Eliminate the guesswork in Safe Street design

Not long ago, I was driving around town at a normal speed when I suddenly braked to about 5–10 miles per hour on a street close to a school. It wasn’t another car in front of me braking that caused the slower speed, the presence of pedestrians, or a malfunction of my car. Rather, it was the presence of bollards lining sections of a school crosswalk in such a way that I had to brake to move through them. They were so tall and so close to my section of the crossing that slowing my speed was absolutely essential. Driving slower became a no-brainer.  

I love when I find these kinds of design interventions around town. I once drove through another Texas city where they had installed rumble strips horizontally across the lanes of a busy street. It was amazing watching all of the traffic, myself included, suddenly slow down several times in response. I have never forgotten that experience and often mention rumble strips as potentially helpful design choices around high-pedestrian areas. 

I like these types of interventions because they actually work, and by that I mean they actually change driver behavior. But they do so in a way that isn’t stressful for drivers. They aren’t ambiguous, suggestive interventions that ultimately leave the burden of decision up to the driver and ask them to more or less decide if they will comply with the suggested behavior.  

Whether it’s the famous yellow arrow indicating an approaching curve and suggesting slower speeds, a posted speed limit, or strips of paint around what’s meant to be a bike lane, many safe street design features too often put the burden of compliance on drivers, asking them to choose certain behaviors that design should induce automatically. The reality is that the increasingly sleek design of automobiles can make one feel immune to physics itself, and the forgiving design of roads often communicates a message that risky driving choices will probably not hurt anyone—and that message often wins out.

To keep up with these realities, we should imagine and advocate for safe street designs and interventions that make the safer choice automatic, that reduce the burden we’re putting on drivers. For example, perhaps it means that bike lanes lined with cement blockers become the minimum safe standard. This is a design option that eliminates the temptation for drivers to use them as parking or passing lanes, saving their attention and energy for other tasks and making it much safer to bike. The idea of trying to use that bike lane for anything else simply would not present itself as an attractive option to even the riskiest driver. 

Similarly, let’s look at non-signaled pedestrian crossings that leave it to drivers to decide if they want to slow down for people trying to cross. It’s well established that everything about car and road design discourages slowing down unless it’s absolutely necessary, making these awkward situations at best and hostile at worst. We’ve all been there: debating whether or not we would be the driver who would voluntarily slow down or stop for a pedestrian trying to cross. Why not choose pedestrian crossing designs like raised crosswalks that eliminate this process altogether and make slowing down a no-brainer?  

This is part of why those bollards were so effective. My response didn’t feel like a big decision I had to make. They didn’t feel like a suggestion to slow down—they simply made it the only option. This was much less stressful for me, and more importantly much safer for the intended student crossers.

This might sound crazy on paper, as a formula for just frustrating drivers and increasing road rage, but in reality, when safety measures are designed and installed in a way that relieves drivers of the burden of decision-making, it’s much less stressful for everybody. Asking drivers to voluntarily make safe decisions is requiring them to resist the behavior that cars and roads are designed to encourage. That’s a heavy expectation to put on drivers and one that often doesn’t lead to the outcomes we’d like to see.  

In short, traffic calming is like language: it’s best when it is extremely clear and concise, eliminating the need for extra thinking on the receiving end. Similarly, traffic calming interventions are best when they not only make the environment safer for everyone outside of a car, but when they do so in a way that reduces the mental load for drivers.