Safer Streets

Today, I have the confluence of two posts about street safety.

First from Streets MN, Unsafe Streets Are Unequitable: For Vulnerable Road Users, "Doing Everything" Isn't Enough. It's the story of a white, male attorney who was hit by a car while riding his bike, and how hard the process was even with all of his advantages.

Second, there's Jason Kottke summarizing a New York Times article called What America Can Learn from Europe About Redesigning Urban Traffic Patterns. My favorite points that Kottke excerpts:

• The best way to slow cars down is to throw away all the techniques that traffic engineers developed to make traffic flow quickly.
• When drivers slow down to 20 m.p.h. or below, they are less likely to hit people and much less likely to seriously injure or kill people if they do hit them.
• Improving public transit gets you the result of fewer cars. Quoting Bogata mayor Enrique Peñalosa: “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.”

My only argument with the original post is that the writer uses the term "congestion pricing," which is in common use, of course, but he should know that it makes a lot more sense to call it "decongestion pricing" since that is the result.