Mixed Messages: Is Car Design Making Streets Less Safe?
I’m on the recovering end of two back-to-back trips to Dallas Fort Worth, taking a friend to and from the airport. This is one of those trips that prompts my mom to pray for my safety. Despite the Texas motto, “Drive friendly, the Texas Way,” two hours on Highway I-35 is not for the faint of heart. During this drive, I held my breath while negotiating with tailgating pickup trucks, drivers who pass on the right at high speeds, and others who weave and dodge their way through traffic at 20 mph over the speed limit.
I counted at least five broken-down cars on the shoulder. At one exit, I gasped at the sight of a young man pushing his truck along a slip-lane-style exit by a notoriously busy Buccee’s gas station. And 30 minutes from home, I crept with hundreds of other drivers at 5 mph as we waited for firefighters to clear the scene of a horrible car crash. It was the second crash I had seen that day, and the car was unrecognizably smashed.
I feel on edge in the city too. A few weeks ago, I stared in shock as two drivers made illegal left turns from a through lane, crossing in front of the actual left-turn lane on a red turn arrow. While going to get groceries recently, a driver sped up next to me as his lane ended. Instead of merging behind me, he accelerated to the point of almost hitting me, insisting on merging in front. If I hadn’t braked, we would have collided.
I’m constantly puzzled by what feels like a major shift in driving culture, especially when reading tragic stories like this one, hearing about close calls when my husband comes home from the gym or catching myself being impatient with drivers going the speed limit. I know driver temperament explains part of this — some drivers are just impatient and willing to adopt extremely risky behavior.
I also know that infrastructure design explains part of it. On the highway, I suspect that an overabundance of lanes (thanks to the highway-expansion-loving Texas Department of Transportation) creates a spacious vista, and the sight of so much space induces both more driving and faster driving. For a driver prone to high-speed weaving, the sight of several “pockets'' where they can slip around cars is probably too great a temptation to resist. Zoom: off they go! This scenario reminds me of a quote from “The Lego Movie” when the little boy questions his father’s rule against playing with the Legos in the basement: “How do you expect me to resist?”
But what about car design? Just watch any car ad and you’ll see the danger implied in the way cars are designed with a promise for speed, convenience, and mastery over time, space and nature. Just look at your speedometer with its maximum speed far higher than any average person should be driving. This leads to a paradox: Roads designed to induce safer driving are also quite likely to send a message contrary to the way cars are designed. “Go slow,” advises the design of the road. “Go fast,” urges the design of the car.
This puts drivers in a tough spot. Psychologically, humans are always seeking flow with the tools they embrace for life. By flow, I mean that optimal state where you're able to employ a tool or device exactly the way it was designed and with such frictionless ease that you feel a sense of mastery and transcendence over your obstacles. In this state, tools feel less like an outside object and more like an extension of yourself, expanding your sense of competence and agency in the world.
This is why driving is so fun. By nature, cars are designed to give you a feeling of transcendence over space and time — and even over nature itself. That’s what it means to exist in flow as a driver. That’s what is communicated in car ads, in movies with high-speed car chases, in James Bond's sexy supercars and in superhero tales. Looking at cars through the lens of the empowering tool, can you blame drivers for being frustrated when they can’t attain that experience of flow, whether because of other cars slowing them down or safety-oriented driving infrastructure?
This is at the heart of the “safe road design” paradox: If cars communicate an expectation of transcendence over time and space, and if attaining flow requires hitting and maintaining a minimum speed, where does this leave us when such norms are incompatible with truly people-oriented neighborhoods and towns?
The truth is, I don’t know. Perhaps speedometers that taunt us with false promises of high speeds should be banned. Perhaps there should be more truth in car advertising. I don’t know the right “policy” choice here, but perhaps it’s good enough, for now, to recognize that Marshall McLuhan’s insight transfers to cars as well: “The medium is the message.” Cars, by their design, put humans in a particular frame of mind for navigating space. Of course, everyone is still responsible for their own driving choices, and the design of the road can help communicate different norms and expectations. But something must also be said for the effect cars have on people's perception of themselves, of space, of time and of other people.
Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.