When I moved the Tribune office from the old location on the 400 block of Main Street in Westcliffe to its current location at the four-way stop in the heart of Westcliffe, I was excited to be closer to the foot traffic that exists on the 200 block during the warmer months. I positioned my desk to look out of the big windows that face Main Street and overlook the conjunction of Highways 96 and 69. At the old office, I was rarely in a position to see the traffic running down Main Street. On the nicer days, I can sit on the patio and watch the world go by, much like the former owner of the building, Bob Halenda, did for many years.
What surprised me was that while most of the drivers were slow and careful, there was a particular segment of drivers who appeared to think that the laws did not apply to them. With frightful speed, they would blow through the intersection, accelerating as they unquestioningly trusted nobody else would enter their trajectory as they flew down the highways.
Clearly, I am not the only one who has made this observation about speeding motorists either in town or along the hundreds of miles of county roads in the region. Complaints about the ever-increasing speed of drivers can be read in letters to the editor or posts on social media websites. Even the Custer County Sheriff’s Office, headed by a former State Patrol Officer, notes that the goal of traffic tickets and warnings is to get people to control their speed. In our collective imagination, we envision speeding motorists as nearly criminal renegades that actively disregard speed limits and flout traffic signals like four-way stop signs. But if we set aside the tiny minority of genuine criminal drivers (who are often caught or remove themselves from the road by death from a crash), the majority of speeders and those blowing through the stop sign in front of my office are normal human beings.
The road environment is the most significant influence on how people drive. If people feel very safe in their vehicles (thanks to wide roads, open lines of sight, and technological improvements in their vehicle) they will inevitably drive faster. When people are behind the wheel, they are not using their slow-moving rational brains. They are using their subconscious movement skills, and speed limit signs might as well be invisible to a person focused on driving. Just like when we walk or run, the environment we are moving in (and the state of our body) dictates what feels like a safe speed.
But our society places far too much pressure on the rational part of humanity, and almost no thought goes into how humans act based on the environment they are in. We believe that if we put up rules, signs, and other rational communications for drivers, this will overwhelmingly influence drivers to do the right thing in the name of safety. And suppose people break those clearly posted rules. In that case, we believe that beating them with a stick in the form of an officer of the law pulling them over and fining them will correct the few wayward souls that refuse to comply with the clearly posted rules on red octagonal signs with reflective white lettering that say STOP.
But it is just not true that we can rationalize our way into safer driver behavior. In fact, our solutions to driver safety over the past century have always made the problem worse. In the name of safety, we widen roads, we widen lanes, we lay down improved driving surfaces, we make cars safer and with better traction.
All of these efforts to make driving safer have succeeded, and the result has been ever-increasing speeds and ever-increasing road fatalities. Ironically, feeling safe behind the wheel is an excellent way to get killed.
Thankfully, the solution to speed is also the most effective and affordable option for local communities such as ours: make driving feel uncomfortable. Instead of widening roads, make them look and feel smaller. Instead of tickets, use flashing speed signs like the ones that are now popping up in Westcliffe. Instead of automated ticketing systems, let washboard on dirt roads help naturally slow speeds down.
The Town of Drachten in the Netherlands in 2005 removed most of its traffic signs, signals, and markers in a dangerous intersection to see if making drivers confused and having to look and make eye contact with other drivers would improve safety; it did. The experiment was furthered by removing most traffic signs and removing centerlines on streets to see if speeds slowed; they did. What I noticed about the cars that blew through the stop sign in front of my office is that it happened during times when there were almost no cars on Main Street. Much of what I was observing was comfortable drivers going too fast down the broad and open Main Street and failing even to see the stop sign. When Main Street has lots of cars parked on it, with bumpers jutting into the road, the speed slows to a crawl, the stop signs are noticed, and pedestrians walk with ease across the street as they feel comfortable with the crawling vehicles.
If our community truly cares about road safety, the solution is not spending more money; it is using tricks to make drivers feel uncomfortable in dangerous intersections. That is the only way to get them to slow down with their own automatic and natural control. The greatest thing is that these solutions are often free, or nearly so, compared to high-tech ticketing solutions that are completely ineffectual at improving safety.
The problem, of course, is that what the individual citizen desires is often in direct contradiction with what is best for the community in terms of both money and safety. During the Board of County Commissioners last week, citizens wondered how to get more money for the Custer County Road and Bridge Department so that the dirt roads of the area can be made smoother so that individuals can get home faster and with less wear and tear on their vehicles. This is the tradeoff that is almost never discussed; that smoother roads for citizen enjoyment cost the community in terms of both funds and safety. Any glance at the old Tribune photos shows County Roads that were much tighter, forcing drivers to pull over to pass by each other. Now, many of the main dirt road arteries, like those on County Road at 271 at Bear Basin, are highway-width and treated with mag chloride to prevent washboarding. The result is that people drive on that section of 271 at highway speeds.
I could go on for a while on this subject because the subject of roads is so counterintuitive that it took me a decade to even understand what others had been saying for a long time. Next week, I will discuss that when you over-maintain dirt roads or pave them, you create induced demand, which costs more money and decreases safety with each passing year.
– Editorial by Publisher Jordan Hedberg