How to Reduce the Appalling Number of Roadway Deaths and Injuries

By Dom Nozzi

A friend of mine recently told me she heard on her local NPR station today that nearly 700 people have died from car accidents in Colorado this year. Officials, she learned, are concerned that 81% of those deaths have been pedestrians that have been run over, up by 48% over last year. Most all the deaths have occurred, according to this report, at large intersections with wide roads where there are speeds above normal. Apparently, a study is being conducted on how to make these pedestrian crossings safer. She told me she didn’t know how you can do that. That to her, it seemed impossible unless you ban cars or build pedestrian bridges to go over all highways.

I told her that as my newly-published book points out, there are a number of well-known ways to improve traffic safety. The number of deaths on US roads is shocking and shameful. US roads, after a century of “safety efforts” are more dangerous — for bicycling and walking — than ever (unless you want to drive at high speeds – which is the only objective for “traffic safety,” by the way).

There is really only one way to improve pedestrian safety, and it does not include banning cars or building overpasses or lowering speed limits with signs. It involves designing streets to obligate slower, attentive driving.

Priorities: Any road in a city that is larger than 3 lanes must be shrunk to 3 lanes via a road diet. Cities like Boulder (where she lives) need to remove all “slip lanes” and all intersections with a double-left turn lane. Cities also need to incorporate effective physical design changes to roadways so that motorists are obligated to attentively drive no faster than 20 mph in a town center.

Effective tools for the town center:

Give-way streets

Woonerfs

Chicanes

Traffic circles

Bulb-outs

On-street parking

Speed tables

Lanes that are no wider than 9 or 10 feet

Streets in town centers that are no wider than two or three lanes.

No slip lanes in a town center

Small turning radii

Low-speed dimensions for traffic signals, street lights, and street signs (i.e., lower the height of each to a pedestrian scale, not a highway scale)

Street tree canopies

Removal of any center-painted stripes in the street

This is not rocket science. It is done successfully all over the world. Here is a link for my published book -- Time to Start a Traffic Safety Revolution.

There is no mystery as to why so many die on American streets for the past century and up to this day and age. Cities have largely failed to employ any of the above tools.

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Use this link to purchase books published by Dom Nozzi.