London needs, slower traffic. It's not like it has a massive congestion problem or anything.
Whoever thinks this is a good idea should go stand in a grocery store for 8 hours. Seriously.
Here in Texas they like to use these reflector things instead of a proper middle line on many roads. The things come up so 2/3 of them are missing and it is hard to see the lines and tell the lanes apart. I can assure it certainly does nothing to help people even find their way around let alone drive safely.
I want you to stop for a second and imagine a 6 lane road (for a total of 12 lanes with both directions) without any lines. This is a recipe for a nightmare.
This is a simple matter of lazy government officials trying to make excuses for not maintaining their roads.
Safety markings by definition mark the safe area to drive on a road.
Removing Safety markings by definition make the road less safe.
If their going to remove the safty markings I can see no reason the pay any attention to speed postings, school zone notices or constructions flaggers.
This is equally as stupid as removing headlights, airbags and seatbelts from the cars themselves.
Whats next, big steel spike in the center of the steering wheel? Electric shocks every time you step on the accelerator?
What a bunch of jackasses.
Sometimes in heavy rain / fog, that white line is the only thing keeping me on the road
How about we eliminate the whole idea of staying on one side for each direction. Just let cars spread out and pass on the left or right. Everyone would slow way way way down
. We could paint people's windshields so that only a small patch remained. That would slow people down. We could just put limiters on people's cars to keep them below 10mph.
We could ration fuel so that few people are able to drive.
We could make cars out of foam so it didn't really matter what they hit.
Or we could actually set minimum safety standards for cars on the road and make sure that there are no roadblocks to self driving cars which looks like the most promising safety technology to have ever hit the market.
Then when SDCs are actually a reasonably available thing, we could begin phasing out manually driven cars if it is shown that they are where they danger lay.
This can't possibly be real. Logic and the advance in technology would dictate that speed limits should be increased. But instead someone wants to remove the white lines separating lanes in hopes that it'll "slow down traffic"?!? This can't be real.
Haven't taken the time to read all the comments, but don't certain driver-less and current safety type features depend on lines to keep you in a lane? If there is no center line how is an autonomous car going to determine the the correct lane to be in?
My only concern with not having the centre line is if you are driving somewhere new, you can't be entirely sure if you have actually driven onto a one way street and not noticed any sign indicating this. More of an issue for narrow roads, though.
I don't know about other people, but I don't get involved in that. My insurance company handles that for me. (The current claim is likely to be interesting that way, but I'll miss the drama. It turns out I wasn't involved in that particular accident.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I think that anyone who thinks removing lane markings on the road needs to try driving on such a road in bad weather conditions late at night when they are tired and just want to get home.
With any luck they will not see that bend in the road and will drive off the cliff and die.
There we go problem solved. Do this to all parties campaigning for this very stupid idea and it won't be a problem for anyone else.
But seriously, I have lost count of the number of times I have been in the situation where visibility is reduced, its night and you can't see anything else accept the fog reflected in your headlights and those dashed lines, often there are no edge markings on the road or they have been covered by debris or just worn off.
Those dashed lines are all that you have to guide you along that road and all that you have to keep you on your side of the road.
Just as a side note, Aren’t those lines used by Tesla's autopilot feature?
Thanks to the illusion that, "White lines along the center of roads...encourages motorists to slow down.".
Yeah, right.
Let's make roads safer by... making them less safe?
Let's apply that logic to sex. Let's puncture condoms so users would be more careful and more likely pull out, why not?
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Ex-U-K-resident-charged-in-fatal-wrong-way-crash-6816414.php
apparently inexperienced 27 year old UK driver on a Connecticut road kills local elderly couple. seems he 'forgot' to drive on the right-side. could only get 10 years sentence.
I currently live in a very rural area in a state east of Texas (not that far out; however, far enough that I must rely on satellite for internet since neither DSL nor cable extends to this point... so much government supplementary for rural internet, but enough of chasing that rabbit). Many, but not all, or even the majority, of roads here are also paved, yet unmarked roads with narrow lanes. Most people simply drive in the middle of the road, only moving over for oncoming traffic. The speed limit on a nearby road is 25mph (about 40 km/h); most motorists drive about 50mph (about 80.5 km/h). Rain, sleet, heavy winds, or wildlife (usually deer, but sometimes rabbits, possums, etc) usually does nothing to slow people down. Sometimes, when the weather is especially bad (white out from rain), they speed up with the probable intent to get out of the weather faster. I would assume that removing the lines in an existing area would temporarily slow down traffic in an area, but I suspect once acclimated, people will increasingly return to their previous driving habits.
I read that, seeing as you haven't linked to a single study, let alone the plethora of peer reviewed studies required to reasonably prove your point, I noted it down as bullshit.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
To make roads more dangerous, in order to make them safer.
We wouldn't set a runway at an airport in the dark, to make for safer landing, would we?
My 2 cents: put reflective material in the dangerous spots, and use some kind of optical illusion to make situations look more dangerous than they are.
e.g. narrower using bigger lines on the road's sides.
On the other hand, maybe this is just a budget cut, and someone found some statistics to back it up.
I guess I'm a little biased. I'm from Spain and I toured the UK on a motorcycle. When going through smaller roads, driving on the opposite side (opposite to me xD) and often not even seeing the lanes divided it made me a bit uncomfortable. Not to mention that more often than not I found that the oncoming car was driving through the middle of damn road.
I'd figure that they'd made it one way, take up the whole road AND go faster autobahnstyle
In my case its more a question of habit: /brek/,
I write a lot of code professionally, so nearly always when I write the sound
I mean the verb "to break" as used in the operand in most language to break out of a loop.
I seldom discuss cars, and thus rarely write the noun "the brake"
(and when I discuss, I usually speak another language. English isn't the language I speak the most, as one might notice)
As /. is filled with computing people, that might explain why brake/break mix up is common, even among people who are able to understand the difference between bare/bear or lose/loose.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I saw a documentary on the development of self-driving cars some 10 or more years ago and they were already using other visual cues besides lane markers. For example the subtle difference in shade between the track of the tires and the lane center.
The idea isn't bad, but I haven't seen a car yet into production with such capabilites.
That's perhaps due to the fact that most car currently deployed with lane detection must cope with bad weather, and as soon as the light conditions are sub-optimal and/or the road is slightly covered by rain water (or simply brand new and has no tires marks already) the makings aren't as much visible as the retroflective paint used for the white lines (you need snow to cover that. Or the paint must be really old and a good layer of reflective water need to obstruct it - which are still event that happen here around and disrupts the LDWS of cars I've been driving)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Call me a cynic, but I see this happening every day on the UK motorway network.
That's also Google's own experience when they gave out a few of their first (as-in a regular car that can go fast, but modified with a ton of sensors) beta-version (as in early version, first time not driven around by the developers and engineers making them, but regular testers. So they might crash any moment now or other weird bugs) autonomous cars to some employee for them to test.
The employee were supposed to be very watchful and pay attention to everything the car was doing and not to rely on it, because so early test versions might go wrong at any moment without notice.
Instead at the developer's/engineer's horror, the people were blindly trusting the AI and took to opportunity to read, take a nap, etc. and generally not pay attention at all at what the car is making.
That's why google is now pushing for cars that 100% autonomous without even a drivers wheel (an emergency "stop" button being the only control available) and that go slowly.
People are going to be careless at the first chance given by technology. So let's not take risk and make sure the thing is idiot- / darwin award- proof.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]