The Solution To Speeding Might Be Smaller Road Lane Width
Speeding. From blunt campaigns like “speed kills” to delivering crippling fines and repercussions, police and lawmakers are constantly trying to get folks to slow down. However, there might be an oft-overlooked solution to speeding: smaller road lane widths nationwide.
The standard 12-foot road lane width may be encouraging Americans to speed up while cheating pedestrians out of vital crossing time
Most drivers speed. Shocking, right? The average American driver tends to push the envelope a bit on highways, surface streets, and rural roads to shave perceived seconds off their travels. Consequently, authorities use tactics like speed traps, traffic stops, and cameras to discourage and penalize offending drivers. However, one safety solution to excessive speeding in cities and towns might not be as elegant as an automated camera.
No, it could be tied to the width of your local lanes. In a Bloomberg article, writer Jeff Speck maintains that excessive speed can be culled by something as simple as decreased standard road lane width in the United States. Speck says that traffic engineers apply the same logic to surface streets that they do to highways, namely that drivers are going to speed, let’s give them room.
However, human behavior comes into play, and if you give a driver an inch, well, you know the rest. The wider standard road lane width means motorists feel more comfortable speeding, so they do.
“Pedestrians are forced to walk further across streets on which cars are moving too fast and bikes don’t fit,” author Jeff Speck asserts. And, while the very premise seems silly, it makes sense. A 12-foot wide road lane width, Speck says, requires pedestrians to move that much further in that much time.
As a result, foot traffic is vulnerable for longer, leading to greater instances of vehicle-vs-pedestrian accidents. Moreover, Speck references eight-foot-wide streets in Washington D.C. that “function wonderfully.” I’m not so sure about that claim. But
The solution. Well, it’s simple, really. The author posits that the United States adopts “10-foot lanes instead of 12-foot lanes.” While that sounds like a logistical nightmare, Speck maintains that the move would save motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians from disaster.
