No One Should Be the Second Person To Die on a Dangerous Street
(Source: Flickr/Dan Nguyen.)
Across North America, we are dealing with an epidemic of fatalities and injuries on our roadways. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 42,795 fatal car crashes in the United States, which is an average fatal crash rate of nearly 16 deaths per 100,000 vehicles.
There are many contributing factors involved in every crash and over the past year, cities and towns across North America have been exploring these factors through the Crash Analysis Studio.
The Crash Analysis Studio has one clear objective: No one should be the second person to die on a dangerous street.
This statement reminds me of the positive impact each of us can have in our communities. It’s a motto that should be placed above the door of every engineering and public works department in North America, similar to how Ted Lasso hung his “Believe” sign in the AFC Richmond locker room. We may feel like we are the underdogs with an uphill challenge, but the pep talk I want to share today is that we do have the power to make our streets safer, and in doing so save the lives of people in our communities.
(Source: Better Streets Miami Beach.)
Better Streets Miami Beach shared the image above, which illustrates one small step every municipality across North America has the power to initiate to address a safety concern at an intersection. The image illustrates an intersection where the design communicates to the driver that they can increase in speed. The driver is able to take the turn at a higher speed without stopping or slowing. The problem is that at a high speed, the driver may not see a pedestrian in the crosswalk, increasing the probability of a crash. Implementing a bulb-out forces the driver to slow down, and makes the street safer for people to cross.
Every municipality should be empowered to implement changes like this.
Better Streets Miami Beach shared this image to educate the public and their local leadership. Adding paint at a dangerous intersection should be a quick project that can be undertaken by a roadway maintenance crew in a couple of hours. However, in many communities, this type of small project hits roadblocks and a long list of reasons why they do not feel they have the authority to add striping to a dangerous intersection.
Our roadway designers have become crippled by the mandated approaches of roadway design and highway standards that are handed down to them from the federal and state government. These design standards are informative, but the approaches do not address every problem we find on our roadways. More importantly, if the mandate results in a dangerous street, we should not wait for a better mandate to be created.
The context and site constraints when designing streets at the level of the block are too complex than what could ever be imagined at a state-wide level, let alone at the national level. Each of our cities are responding to issues unique to every municipality. That is why our roadway engineers have years of education and are certified and registered in every state. They are anointed technical experts in their field provided with the education and knowledge that allows them to make on-the-ground decisions. There is never a single, broad-brush solution to meet the needs of our very diverse communities.
The intersection represented in the picture above is like many intersections found in all of our communities. It was designed and stamped by a registered engineer. It follows all the roadway design standards, and was inspected during construction to confirm the intersection was built according to the plans. Yet, this intersection is not safe, and the community is requesting a change.
Once an intersection has been constructed, we can observe and learn more about driver behavior on it. This is new information that the design engineer did not have. Due to the geometries and visually wide lanes, the road feels wider, resulting in drivers speeding around the corner. The mandated design does not address how drivers in this community are using the road.
The dangers of this intersection may also be increased because of other conditions unknown at the time of the design. It is also possible that after the roadway was built, a new neighborhood or school was constructed on this street, increasing the volume of pedestrians using the crosswalk. We cannot conceive of every possible scenario at the outset, and conditions like this change all the time in cities.
If a municipality was informed of a dangerous condition in a park or a roof leak in a public building, municipal staff would jump into action by rolling out yellow caution tape or by placing orange cones around the danger. They would explore a lot of small ideas as to what they could do with available resources to eliminate the danger. This is a scenario that plays out in cities everyday.
However, this practice stops at the edge of the pavement. Municipalities seem to have forgotten that they have the authority and duty to keep residents safe.
Just as the public facilities are able to work quickly to address a safety concern in a building and are able to use the resources available, our qualified engineers should be able to do the same.
Once you acknowledge the struggles, a very quick sketch can be developed to address them. Then, with literally a few hundred dollars’ worth of paint, a response can be implemented in the space of an afternoon, with resources that are readily available in most municipalities.
This is what we at Strong Towns would describe as a small bet. This is a small intervention with very little risk or capital investment. Once installed, we can examine and watch to see what happens. If drivers continue to speed, we have invested very little and we can try another small bet, like adding delineator sticks or plastic bollards, but if drivers slow down, we have accomplished a lot with minimum investment.
Small bets do not require exhaustive meetings, detailed plans, heavy analysis, or lots of money. This is the type of project that a city works department under the direction of a city engineer could lay out and install in a matter of hours. These types of projects can be done with cheap, temporary paint that can be power washed off if we fail, but if we succeed, then we can make a bigger investment in permanent materials.
Every municipality has the power and the authority to do these types of projects on their local streets. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, because we have an obligation as public servants to work to the best of our ability to keep the citizens we serve safe. It’s time we got serious about safety. No one should ever be the second person to die on a dangerous street.
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.