Comment on California father arrested after repainting crosswalk, adding stop signs near children’s park

• Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Traffic engineering is an actual science - what he did was extremely well-meaning, but it’s also the pavement equivalent of alternative medicine. Sometimes you’re right, but even if you nail the diagnosis most of the time you’re so ignorant you don’t even understand the potential harm you’re doing in brewing up your own treatment. It is very possible that his traffic revisions have made the area less safe for pedestrians by ex: shifting traffic congestion onto surrounding roads.

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  • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It may be a science, but that doesn’t place it in some rarefied air of infallibility, any more than any other science. It’s only ever as good as how it’s applied, and how any science is applied is always subject to human fallibility. Traffic engineering is especially bad in that respect, routinely and as a matter of course being subverted by political considerations, not least by the fundamental choices about who and what matters, and who and what does not matter. It does not deserve much respect as a practice.

    But with that said, in this case, even the traffic engineers agreed that a stop sign was an appropriate treatment for this intersection when they rejected it on the basis that the traffic volume wasn’t high enough to warrant installing one. Presumably, if there were more cars, it would be fine. So, yes, we can say confidently that this man made the area safer.

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    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      even the traffic engineers agreed that a stop sign was an appropriate treatment for this intersection when they rejected it on the basis that the traffic volume wasn’t high enough to warrant installing one

      I’m not sure I follow your reasoning here.

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      • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        They allegedly did a study to see whether there was enough traffic, a step which requires a certain commitment of resources. If the placement of a stop sign would’ve harmed safety by displacing traffic flow, then they could’ve cited that without spending time on a study. But they didn’t, from which we can conclude that a stop sign is okay there.

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