You can’t design away all stupidity, but you can absolutely design away a lot of it. For starters, red lights are red lights. You should never be turning on a red light. Drivers who are used to turning right on red are more likely to do it even when it’s not allowed.
Further to that, you can improve safety by:
Keeping turn radii very low, so drivers have to slow down to take a sharp right angle turn, instead of smooth higher speed curves.
Keep pedestrians safe by giving them a lead time: let them start crossing at intersections with lights a few seconds before cars are given a green light to start turning, so they are well into the intersection and clearly visible before drivers start
Where major roads cross less major roads, use a wombat crossing: cars must drive up as though over a speed bump to the pedestrian’s level, instead of pedestrians walking down onto road level, forcing drivers to slow down like when they go over a speed bump, while visually indicating that pedestrians clearly have priority
Combine the above with having the crossing set back from the road a little so cars have completed their right angle turn and are looking straight ahead at pedestrians before they cross their path
I appreciate the reply. I really didn’t mean that you can’t design away ALL stupidity, as there are clearly infrastructure and road designs all over the world that force motorists to drive in a way that causes less harm.
But my thoughts are that if you have to design infrastructure to “be safe”, rather than have drivers drive safely, then we really should re-evaluate whether these vehicles should be allowed at all. I’ve seen multiple cases of motorists driving over concrete barriers designed to keep cyclists safe. It’s nice that they didn’t kill anyone, but the fact that it even happened is highly worrisome!
Same with speed. Yes, you can design all sorts of things to physically slow drivers down. But the fact that someone would choose to drive 2 or 3x the speed limit is the real problem, not that the roads physically allow them to.
We, as a society, have to change a driver’s behaviour and attitudes.
You can’t design away all stupidity, but you can absolutely design away a lot of it. For starters, red lights are red lights. You should never be turning on a red light. Drivers who are used to turning right on red are more likely to do it even when it’s not allowed.
Further to that, you can improve safety by:
I appreciate the reply. I really didn’t mean that you can’t design away ALL stupidity, as there are clearly infrastructure and road designs all over the world that force motorists to drive in a way that causes less harm.
But my thoughts are that if you have to design infrastructure to “be safe”, rather than have drivers drive safely, then we really should re-evaluate whether these vehicles should be allowed at all. I’ve seen multiple cases of motorists driving over concrete barriers designed to keep cyclists safe. It’s nice that they didn’t kill anyone, but the fact that it even happened is highly worrisome!
Same with speed. Yes, you can design all sorts of things to physically slow drivers down. But the fact that someone would choose to drive 2 or 3x the speed limit is the real problem, not that the roads physically allow them to.
We, as a society, have to change a driver’s behaviour and attitudes.