"Monderman’s principle is that freedom to assess risk for ourselves is what makes us safer. Rules, controls, signs, traffic lights all reduce our awareness of our surroundings and thus our sense of danger. On roads, he said: “When you don’t exactly know who has right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with other road users. You automatically reduce your speed … and take greater care.”"
Well, there is nothing new there, Bristol in the 80's tried an experiment getting rid of traffic wardens controlling lights and roundabouts. They never came back. But you can be sure that there will always, somewhere, be control freaks ignoring the research and saying that they know best.
Oh, and:
"The Highway Code demands drivers give cyclists “as much room as you would when overtaking a car” but a cycle lane is far narrower. While drivers must manoeuvre past random cyclists, cameras on a Lancashire road showed that drivers gave cyclists in marked lanes 18cm (7in) less distance at far higher speeds than those on an ordinary road. Painted lanes made everyone feel super safe.
Shared space is not for every road. It requires attention to surfaces and speed breaks, and routes for the disabled. But it clearly cuts accidents. London’s best-known “naked street”, Kensington’s Exhibition Road, has seen a fall in driving speeds and fewer crashes. Likewise such streets in Camden, Ashford and Poynton in Cheshire, along with the celebrated continental examples of Drachten in Holland and Bohmte in Germany, where the high streets have become virtually accident-free zones."
