Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
I doubt if anyone would suggest that lowering speed limits is a mechanism for making drivers "feel less safe".
I agree that it only makes sense to try out the Monderman techniques very slowly, if at all. I believe it would be downright ignorant to extrapolate from one or two tiny trials "reported" by the cheerleading from a few proponents of the technique.
We were not talking about speed limits, which are almost totally ineffective at slowing down drivers. Recently, traffic engineers are looking much more at the behavior and psychology of drivers in order to get them to perform better. One example is that drivers tend to slow down considerably if the side of the road feels "uneven" to them. Thus, they will slow down if there are parked cars on the streetside, or irregularly spaced pedestrian islands--even though they still have plenty of actual space to drive more quickly.
The links I listed discuss this. But a better introduction is the book "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt. I think you'd enjoy it, if you haven't looked at it yet.