Originally Posted by
Korina
You're right; ELRs are designed for roads with good sightlines In Williams's ELR Design Guidelines, he has this to say about the subject:
I don't see how it would encourage drivers to drive FRAP aside from passing each other and cyclists. It's supposed to be used on low speed, low volume roads, and anyway I don't see drivers being comfortable driving on a dashed line; it goes against their training. It is annoying that there's no crash data for cyclists, but we know where cities' priorities lie.
I should've clarified--FRAP when there's a vehicle coming from the other direction.
The main thing I'm getting from the linked sources is that this really only makes sense on narrow, low-traffic, low-speed roads. As soon as speed and traffic increase, this increases close encounters, not decreases it.
I think this is a good idea if it's confined to the very limited set of roads it's good for, but that there's really a potential for abuse of this is seen as a way to squeeze too much two-way traffic onto a narrow road. I can see how this is going to work in low-density flat-land.
My guess as to why there really isn't good data regarding safety of pedestrians and cyclists is that these are roads where they're relatively safe already, so there aren't enough crashes to calculate risk.