The 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. Drivers slow down because the peds have the same priority, if not higher, than they do. The drivers don't have the "designated" path in front of them so they cannot easily keep their cocoon around them. It's not increased risk perception. It's space management. At least that's the way I understand it but it's still early days and I don't actually know that much about it :-)
NIP arrived. 951Brimstone Inadequate visibility and a near certainty that some other driver will be far too fast for the conditions and-or on the wrong side of the road. Be sure that I consider other road...
That is risk compensation.
There is no point to understand. An inanimate object like a road is not and cannot be dangerous so why call it dangerous. You have a contradiction in your example. If two stretches of road have a different configuration then they are different. They are NOT the same or similar, they are different. Any driver that drives both of them using the same degree of attention and care will necessarily experience different levels of risk because what is suitable for one is NOT going to be suitable for the other. That is human error. The danger has been created solely and exclusively by the driver. The road had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever.
-- Mark Foster, Brighton, Suslove, UK PGP Fingerprint: 3342 C02C 7BE8 3FE4 AAC5 8BB2 03B7 9263 DDF2 04C1 -------------------------------------------------- "There are no such useless words as...'I didn't have a chance.'" Driving, HMSO