SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS
Chapter 3: Whose Mistakes Do We Forgive?
Key Quotes
“...slowing down is the natural response for drivers perceiving an increased level of risk.” — Click to Tweet
“It is a shockingly common experience across North America to have a street designed to accommodate speeds of 60 miles per hour, traffic flow at 45 miles per hour, and have the legal speed limit designated at 30 miles per hour.” — Click to Tweet
“Instead of exclusively trying to fix the behavior of people driving automobiles, engineers need to reshape the environment being driven so that it forgives the common mistakes drivers make.” — Click to Tweet
“To be safe, the street must communicate the real level of risk to the driver. In other words, the driver must feel discomfort driving in a manner that is unsafe.” — Click to Tweet
“On our streets, we want the price paid for mistakes to be paid in fender benders and shattered headlights instead of in human lives and suffering.” — Click to Tweet
Lewis v. Amorous (1907)
From Lewis v. Amarous (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1907), as quoted in The Law of Automobiles
“It is insisted in the argument that automobiles are to be classed with ferocious animals, and that the law relating to the duty of the owners of such animals is to be applied. It is not the ferocity of the automobile that is to be feared, but the ferocity of those who drive them. Until human agency interferes they are usually harmless. While by reason of the rate of pay allotted to the judges of this State, few, if any, have ever owned one of these machines, yet some of them have occasionally ridden in them, thereby acquiring some knowledge of them; and we have therefore, found out that there are times when these machines not only lack ferocity, but assume such an indisposition to go that it taxes the limit of human ingenuity to make them move at all. They are not the be classed with bad dogs, vicious bulls, evil-disposed miles, and the like.”
What Is “Forgiving Design” and Where Did It Come From?
Lesson 12 of "Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach," available now in the Strong Towns Academy
The Not-so-Secret History of Deadly Street Design
What COVID-19 Taught Us about Street Design
During the early months of the COVID-19 crisis, traffic volume was way down. But traffic deaths weren’t. These Strong Towns resources explain how the pandemic shutdown made more obvious North America’s reckless street design.
“Now Is the Time to End Traffic Fatalities. Here's a Simple Plan to Do It.” by Charles Marohn
“Beth Osborne: America’s Roads are ‘Dangerous by Design’” (Podcast)
“Have Coronavirus Shutdowns Prompted an Epidemic of Reckless Driving?” by Daniel Herriges
