What could possibly go wrong?
If true, pure lunacy:
Behind the wheel, you want the least amount of distraction possible. So why is a local transportation agency painting crooked lines on the road on purpose?
The Virginia Department of Transportation says it’s part of a safety campaign to get drivers to slow down in a high pedestrian and bicycle area. The 500 feet of zig-zagging lines are painted on the ground on Belmont Ridge Road, where it intersects with the Washington and Old Dominion trail in Loudoun County.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:32 am
I know exactly where that is, too. If that’s true, it’s going to get someone killed.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:03 pm
looking at the actual picture of the lines being painted, this seems like nothing more than another painted-on-the-road warning signal. doesn’t look any more distracting or dangerous than the big-ass and utterly pointless “SCHOOL” i see painted in the residential streets all over.
it’s basically saying “pedestrian / biker intersection coming up ahead” without spelling all that out in english. seems like a good idea to me, especially if you can get all the various D’sOT to agree on how these should be painted and in what kinds of location, so as to make it a uniform signal.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:06 pm
If it were zig-zagging lane lines, it would be bad.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I agree with Nomen I think this is fine as long as it is a uniformly used symbol and I much prefer symbols on the road to symbols on signs
Signs are easier to miss as they are in the periphery
April 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Actually, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. In pretty much every place it’s been tried, changing the rules to make driving more dangerous has lowered the number of accidents and drastically lowered the number of serious accidents. When people feel safe, they drive like idiots. When people feel like it is dangerous, they slow down and pay attention.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p07s03-woeu.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
April 21st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
They have immunity from lawsuits, that’s why they are able to put such a poorly thought out idea and see who dies.
If the government had only limited immunity from lawsuits, I bet they would think more before they do so may of the stupid things they do.
April 21st, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I work only ’bout 1.5 miles from this site. Will keep you posted. We know if it fails there will be no mention of it.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:27 pm
There is one tried and true way to reduce speed: speed bumps. In Jamaica I have been told the rumble strips, somewhat smaller than a speed bump but very very noisy when driven across, are called “sleeping policemen.”
The idea is similar to the rumble strips on the shoulders of interstate highways – they make an audible signal that something is not right.
Alternately, one could put a fence and gate, requiring a right turn to get through, on the pedestrian side of the road, so they don’t jog or bike nonstop into traffic. But that would be blaming the victim, I suppose….
April 21st, 2009 at 3:33 pm
What Phelps said and read the Wired article in particular. The roads are designed to give everyone a false sense of security and as such, people don’t pay attention. When you introduce an element of danger or surprise, people pay more attention and the data shows that its successful.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
It is illegal to cross solid white lines in Virginia. It is illegal to drive straddling the white line. Passing lane = broken white line. No passing lane = solid white line.
Ergo, every one who drives on these roads is a criminal.
People will slow down, because they don’t want to be criminals. Other people will stop paying any attention at all to the whi
Apparently the people in charge should all have their driver licenses yanked.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
dustydog – Stop lines are solid white lines as well as are crosswalk marks, I agree that they could have chosen a better way of defining what they meant (creating breaks in the pattern to indicate you can drive over it), but it’s not that bad and I like the concept of a visual warning on the surface you are paying attention to.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:58 am
We’ve got the rumble strips some places around here. I guess the idea is a driver comes up upon the spot and says “whoh, WTF?” It probably works the first few times.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:39 am
When I was a kid and I first heard about Pedestrian right of way laws, my response was along the lines of
“That’s stupid. The 3500lbs piece of steel that’s doing 15 over has the right of way. I’m not crossing in front of a car just because he has the legal obligation to stop.”
…and I still feel that way now. Of course, we didn’t wear helmets when I was a kid, and it was generally known that if you were on your bike and you weren’t paying attention, you would likely be killed.
A few years later, my dad hit and killed a kid who rode out in front of him on a major highway. Speed limit: 55. He saw the kid and slowed down, the kid misjudged the distance of the car and rode right out, thinking he was faster than a car. Boom, dead. Squiggly lines, rumble strips, more cops, newer tires, better brakes, even bicycle helmets, nothing could have saved that kid. You can’t fix stupid and I wasn’t allowed to own a bike for years because of that.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Your tax dollars at work!
The problem here is not that this is a dumb idea, but that someone thought this was a GREAT idea. Great enough to allocate tax money to do it!
Friggin’ Awesome!