email nick leth at gmail dot com. Need solutions? No worries. Now. |
Cops call for motorists to stop carnage (The West, 7 Dec 2010). How often have you heard the same cries? How successful are we at reducing road deaths? Not very...
You know what the problem is? Our roads are just too safe.
Have you ever hear of "traffic calming"? Make the roads narrower. Add small chicanes. Make it just a little bit more difficult to drive from here, to there. And what happens?
Use traffic calming and -- according to research -- the traffic simply goes away. Doesn't go somewhere else, just goes away. People avoid the "calmed" roads -- the more difficult roads. And they don't go anywhere else.
So traffic calming reduces traffic, simply by making roads more difficult for driving.
Now let's take that a step further...
Add a few potholes. You're driving along -- through a narrow, winding road -- and you just know that the road is badly maintained. There could be potholes... anywhere... So you drive even more slowly, on the lookout for potholes.
You drive more slowly -- and more carefully. The last thing you want to do is to damage your suspension on a pothole. Damaged suspension is very expensive to fix...
And why do we build cars with such great suspension systems? Just use simple springs... Let the driver feel the road under their wheels. Let the driver feel every bump, every pothole... Let the driver be so uncomfortable that they slow down to avoid the jarring and banging.
What happens if you drive your car straight into another? Seat belts grab you, air bags soften the impact, crumple zones keep most of the impact away from the driver... No matter how fast you crash -- the car is designed to save your life!
Remove all those expensive safety features... Let the driver appreciate the thrill of danger... Let the driver understand that, if they crash, they will likely die.
If you are driving a car which will kill you in a crash, a car which jars you over every bump, which threatens to break in every pothole -- you will drive more carefully.
Forget about insisting on superior computer-assisted braking systems, do not legislate for tyres which can safely corner at any speed. Ban the lot!
Build cars which are simply a means of transport. Remove all the cocooning features; they only serve to make the driver feel invulnerable. Build cars which remind the driver that they are driving a potential death trap.
Ensure that every car is a death trap -- if they crash. Support the threat with roads which demand constant attention to driving. Make the driver aware that damage and death are their constant companions, as they navigate a ton of metal along the winding streets.
Crash your car and you will be injured... at the very least.
And people will, without conscious thought, drive more carefully. They will drive within the limits of their vehicles, within the limits of the roads.
Remove the safety cocoons. Let every driver take full responsibility for their own safe driving. Watch the road carnage disappear.
Agamedes Consulting. Support for your thought: email nick leth at gmail dot com |
No comments:
Post a Comment