
How Sweden Has Redesigned Streets to Route Around Bad Behavior - bane
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3066435/how-sweden-has-redesigned-streets-to-route-around-bad-human-behavior
======
joatmon-snoo
Some details about the _how_ from an Economist article
([http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/02/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16)):

    
    
        Planning has played the biggest part in reducing accidents. Roads in Sweden are
        built to prioritise safety over speed or convenience. Low urban speed limits,
        pedestrian zones and barriers that separate cars from bicycles and oncoming
        traffic have helped. Building 1,500km (900 miles) of “2+1” roads—where each lane
        of traffic takes turns to use a middle lane for overtaking—is reckoned to have
        saved around 145 lives over the first decade of Vision Zero. And 12,600 safer
        crossings, including pedestrian bridges and zebra stripes flanked by flashing
        lights and protected with speed bumps, are estimated to have halved the number
        of pedestrian deaths over the past five years. Strict policing has also helped:
        less than 0.25% of drivers tested are over the alcohol limit. Road deaths of
        children under seven have plummeted—in 2012 only one was killed, compared with
        58 in 1970.

~~~
jessriedel
To clarify, the "2+1" roads have a middle lane that alternates directions
every few kilometers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B1_road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B1_road)

This is distinct from the sorts of 3-lane roads (more common in Europe than
the US) where the central lane is designated simultaneously for passing in
either direction. (Which conversely seems really dangerous.)

Note also that rural road costs about $1M/lane-mile in the US (double in urban
areas) so 900 miles of 3-lane road is probably at least $2B. If the road
lasted a decade, it would make the cost-per-life-saved on the high side of US
value of life guidelines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US)

~~~
douche
In the US, I've never seen a two-way passing middle lane, only three lane
roads where the middle lane is designated for making left-hand turns for
either lane. Usually these are in the "strip" regions in towns, where there
are strip malls and big-box stores lining both sides of the road.

~~~
calinet6
I have seen 3-lane roads where the middle lane switches direction depending on
time of day, with clear lit-up overhead signage telling you which lanes are
going which direction. During non-rush hours it acts as a standard protected
turning lane as you describe.

It's not very good for safety: many drivers forget or don't see the signage,
so driving even in the direction the sign tells you you're allowed can be
dangerous.

~~~
sandworm101
Vancouvers Lions Gate bridge (the big green one) uses this system. I havent
heard of a non-drunk ever getting that confused. If you cannot obey the 100s
of lit signs, youll also be having trouble with hasic red-light intersections.

One cool trick is that the center lane can be shut both ways to allow
ambulances and cops to rush the bridge when needed.

~~~
calinet6
Southern Maryland is a lot different from Vancouver, that's all I'll say...

------
StavrosK
The article fails to answer the question its title poses. How _has_ Sweden
redesigned streets? "Uhh, it kinda has, and fewer people die. Also, cameras."
Okay, thanks.

~~~
open-source-ux
Yes, it does lack detail.

Here is the Wikipedia page of countries ranked by traffic-related deaths (the
table headers are sortable) with data from 2013. Sweden has one of the lowest
fatality rates per 100,000 inhabitants. But, interestingly, so does the UK
with its much bigger population. Is there a common factor between these two
countries that explains the low road fatality rates? Or maybe not?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-
related_death_rate)

~~~
refurb
Wouldn't you measure traffic fatalities by deaths per miles driven? Doing it
by population completely ignores factors like the percent of people who
actually drive and how much they drive each year.

If you use deaths per inhabitabt it wouldn't surprise me that NYC has a very
low rate as well (hint: many people don't own cars in NYC).

~~~
jontro
That statistic is also included in the table for some countries

------
vanderZwan
As a Dutchman living in Stockholm I can tell you one thing: they should fix
their goddamn bike lanes. Sure, they _have_ them, which makes them better than
90% of the rest of the world. They're still shit. There's no separation of
car- and bike traffic. To turn left a cyclist first has to cross parallel car
traffic, making this unsafer for cyclists (and annoying for the people in
cars, for that matter). Key issues:

\- the cyclist and driver should meet at a (near) 90 degree angle, so neither
requires eyes in the back of their head

\- separate the goddamn lanes so neither car nor cyclist feels uncomfortably
close to the other

\- don't require extra space because every square meter counts in a big city

Well guess what, we've figured this out decades ago in the Netherlands:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDN9fUlqU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDN9fUlqU8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41XBzAOmmIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41XBzAOmmIU)

~~~
smallnamespace
I think your requirements are fundamentally impossible to implement because
they conflict with one another.

> \- separate the goddamn lanes so neither car nor cyclist feels uncomfortably
> close to the other

This requires more space.

> \- don't require extra space because every square meter counts in a big city

This requires less space.

Like, it's easy to gripe about any particular traffic design, but the domain
is constrained by a large set of fundamentally opposed requirements, so it's
always a big compromise in the end.

~~~
vanderZwan
First, I linked videos explaining how to solve this.

Second, even if that was not the case, you have _no_ idea how insanely wide
many of the sidewalks are in Stockholm. Here, look:

[https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Stockholm,+Sweden/@59.34287...](https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Stockholm,+Sweden/@59.3428735,18.0450206,3a,75y,266.65h,62.28t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sCITd8miYo0EHXUX22fl9uA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DCITd8miYo0EHXUX22fl9uA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D392%26h%3D106%26yaw%3D207.465%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x465f763119640bcb:0xa80d27d3679d7766!8m2!3d59.3293235!4d18.0685808!6m1!1e1?hl=en)

You could fit ten people side-by-side on there. There are a few areas where
this is necessary. Most do not, and this is one of the latter. Also note how
they squeeze a tiny strip of bike lane between parking and regular road. Even
without any other change, there is _no_ reason to prefer road/bike
lane/parking over road/parking/bike lane.

------
Mz
_If a car almost hits a pedestrian when the car is turning right on a red,
whose fault is it? According to Matts-Åke Belin, Sweden 's traffic safety
strategist, the blame is on whoever designed the intersection._

This. So much this.

This was kind of how I raised kids, moderated forums, etc. When people cannot
get along without serious drama, someone running the system has some work to
do.

Trying to find someone to blame -- "who started it" \-- is a sucky approach. I
generally want to figure out how to put a stop to it, not who to point fingers
at. And it is an approach that gets uncommonly good results when followed
faithfully/to its logical conclusion.

------
ChuckMcM
I was struck by their camera system, it would be interesting to have traffic
cameras that recorded but did not attempt to enforce traffic violations. Then
if you're in court for something there might be an additional piece of
information about how safe of a driver you are given how often you've been
recorded violating various traffic rules.

In Sunnyvale there are a number of the 'automatic' speed signs (they show you
your speed and flash if it is over the limit) and on the streets near me they
do seem to improve compliance when they are active. Of course given that they
are two lane streets (one lane in each direction) one compliant driver can
keep the entire block compliant :-).

~~~
prawn
I read about one place that trialled red lights that were shorter for roads
where the drivers had kept under the speed limit. Push over the limit and
you'll get a longer stop at the lights. Defeats the purpose of speeding.

~~~
mjevans
Won't this just trigger people to try to go faster to 'make the light'?

Which is the issue in the first place; the lights not being timed up to
/reward/ driving at the indicated speed.

------
geon
Another change recently was more fine grained speed limits. You now have
speeds for each 10 km/h instead of 20. Some roads had their speed limit
raised, like from 90 to 100 km/h. I think it has created a higher sense of
fairness, and the limits are respected more as a whole.

------
Etheryte
Having both kmh and mph in two sentences next to one another is very
confusing, articles should use one or the other as a primary unit and include
the other, if needed, in parenthesis or an aside.

------
mannykannot
It is beyond me why the traffic strategist quoted in the second paragraph
feels that it is necessary to absolve distracted drivers. It is not a
prerequisite for what they are doing.

~~~
avar
Because you can't solve systemic issues if you've got the mindset that
individual users should be blamed for their statistically inevitable mistakes.

~~~
Steltek
Arguing that traffic enforcement doesn't work fails to point out that in
practice it's loose to the point of worthlessness. You only need to look at
drunk driving convictions to realize this.

One doesn't "accidentally" drive drunk nor "accidentally" text and drive.
That's not a mistake, it's an all too common cause of traffic fatalities.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
That's not the point.

Yes, folks are responsible for not doing these things. But we know people do
them nevertheless. Not taking this into account when designing roads and
public transport seems like reality denial. All that work to get a product
that only works in idealized conditions instead of designing roadways so that
you get less deaths from things people are doing anyway.

------
rvern
More details on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero).

------
cmurf
If only software designers accepted more blame for bad design, admitting that
it's hard, rather than always considering that it's user error.

------
Buge
>New York is actually pursuing a version of Vision Zero (though not without a
few snags), so perhaps, one day, cars will no longer be able to turn right on
red,

Right on red is already illegal in New York City.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red#North_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red#North_America)

------
henrikschroder
> the speed limits are set low, at 30 kmh, or 18.6 mph.

Pet peeve: 30km/h = 20mph. 30.0km/h = 18.6mph. 50km/h = 30mph, not 31mph. It's
so annoying when people don't do significant digits correctly when converting
between metric and imperial, it completely breaks the flow.

~~~
tomjen3
My pet peeve is that it is way too slow. Sorry but I don't want to spend an
extra day a month in traffic so retarded teens can send sms back and forth
without ending in a collision.

~~~
henrikschroder
It's exactly that mindset that kills people by statistical inevitability. Each
society is of course free to make the choice, and as a result the US has four
times as many fatal accidents per capita as Sweden.

Also, 30km/h is used in the same places that would be 25mph zones in the US,
i.e. residential areas and school zones on thoroughfares. The default speed on
larger roads in cities is 50km/h, which is just below 35mph, a very common
city throughfare speed limit in the US.

And on the flipside, many Swedish freeways have a speed limit of 120km/h, i.e.
75mph, which you're hard pressed to find in the US at all, and certainly not
in California. It's only in the last decade they've changed the speed limit to
120km/h, but it's because freeways have been made safer, and cars have been
made safer, so it makes sense to raise the limit.

Try getting the speed limit raised in California. I'm not gonna hold my breath
waiting for that.

------
kristianp
How are they going to get to zero by 2020? That's an infinite improvement in 3
years.

~~~
throwaway7767
I don't think anyone reasonably expects them to eliminate fatalities in
traffic. It's just a goal to work towards, or in other words it's a way to
market the initiative.

