This campaign for traffic system reform (a re-launch of FiT Roads), is not just another special interest group. It 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 28,000 killed or hurt on our roads every year, the current system is demonstrably unfit. Westminster City Council’s latest safety audit shows that no less than 44% of personal injury “accidents” occur at traffic lights. I put “accidents” in inverted commas because most accidents are not accidents. They are events contrived by the rules and design of the road.
Traffic lights take our eyes off the road, a recipe for danger. They make us stop when it’s safe to go, a recipe for rage. They cost the earth to install and run.
But lights are only the most visible symbol of a dysfunctional system. That system is based on a bad idea – priority. Priority imposes unequal, anti-social rights-of-way. It licenses main road traffic to plough on regardless who was there first, in neglect of other road-users. It produces intolerance and inappropriate speed.
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 problems of its own making.
How many of Westminster’s remaining 56% of “accidents” are due to priority? Compiled in the context of priority, the stats don’t tell us.
“Get out of my way!” yells priority, as it denies infinite filtering opportunities and expressions of fellow feeling. The aim here is to change the basic rule of the road from priority (a traffic engineering construct) to equality (a social model). “After you,” says equality, as it stimulates empathy and encourages drivers to see pedestrians as fellow road-users.
Current policy sets the stage for lethal conflict. It damages our health, quality of life, the economy and the planet. The entire edifice of traffic control, which seeks vainly to achieve safety through coercion, is scandalously overdue for reform. Evolutionary change will give undeserved solace to traffic engineers and policymakers who have been getting things diabolically wrong for decades. Nothing less than a revolution in thinking and practice 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
When lights are out of action and there is no priority, we approach carefully and filter in turn (FiT). As courtesy thrives, congestion dissolves.
At major junctions at peak times, signal control might prove necessary. But it should be a last resort, not the first. Generally, we’re better off left to our own devices, on a level playing-field with equal or no priority.
This campaign for sociable streets opposes regulation which contrives conflict, dictates our behaviour and deprives us of choice. But deregulation is not enough on its own. It needs to be combined with (among other things) roadway redesign to express a social context, and culture change to help people unlearn the bad habits of a lifetime instilled by the anti-social rules of the road.
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. It could bring transformational gains across the board, with beneficial spending cuts of £50 billion a year. The only losers would be the traffic “experts” who have been ruling our lives to our detriment and devaluing the public realm for too long.
“Technology must be the servant of man, not its master.” E.F.Schumacher
Equality Streets was founded by Martin Cassini, producer and traffic writer/campaigner.
