Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
This comment basically sums up the reason for doing this. Drivers now expect that transport engineers/councils should ensure they can blast down a road, rain or shine, day or night, busy or not, at 5mph above the posted speed limit (under the police threshold). It is their 'right', and if they can't then someone is to blame. The whole idea of this scheme is to make drivers realise they must constantly adjust their speed to the conditions, and that may very well mean travelling at speeds they believe are painfully slow.
I have driven on many of these sorts of roads in the UK. They are not motorways. Many times they are far from an ideal width due to historical concerns, and heavily shared by pedestrians and cyclists. It sounds like councils are taking a very pragmatic approach to trying to improve road safety for everyone and, provided they don't go out of control (in the end you have to accept some risk vs speed in a transport network) then it sounds like a good way forward.
How about keeping the lines on the edges of the road but removing the middle one?
No idea why this got modded down (perhaps it was the SJW remark?). The comment is right on the mark though: in this region there has been a lot of research into influencing motorists with visual "tricks". We're not talking about removing the center divider on the highways, but about modifying the smaller roads where speed limits of 60 or 80 km/h are in effect. Some of our roads never had a central line to begin with. Other roads have been made to appear narrower by coloring a strip on each side of the road in red (the colour used for bike paths), leaving a black space that is too narrow for two cars to pass. This has had a measurable effect on the speed at which motorists drive there. Other tricks include using lines, fences or even planting trees to make a road appear to narrow on the approach to small towns (where a lower speed limit is in effect). This also results in motorists slowing down unconsciously.
Most accidents happen on these crappy little roads, and speed is a large factor in most of these accidents. In the past two decades or so there has been a lot of attention to safety on those roads, and numbers show they have succeeded in making them safer. Social / environmental engineering of roads is a relatively new phenomenon, and measures do not always work out the way they planned it, but it generally works well. Also keep in mind that over here at least these changes are not designed by idiot council members with an agenda; there are engineers involved who know about this stuff. And in some cases, instead of removing the white line, they add a center divider.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Or (at one time) "reasonable and prudent".
Perhaps my favorite factoid about the state I grew up in is that prior to 1974 there was no set speed limit. When the Federal 55MPH limit was set, Montana's law defined speeding not as a moving violation, but as an "environmental waste of resources", and the fine was a flat $5 which didn't go on your record. The joke was to "keep a stack of fives on the dash" while driving through Montana.
In 1995 they re-instated the "reasonable and prudent" speed limit until it was struck down in 1998. During all of this there was no evidence that the lack of speed limits impacted fatalities.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)