Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
U.S. engineers say that if only drivers obeyed every law and regulation perfectly and always paid perfect attention that we would have fewer fatalities. Dutch engineers say that drivers are human, imperfect, will make mistakes that could prove fatal and so they design their road system to mitigate these mistakes as much as possible.
Excellent post and astute observations. Roads in the vast majority of the US are designed for cars and cars alone. Walking or riding a bike on the road is literally impossible on the majority of the roads in my area. This exclusion of non-car road users is further encouraged by ridiculous laws like "jaywalking" and the lax enforcement of non-driver rights. It's just taken as a matter of fact in the US that "roads are for cars" and any non-car driving user of the road is a lunatic asking for trouble. What particularly irks me is that we've seemingly arrived here in the US without much deliberate thought. These are really important decisions we're making given the amount of land we have ceded to roads, the legal structures that enable drivers to be reckless, the enormous government subsidies that sponsor car usage and the ways that road usage dictate how we live our lives. Most American can't conceive of another way. Then, there are us weirdos that look at a city like Utrecht and what they've accomplished, how their lifestyles have improved, how the city is much more livable and human, how non-car transportation has been normalized and made safer and you have to wonder how we've gotten it so wrong.