Category Archives: Safety

Foolish to build FACTORIES underneath FREEWAYS? (It’s legal in California)

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Los Angeles THREW AWAY all their RED-LIGHT cameras?

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Stop lights can… RUIN a street for bicyclists?

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Can this “HAWK” STOP LIGHT make walking feel SAFE again?

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Why freeway exits and chickens don’t mix!

So, you’re having this really nice walk across town when suddenly, there’s a freeway you have to cross. Seeing a large bridges with nice big sidewalks can be a relief. But what about those pesky interchanges where cars are entering and exiting the freeway? It gets a little bit scarier at newfangled designs which work […]

Rebuilding the road? Don’t forget about joggers and bicyclists!

Avid bicyclists roll their eyes as state engineers rebuild a highway through town. Tyranny of the car, right? Here’s a project in Utah which added a raised median that unlocked an avalanche of really cool safety improvements — including a traffic signal just for bikes!

Why does this street BLOCK off Arby’s (but not McDonald’s)?

Raised medians reduce left turns which prevents crashes (and saves lives). But cities only block left turns for some businesses and not others. How can the engineers decide fairly? And what do we do with drivers who still need to turn left? ——————————- Additional reading: ——————————- Federal Highway Administration. https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferjourney1/library/countermeasures/16.htm. Accessed Jun. 9, 2021.

Does a turn lane really deserve its terrible nickname?

Traffic travels in both directions. So it makes sense we’d have a malicious moniker for two-way left turn lanes (TWLTLs). Are they actually dangerous, though? Let’s look at the safety of these middle lanes. After all, they are on roads pretty much everywhere in the United States. ————– Sources cited: ————– Mukherjee, D. Choosing Between […]

Are roundabouts REALLY better than a traffic signal?

Traffic signals are not scary. Roundabouts can be, especially if you’ve never driven one before. Let’s take a fun dive into America’s fastest-growing transportation design. Are these spinny circles really better that a traffic light or just a passing fad? Enjoy my video? https://www.patreon.com/roadguyrob

Safety on Provo 500 West

I’m exploring a site along Provo’s 500 West, which a SafetyAnalyst project identifies as one of the most crash-prone stretches of road in the county. SafetyAnalyst allows a transportation researcher to combine data and other analytical tools to identify roadway segments and nodes which are statistically more dangerous than others, controlling for many other factors. […]

Safety: House and Car

North of Brigham Young University’s campus boundary sits a house at a T-intersection. Well, I should say “sat” a house.  Because a young adult with a medical issue (I suspect suicidal depression, but we’ll never know) plowed an early-90s Suburban into it.  And from the looks of it, the Suburban won: The force from the crash was […]

Safety: Triple Right Turn?

I had to get on the phone with UDOT right away when I saw this. Crews added two new “right-turn only” arrows.  But why?  That sounds really unsafe.  The intersection does back up a lot during rush hour, but I think painting a protective “free right” stripe would’ve been a better option.  What’s UDOT (or […]