On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:43:24 -0800, Zoot Katz <zootkatz@operamail.com> wrote:
: On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:22:51 -0500, Robert Coe <bob@1776.COM> replied
: >"Dave Reckoning" wrote:
: >
: >: The best idea I have seen is counter-intuitive, take down all of the traffic
: >: signs and street marking and make people rely on common sense!!! Street
: >: markings and bike lanes just give the cars the false sense that they can
: >: drive over anything that gets in their way.
: >
: >If that's the best idea you've seen, you should find a better optometrist.
:
: It's called "second generation" traffic calming, a combination of
: traffic engineering and urban design that also draws heavily on the
: fields of behavioural psychology and evolutionary biology.
:
: One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears
: chaotic and demands a strong level of having your wits about you.
:
: It is anarchy without malice.
:
: It challenges one of the fundamental tenets of American urban
: planning: that to create safe communities, you have to control them.

Ah! I think I get it. This is the system that's now being tested in Baghdad,
right?

: For the past 50 years, the American approach to traffic safety has
: been dominated by the "triple E" paradigm: engineering, enforcement
: and education. The history of traffic engineering is the effort to
: rationalise what appeared to be chaos.
:
: Studies of second-generation traffic calming methods have shown
: encouraging reductions in the number of injury crashes, based largely
: on reductions in speed and in the amount of vehicle traffic. The
: Netherlands has noted an injury-crash reduction of more than 80
: percent. In Germany, the number of crashes went up to some degree,
: but the number of casualties decreased 30% - 56%, Great Britain, 24%
: and Austria, 31%.
:
: Do some research

Yeah, like into whether you and others proposing such madness are (or are
shilling for) personal-injury lawyers.

What does this have to do with Verizon cell phones? (Other than the obvious
fact that if this method of traffic "calming" becomes widespread, we're all
going to have to have 911 on speed dial.)