Should we get rid of traffic lights and stop signs in order to reduce the number of accidents?

That is what Bohmte, Germany is doing at the moment. Starting on the 12th of this month, this German town eliminated all its stop signs and traffic lights in an effort to cut down on the amount of accidents.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2007-09-11T123405Z_01_GOR145124_RTRUKOC_0_US-GERMANY-TRAFFIC-ODD.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

This is just like how the Autobahn cuts down on accidents by eliminating speed limits.

Could we learn a few things from the Germans and their wise driving laws?

harryb

It would be easier to get rid of the bad drivers.

RatherTallFella

We should always keep an open mind when it comes to new ideas on how to improve.

I am still trying to figure out how this would work, though.

The Mr. Pine

Not a good idea.

HijabiMamaBabyPajama

Sure.
Like we should get rid of smoke detectors to reduce the number of fire related deaths, and like we should get rid of the police force to reduce the crime rate, and...

CwboyBill

Can you imagine the city of Atlanta with no traffice control? It would take two months just to tow away all the crashed cars after one morning rush hour...

Fred C

German drivers are far better trained to start with. Any American city that tried that would have 50,000 accidents in a few days because drivers here, poorly trained to start with, have far less patience, and a grossly inflated sense of entitlement.
Parts of the Autobahn have no speed limit, this is true. There is not a highway in the US or Canada that comes anywhere near the absolute minimum construction standards of the Autobahn, or the maintenance standards enforced. They also have special driving classes, for drivers who already have completed standard driving classes, on driving the Autobahn. Travel in the left like people do here gets you a massive fine as well, that is why so few drivers do it.

Sizzlin Sammy

WHAT????? Then you would have to get rid of all the stupid people....

traffic_joker

You ask a very good question. I came upon this same type of story about 6 years ago. The first place to do this, If I remember correctly was in Switzerland.

A lot of people would have you believe that it would not work because the drivers of the USA are not good drivers. This is not the case. It all boils down to inexperience. Trying to bring something like this to the USA would be like trying to introduce the SI (Metric) system to the United States. It was a great idea every time we tried to do it but it ran into obstacles that could not be overcome.

It is my belief that we ought to introduce new ideas in small steps. The first of these steps would be introducing more yield conditions like round abouts. A lot of people gripe about them but they work. I have seen the before and after on these and they greatly reduce crashes while significantly increasing the capacity of an intersection.

bestonnet_00

A lot of autobahn segments do have speed limits because of high accident rates.

What'll probably happen is that at first they'll get a reduction as people take more care but then when they get used to the lack of traffic control devices the accident rate will go up.

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