tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23884640.post7701642998756718932..comments2024-03-22T03:13:15.710-07:00Comments on Engineering Ethics Blog: Vision Zero: Realistic Goal or Illusion?Kaydeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15055360323969104129noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23884640.post-25845123590762593042018-05-02T07:22:13.928-07:002018-05-02T07:22:13.928-07:00This sounded fine until you started talking about ...This sounded fine until you started talking about the wonders of roundabouts replacing stop signs.<br /><br />A roundabout is in essence a miniature freeway, and like a freeway depends on certain physical properties to work correctly. For example, the diameter has to be wide enough that cars entering the circle are visually reassured that there's sufficient room. If this condition isn't met there's a tendency for someone slam on the brakes on entry, and if there's a car close behind them you can end up with a collision.<br /><br />Roundabouts are also pedestrian-hostile, especially when introduced into areas where they aren't the norm.<br /><br />None of this is idle speculation on my part. A couple of roundabouts were introduced just down the road from here in a location where there simply wasn't enough room. The result was an increase in congestion and accidents, and eventually the city was forced to face reality and remove them. <br /><br />And now I think I know where they got the idiotic idea to do this in the first place.<br /><br />This whole thing also reminds me of the "double nickel" campaign 40 years back, where a universal 55 mph speed limit was imposed. The claimed benefits were supposedly going to be a 2% reduction in fuel consumption along with a significant decrease in fatalities.<br /><br />What we got instead was a at most 1% reduction in fuel use, no clear reduction in fatalities, and what amounted to a tax on poor people as various jurisdictions used the law as an excuse to increase traffic fines.<br /><br />As for the zero-fatality car, I'm sorry, but that's just Volvo PR nonsense. You have only to look at the reported Tesla fatalities to see this. For example, do you really think it's possible, let alone practical, to build cars that will survive being driven off a cliff? Or having the car hit a cement post at over 100Mph? Or when the car was hit from the side at high speed by a dump truck?<br /><br />Engineering is hard in general, and due to both the highly over-constrained nature of the problems it deals with as well as the high likelihood of unintended consequences traffic engineering is hard even by engineering standards.<br /><br />Pie-in-the-sky schemes like this sound great on paper, but are no substitute for looking at things carefully and realistically. BoxNDoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16747475972573324071noreply@blogger.com