I thought I blogged this the last time I read about it, but if I did, I can’t find the post. But today Wired has an article about roads gone wild — an interesting new theory in traffic engineering.
The basic premise is that if there are no signs telling drivers where and how to drive, they’ll slow down and think about it themselves. In other words, “Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer.” Wired says this is counterintuitive. I guess that depends on your mindset.
What I think is interesting are the possible implications not only for traffic patterns, but for changing societal patterns as well. Someone recently commented to me about how strange it is that we don’t look at each other as people when we’re in our cars. We’ve built huge parts of our lives around them, but they aren’t integrated, they’re separate, and they separate us.
I love my car, and, despite what the article says, it is a symbol of freedom for me. But more in a sunset-chasing, random-roadtrip-taking way, not so much in a day-to-day way. In a day-to-day way I hate traffic and how far away everything is. For that, I’d like to see communities similar to the idea apparently being encouraged in New Jersey mentioned at the end of the article.