This campaign for traffic system reform (a re-launch of FiT Roads) asserts the right of all road-users to use commonsense on roads free of counterproductive traffic controls.
With journey times at an all-time high, and 26,000 humans killed or hurt on UK roads every year, the current system is plainly unfit. We complain about the traffic and blame other drivers, but could it be traffic controls that are the problem?
Traffic lights take our eyes off the road, a recipe for danger. They make us stop when we could go, a recipe for rage. They cost the earth to install and run. But when lights are out of action, what happens? We approach carefully and filter more or less in turn. As courtesy thrives, congestion dissolves.
Lights are the most visible symptom of a dysfunctional system. That system is based on a bad idea – priority. Priority imposes unequal rights-of-way. It licenses main road traffic to plough on, regardless who was there first. “Get out of my way!” yells priority, as it denies infinite filtering opportunities and expressions of fellow feeling.
Why do we “need” traffic lights? To break the priority streams of traffic so others can cross. Thus is most traffic control an expensive exercise in self-defeat, a vain bid to solve the problem of priority.
So the aim is to change the rule of the road from priority (a traffic engineering construct) to equality (a social model). This would remove the “need” for most traffic control, and the need for speed, letting all road-users merge in harmony.
Most “accidents” are not accidents. They are events contrived by the misguided rules and design of the road. Contrary to popular belief, traffic lights are no guarantee of safety. Westminster City Council’s latest safety audit shows that no less than 44% of personal injury “accidents” occur at traffic lights. How many of the remainder are due to priority?
“After you,” says equality, as it stimulates empathy and encourages drivers to see people on foot as fellow road-users rather than obstacles in the way of the next light. This is no mere novelty effect, and it’s efficient, as evidenced by our 2009 lights-off trial in Portishead which went permanent after journey times fell by over half with no loss of pedestrian safety. It works on a macro scale too, e.g. during power cuts across London in Nov 2007 and Feb 2008 when, free of obstructive traffic control, congestion vanished into thin air.
Founded by Martin Cassini, producer and traffic writer/campaigner, Equality Streets opposes regulation which contrives conflict, dictates our behaviour and deprives us of choice.
The traffic control industry seeks vainly to achieve safety through coercion, and is scandalously overdue for reform. Nothing less than a revolution is needed. And it’s needed fast, to avoid more needless deaths on the altar of the malign current system.
Traffic regulation – a dead end
At major junctions at peak times, signal control might be necessary. But it should be a last resort, not the first. Generally, we are better off left to our own devices, on a level playing-field with equal or no priority.
Deregulation is not enough on its own. It needs to be combined with (among other things) roadway redesign to express a social context, and a change in culture from priority to equality. What could be achieved in terms of safety, efficiency and quality of life through reform along these lines is unlimited.
Based on a trust in human nature rather than an obsession with controlling it, Equality Streets could launch an era of peaceful co-existence on our roads, with transformational gains across the board. It could provide kind spending cuts of £50 billion a year, and growth with thousands of new job redesigning and re-engineering the public realm.
“Technology must be the servant of man, not its master.” E.F.Schumacher
