<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 6/4/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jim Leonard</b> <<a href="mailto:jim_bcm@xuth.net">jim_bcm@xuth.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Turtle,<br>I understand what you're saying, but I must disagree with you on this.<br><br>First at it's simplest I can completely disrupt traffic by moving at<br>0.3 mph on a busy narrow road and while it's completely antisocial, it
<br>is still within your rules. More realistic is the person who is<br>unable to move faster than this but is still given the full right to<br>disrupt traffic.</blockquote><div><br>This happens now anyway. We get traffic jams all the time! So my set of laws wouldn't make that problem any worse...
<br><br>What would help in either my scenario or the current one, would be to create better engineered roads, with at least two travel lanes in each direction, one for normal traffic and one for passing. (Adding more efficient public transit would clearly help a hell of a lot too!) Most current roadways wouldn't need any extra width than they already have to create two full travel lanes in each direction if you add the sidewalk or shoulder to the road width.
<br><br>Also, allowing equal access to travel lanes doesn't preclude having other spaces for more chaotic local commerce. Imagine Downtown Crossing as it is now, then remove the hardline curbs, and plunk my laws into the scenario. In dense urban districts with a lot of pedestrian traffic and lots of local commerce, everyone already has to move slowly and carefully anyway (which is as it should be for healthy and safe communities). While in more empty areas and on rural roads, traffic can move more smoothly and quickly, since there will be less cross traffic, which is also how it is now.
<br><br>The thing is, my set of laws are really what we've all already come up with, as unwritten rules of the road. The only addition that I see necessary is making those unwritten, human-nature rules official, and making it clear that ALL road users have the same rights and the same responsibilities while using the roads.
<br><br>Also, studies have shown that when people are expected to make their own decisions, and are help responsible for the consequences for those decisions, they make far better decisions than when someone else tries to foist one-size-fits-all decisions on them. And that's what I'm trying to work with here.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>On a complete tangent, thinking about the utility of separating<br>vehicles by speed, I find myself lamenting that I'm in a place with no
<br>bike paths. Yes there are several multiuse paths, but no place where<br>bicyclists have the right of way. When I lived in Columbus, it was<br>often worth my while to get onto one of the bike paths because it was<br>
safe and useful. I could travel at reasonable bicycle speeds and not<br>have to worry about pedestrians or worse, their pets.</blockquote><div><br>But, but, but... bicyclists have the right of way all the time on public roads! It's pretty much the first-come-first-served rule on most roads, so once you get into a travel lane, you've got the right of way (until you come to an intersection, where there are probably signs and signals that tell you when your turn to get the right-of-way).
<br><br>-Turtle<br>who notes that about 90% of travelers choose not to stop for the stop sign next to her house, yet the intersection manages to have an infinitesimal number of crashes! So, removing the stop signs AND telling people that it's their job to not hit anyone in the intesection probably wouldn't make much of a difference, and it would save money on signage, would eliminate the psychosis caused by people trying to repress the fact that they are "criminals" for blowing through the stop sign, and it might even improve things a bit by clarifying what people's responsibilites are...
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