The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 13, 2018
by Don Kostelec

A child, all of 100 pounds, is mowed down by a person driving a 4,500-pound pickup truck. What will you likely hear from police officers, highway safety engineers, Governors Highway Safety Association, and state DOTs? “Now, remember, children, safety is a shared responsibility!”

Bull pucky.

Shared responsibility on the road isn’t a valid expectation of people who walk and bike until they are given equal consideration in road design and equal opportunity to move safely throughout the system.

Hot off the presses this week is this shared responsibility, victim-blaming spot featuring the Pennsylvania DOT and law enforcement in the Harrisburg area. It’s probably the worse example of overt victim-blaming I’ve seen. The media sops it up like a dog that hasn’t eaten in a month.

The media can’t be bothered to interview someone who actually walks or bikes to get somewhere. The story recites out-dated public right-of-way laws that were developed in an era when motordom was exerting its lobbying influence on the highway safety realm. They attempt to show balance in the headline by mentioning motorists but the story is heavily slanted toward blaming pedestrians. A cop cites anecdata, saying pedestrians are almost always at fault, most likely derived from interviewing drivers after they kill pedestrians, who then have no ability to defend themselves.

Origins
Admittedly, I’m still trying to piece together the history of the “safety is a shared responsibility” mantra. Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic, chronicles the underlying movements of motordom that led to the car-dominated set of road design standards and laws we have today. These efforts of the early 20th century worked to eliminate anything other than cars from the use of roadways. The entire effort was intended to make someone other than the motorist look responsible for the carnage caused by the automobile, knowing that if cars had a bad reputation for safety they could never been mass-marketed the way automakers needed them to be. Despite early outcry over the prevalence of motor killings, by the 1930s attitudes had shifted, as Norton writes:

• “The car had already cleaned up its once bloody reputation in cities, less by killing fewer people than by enlisting others to share the responsibility for the carnage.”

In seeking to find how this morphed into traffic safety doctrine, I asked the twitterverse to help me find the history. In bits and pieces over the years I’ve heard that it went full throttle with the automobile insurance industry’s desire to absolve policyholders of responsibility and shift blame to the vulnerable road users. It is a way to keep policy costs low and deflect from the carnage their clients cause.

A clue emerged when @bettybarc0de did a search for “safety is a shared responsibility” through Google Ngram, which charts the frequency of phrases by the timeframe in which they are used. The 1970s seem to the time in which the use of the phrase accelerated.

In looking up the history of compulsory automobile insurance I found that our modern-day requirements became prevalent in the 1970s. Automobile owners prior to then had some requirements regarding financial responsibility but it wasn’t like our current compulsory insurance framework that became the standard among states during this timeframe.

This may explain the connection between use of the phrase and scheming by the auto insurance industry. Finding out more is on my to-do list.

Physics & Human Nature Suggest Otherwise
It easy to comprehend how shared responsibility could be a rational expectation between two motor vehicles of similar mass, speed capabilities, and built-in safety features. That’s a place where the automobile insurance industry has a point. It’s kinda like two college students sharing responsibility for academic performance in the same class. Or two pedestrians negotiating the same space on a sidewalk. They are equivalents in most respects.

I snapped the image in the graphic below while we were doing walk audit training in Clearfield, Utah. It was the end of a school day at a nearby middle school and these kids were walking along a state-managed route and attempting to cross this state-managed intersection. In a show of “right of might,” the driver of the modified pickup truck expressed his dominance on the roadway by encroaching on their space. (Search Bill Schulteiss’ great hashtag #AmbassadorsOfSharedResponbility to see more great examples)

I oftentimes caption this picture as “Go ahead and cross, children, I dare you. The signal says WALK!”  (fades out to the tune of “Walk” by Pantera.). I’d conceptualized this graphic like you would a boxing match the Tale of the Tape. The goal is to point out how the basic physics of this situation prove the “safety is a shared responsibility” to be a ill-informed postulation.

Let’s start with the mass of the two objects that are expected to share this responsibility. One is at least 4,500 pounds and produces 81,000 joules at 20 mph. The others weigh 100 pounds each, producing 40 joules at 3 mph. Joules are a measurement of kinetic energy based on a function of weight and mass. It’s the transfer of kinetic energy that kills people in a crash.

The catastrophic consequences of these two objects colliding is compounded by traffic engineering practices where roads undergo detailed design for the exclusive comfort and speed of the 4,500-pound object. Traffic signals are timed to maximize their efficiency and ensure that average operating speed is as high as possible, especially on state-managed routes like this one.

The driver is allowed, by law, to raise the profile of the vehicle so it makes the impact zone upon a pedestrian higher on the body and almost ensuring the collision occurs in the torso or head region instead of on the legs. The exerts more force on more vulnerable sections of the body and pulls the victim underneath the vehicle.

Nothing in the engineering of this roadway or the modifications to this truck suggests the driver shares any responsibility. That perspective is what’s lacking in the Harrisburg story I cited at the start of this post.

“Well, those kids need to know they could die if hit by that car, that’s why they share the responsibility!” That’s the grunt reply that active transportation advocates get when they try to point out these basic facts of physics and vehicle characteristics.

That’s when I turn to the research. The table below is from the report Improving Pedestrian Safety at Unsignalized Crossings  and derived from a Florida DOT pedestrian safety handbook.

Just read through the table. As you read it, repeat the mantra “safety is a shared responsibility” after each bullet point.  As much as we may try, there is no way we can educate human nature out of children to get them to magically conform to the inconsistent elements of our traffic laws.

The report also characterizes walking abilities of older adults:

• They have difficulty in selecting safe crossing situations in continuously changing complex traffic situations, likely because of deficits in perception and cognitive abilities, as well as ineffectual visual scanning, limitations in time sharing, and inability to ignore irrelevant stimuli.
• They have difficulty in assessing the speed of approaching vehicles, thus misjudging when it is safe to cross the road.
• They have slower reaction time and decision making.
• Those with arthritis may have restricted head and neck mobility as well as difficulty walking.

Even the AASHTO Guide for the Planning, Design, and Operation of Pedestrian Facilities, which is referenced 30 times in the latest 2018 publication of the 1,048-page AASHTO Green Book, aligns with this report. The table included in this guide states:

Experts Should Know Better. They Don’t.
One of my favorite twitter spats of 2018 was between Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog USA and Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association.

Adkins is clearly sipping heavily from motordom’s shared responsibility keg.  Or is he just reflecting the lobbying influence on this organization?

I’ve long suspected GHSA is heavily influenced by the auto insurance industry and the state DOTs it lists as members (corporate sponsors shown in the image below).  Read through those two links to see the organizations that GHSA lists as its member. Adkins own bio admits as much, “Adkins has built partnerships with a variety of leading organizations in the automotive, insurance and consumer products industries.” It doesn’t mention him building partnerships with AmericaWalks or the League of American Bicyclists. It’s all about the motordom industry.

We know state DOTs are not inclined to put responsibility on the motorists that they spend billions to subsidize and promote. We seem to have a connection between the insurance industry and their desires to limit responsibility for motordom’s deadly tendencies.

If you read the rest of the exchange between Schmitt and Adkins you’ll see he does make some points about road engineering. That’s a good thing and I have seen GHSA’s messaging shift the last couple years to acknowledge the issues associated with road design and small hints that they understand their long-standing quest to perfect human behavior is horribly misguided. Watch closely and keep the pressure on GHSA and their state member DOTs.

Previous Posts in the 12 Days of Safety Myths Series: 

On the 3rd day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Lifesaving tchotchkes!

On the 2nd Day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Magical force field paint!

On the 1st day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me….bright, reflective vests!

 

 

 

 

The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 12, 2018
By Don Kostelec

We all love swag. No, not the kind that’s legal in Washington, Oregon, and elsewhere. I’m talking about the legal-everywhere swag you get when you register for conferences or approach a public agency’s tailgate tent at a local festival.

Have you ever considered how much money traffic safety offices spend on swag to promote their campaign? Who knew that “Toward Zero Deaths” thumb drives saved lives?

Maybe these highway safety offices are onto something I’m not aware of. Maybe spending $10,000 of taxpayers’ money on foreign plastic trinkets saves more lives than spending $10,000 on a RRFB. Being unsure, I decided to see if tchotchkes appeared in a simple search using the FHWA PEDSAFE Countermeasures selection system tool.

PEDSAFE is an online portal that allows you to see what types of safety measures can address specific road situations. I entered a few key characteristics of a roadway I cross frequently near my house: 4 lanes, school zone, speed limit less than 45 mph, minor arterial, transit service.

And the results…

Hmm. That’s weird. Street furniture. Sidewalks. Roadway lighting. Curb ramps. Better access to transit. Signs. No tchotchkes. Drat. 

Oh..wait…”Ped/Driver Education.” Tchotchkes must be listed under that one since nothing screams “TRAFFIC SAFETY EDUCATION!” better than a case of reusable grocery bags, right?

So, let’s click on education and see what it spits out:

• “There are several broad approaches to education that can be conducted with moderate resources. They include:
  1) highlighting pedestrian features when introducing new infrastructure;
  2) conducting internal campaigns within the organization to build staff support for pedestrian safety programs;
  3) incorporating pedestrian safety messages into public relations efforts;
  4) developing relationships with sister state agencies and statewide consumer groups; and
  5) marketing alternative travel modes.”

Foiled again. Maybe, just maybe, tchotchkes aren’t the magic bullet of a safe systems approach that some highway safety offices seem to think.

Well, maybe they’re beneficial to public involvement, if for nothing else than getting people in the door to learn about these education-based countermeasures. For that, I went to the the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Public Engagement Toolkit and its “searchable list of public engagement techniques with detailed descriptions” to see if it offers insights.

HOLY CRAP! There it is: Grocery Bags. 

Grocery Bags have five stars for both “Rating” and “Cost Effectiveness,” rivaled only by GIS Mapping and Handheld Instant Voting. I can only imagine the consultant contract gravy train that yielded this public involvement Yelp. 

 

Who needs to add an RRFB to a project when you can give people grocery bags instead?

But what about the kids, you ask? Grocery sacks are totes ridic. How about drawstring backpacks? Totes adorbs!

Plus, if the highway safety office is working on child pedestrian safety they must fulfill their NHTSA grant obligation and lecture children them about the virtues of bright, reflective clothing, right? Let’s make them reflective. Totes magotes!

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a better idea…wait for it…black Toward Zero Deaths bag!!! Cray cray, you say? Well, at least it matches the bodybags pedestrians end up encased in because DOTs blew their traffic safety wad on useless tchotchkes instead of proven safety countermeasures.

Final thoughts: I feel bad for the people who work in state DOT traffic safety offices. They have a job where they are in no way integrated into the broader engineering efforts of that agency. They’re often stuck out in the modular offices on the edge of a DOT’s headquarters complex. They get their NHTSA grants, they buy their tchotchkes, they do the only thing they’re empowered to do within that organization. I’m sure there’s a highway safety official who got wind of true Vision Zero concepts, became excited because it deviates from the same, tired education-based beat-your-head-against-a-wall approaches, and then tried to pitch it to the engineers elsewhere in the DOT catacombs. I’m sure they were shot down, then returned to their modular unit cubicle to fill out their next grant application, or a job application. 

Other posts in the 12 Days of Safety Myths Series:

On the 2nd Day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Magical force field paint!

On the 1st day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me….bright, reflective vests!

 

 

The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 11, 2018
by Don Kostelec

“A reminder to pedestrians and bicyclists that paint isn’t there to protect you.
It’s only there to absolve motorists if you deviate from it.”
– The wise, old sage of motordom, “Bob Gunderson”

We’ve all been there: A public meeting concerning your primary walking or bicycling route. You have expectations that things might be different this time with your local or state DOT. You hope for protected bike lanes or frequent, signalized pedestrian crossings; you know, everything the modern engineering guidance is pointing to with regard to safety. You leave with nothing more than a paint sample from Sherwin-Williams and a deep suspicion that the fumes from all the paint they promised was weakening their cognitive abilities. 

If you try to counter the project engineer you get their version of a Jedi mind trick, a wave of the hand and a “No, the paint is safe infrastructure and it will protect you.”

The idea that paint is a solution for a safety issue is probably the single worst default position a designer can take. I look back on projects and plans I was involved with during my less-enlightened days and think, “I can’t believe I actually recommended a sharrow.” Or, “Why did I mention nothing more than adding a crosswalk?”

It doesn’t take too deep of a dive into prevailing design guidance and research to find language that discourages the use of paint as a standalone safety countermeasure. Even when paint is used in combination with other measure, the existence of paint can be the thing engineers and law enforcement point to if, as Bob Gunderson warns, you deviated from the paint. Albuquerque Police seem to believe in the magical force field power of paint. 

Crosswalks
The 2005 FHWA publication Safety Effects of Marked versus Unmarked Crosswalks at Uncontrolled Locations: Final Report and Recommended Guidelines had some pretty significant findings. This is one that @peatonx unearthed while assisting me on a Comprehensive Pedestrian Plan in North Carolina.

• “The study results revealed that on two-lane roads, the presence of a marked crosswalk alone at an uncontrolled location was associated with no difference in pedestrian crash rate, compared to an unmarked crosswalk. Further, on multilane roads with traffic volumes above about 12,000 vehicles per day, having a marked crosswalk alone (without other substantial improvements) was associated with a higher pedestrian crash rate compared to an unmarked crosswalk.”

That was 13 years ago, yet take a walk anywhere in your community and you’re like to find dozens of examples of nothing more than some paint and a couple of signs. If a federal study on motor vehicle lanes had such stark conclusions you’d probably find engineers mobilizing millions to rectify the situations.

The engineering countermeasures recommended in the FHWA study include:

• Raised medians on multilane roads;
• Narrowing road or providing curb extensions;
• Traffic signals, where pedestrian volumes warrant it (don’t get me started on this one);
• Reducing vehicle travel lane widths to provide space for medians;
• Traditional traffic calming on lower volume, low speed streets;
• Adequate lighting;
• Tighter turn radii to slow vehicles;
• Using flashers, warning signs, and other active devices;
• Reducing the required widths on new streets in new areas.

It’s all there for you to use as you advocate for it. On that pedestrian plan, the DOT built a new state secondary road monstrosity and didn’t care enough for pedestrians to do something other than paint a couple of lines on a high speed arterial with a 160-foot pedestrian crossing between public housing and downtown (see pic). To date, NCDOT has done nothing with that horrendous crossing despite endorsing the town’s pedestrian plan in 2015.

Of course, we have to leave it to the traffic engineers to screw up the findings of the 2005 FHWA study. When MUTCD was updated in advance of its 2009 update it was intended to include the findings of the 2005 FHWA study. MUTCD Section 3B.18 – Crosswalk Markings states:

• “New marked crosswalks alone, without other measures designed to reduce traffic speeds, shorten crossing distances, enhance driver awareness of the crossing, and/or provide active warning of pedestrian presence, should not be installed across uncontrolled roadways where the speed limit exceeds 40 mph and either:

1. The roadway has four or more lanes of travel without a raised median or pedestrian refuge island and an ADT of 12,000 vehicles per day or greater; or

2. The roadway has four or more lanes of travel with a raised median or pedestrian refuge island and an ADT of 15,000 vehicles per day or greater.”

I put the “40 mph and either” in red because this is where the confusion starts among engineers, according to FHWA Safety Engineer Peter Eun. The language was not intended to be so specific in terms of meeting the two conditions: 40 mph and one of the two other circumstances. The language was to read “40 mph and/or either…” The result is designers still think this only applies to 40 mph streets and higher and they do nothing elsewhere. Mr. Eun says they hope to correct that in the upcoming MUTCD update.

Sharrows
The sharrow is probably the worst example of the false promise of paint: A horizontal sign on a road, backed by all the thoughts and prayers engineers can muster, all while they claim they can’t afford dedicated bike lanes for the safety for today’s bicyclists because they’re too busy widening roads for motorists that won’t exist until 2040.

We could beat the sharrow horse until it’s dead, dead, dead, but the Bicycle Lobby has already assumed that critical role.

That’s thoughts and prayers approach to sharrows is prevalent across DOT literature, as in the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Complete Streets Planning and Design Guidelines: “In streets where bicycle lanes cannot be accommodated, shared lanes provide an alternative to bicycle lanes…Shared-lane markings increase a motorist’s awareness of the 
presence of cyclists (by raising the motorists’ expectation that they will encounter cyclists).”

They’re definitely not alone in that thinking.

Wes Marshall, an engineer and academic at CU-Denver, is perhaps my favorite transportation researcher. He takes on topics others seem unwilling to address. In doing research with Chicago data, Marshall and Company found streets where sharrows were “installed” resulted in less of decrease in crashes than streets that had no sharrows installed over the same time period.

The paper states, “As sharrows do not provide designated space for bicyclists and do not enhance the overall bicycle network, all cities should (as many already have) begin to consider sharrows simply as signage as opposed to actual infrastructure.”

(Why Chicago? Bicyclist dooring crashes are not allowed to be processed through typical crash reporting protocols because they happen with a stationary vehicle. Most crash reporting protocols require a collision with a moving motor vehicle, which is a good one to remember when someone tries to play the “bicyclists have the same rights and responsibilities” game. Chicago is one of the few places where a dooring crash is allowed to be treated the same as other crashes, so they have useful data for purposes of evaluating the impacts of sharrows.) 

On the 1st day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me….bright, reflective vests!