In a study of 20,000 crashes reported by the police in Longmont Colorado, researcher
Peter Swift found that crashes were much more likely to occur on 36-foot wide
residential streets than on 24-foot wide streets. One of the main reasons is vehicle
speeds: as speeds increase so too does the distance motor vehicles travel during
the time it takes a driver to react and respond to a situation. Equally, the seriousness
of crashes increases considerably with increasing vehicle speeds. http://www.lgc.org/freepub/PDF/Land_Use/focus/traffic_safety.pdf
In European cities, traffic calming - to reduce the speed and impact of motor
vehicles - has been a feature of street design and traffic management since
the 1970s. In recent years, many US cities have adopted traffic calming techniques
such as speed humps, traffic circles, and road narrowings to control the speed
of vehicles in residential areas. This has the potential to reduce the number
of rideout crashes involving bicyclists because the drivers will have more time
to react and respond to someone darting out between cars or off the sidewalk.
Two years ago, the Federal Highway Administration and the Institute of Transportation
Engineers collaborated to produce a sate of the practice report on traffic calming
in the United States. A variety of tools are available from http://www.ite.org/traffic/index.html
an extensive ITE website. FHWA has also compiled a website with links to more
than 25 community traffic calming programs and an overview of traffic calming
issues and techniques. www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/tcalm/index.htm
