Mark Foster
I'm not, that's your bugbnear. I'm saying the same as always, that some roads are more dangerous than others for a given level of driver skill and attention.
The instance I know best is at the end of the M50 where it joins the M5 with a motorway roundabout. When it was wide open people often misjudged the speed of cars going round the roundabout and smashed. Now the sightlines have ben cliosed down they slow down to a sensible speed and the number of incidents has been reduced.
NIP arrived. 950The psychology of it isn't that it feels more dangerous or risky. It's that nobody knows who belongs where and so there is no territorial insistence...
When I first saw it I thought WTF? too. But experience leads me to think it was the right thing to do.
There was an experiment in the States with a long straight road approaching an unmanned no-barrier railroad crossing. Traffic behaviour etc. was monitored while there were trees screening the railroad both sides for some distance. Then trees were cut down to open up the junction and allow cars to see trains coming from much further away.
They ended up replanting trees in a hurry because drivers were racing trains much more often. And coming close to losing often enough that they cancelled the experiment.
It's to make the road feel more like a shared space rather than a fast clear road. Yes it's the drivers and peds that cause the problems. But if you look into the psychology of it, it's the perception of risk that makes the difference. Same as driver behavious after seatbelts were introduced.
Nobody that I can see is arguing with any point you are making *except* the dogged insistence that a road cannot be called 'dangerous' when driving along it carries more risk of an incident than a similar stretch of road with a different configuration.
We all understand your point about pbutting the buck but you do not seem to understand the point above.
