Sunday 31 May 2015

Shifting blame to the victims of bad design.


I wrote about this particular junction a year ago.  There have been numerous attempts to communicate the danger here by various groups who have also offered good solutions but after much consideration the "solution" is to change the signs.  The signs were being ignored so now the signs have been changed so that the legal consequences of ignoring the signs is shifted to the victims of this dangerous junction.  This will change nothing and there will continue to be danger, accidents, arguments and conflict at this junction.

This video I found on the internet explains the problem much better than I could..


Austria has consistently twice the kill rate per capita on it roads compared to the Netherlands despite the Netherlands having a large number of vulnerable road users.  The planners whose incompetence kills ~250 people a year (more than would be killed if NL planners did the design) are not interested in learning best practice.  They are interested in shifting blame to the victims of their bad design.  This is not an acceptable solution in my opinion.