Thinking about using technology to make cyclists’ life safer? You’re doing it wrong.
Smart Cities, smart cars, smart paint. When it comes to road safety, everything is smart. Except the ideas.
I guess that there isn’t really a good way to start a rant, so I’ll cut right to it: A lot people are bothered by the fact that so many people are killed by cars. Some of them have ideas how to fix at. Those ideas are all bad.
Why? Because they always try to put the pressure for change on the victims of traffic deaths and injuries, the most vulnerable road users: pedestrians and cyclists.
Making victims more visible will not change anything
One car manufacturer had the brilliant idea to tell people to cover themselves in reflective paint so their customers won’t run them over. They called it ‘life paint’, but it’s their marketing catch-phrase that is really appaling:
Life Paint: The best way to survice a crash is not to crash.
This is not only painfully obvious, it is also painfully misleading. It should actually read:
The best way not to get killed by a motorist is not being killed by a motorist, and it is their responsibility to not kill you.
But of course, nobody sees it that way. Not being killed on the road appears to be the strict responsibility of the people in danger of being killed.
Whenever I see groups of children in the streets in Vienna, all of them wear safety vests.
It is understandable, but it is also giving the wrong impression. It says that you are responsible for being seen by drivers. And if a driver fails to see you, it is you who is to blame. It apparently is not a car drivers duty to make sure that they see little children unless they are walking around lightened up like christmas trees.
When exactly did we start being ok with the fact that little children need to wear the visual equivalent of full body armor in order to be safe in our streets?
Shifting responsibility from car drivers will make their behavior simply more reckless.
And if car drivers don’t care about the safety of other road users now, how are we expecting this to get any better if we paint those other road users pink?
Another thing I’ve come across rather recently is the ‘Starling Crossing’, some sort of smart pedestrian crossing. It also tries to raise awareness of other road users, and it also falls into the same trap: It is not the problem that cyclists or pedestrians aren’t visible. The problem is that drivers stopped looking for them. And ‘solutions’ like these do nothing more than saying ‘It’s ok that you got distracted. It’s ok that that Facebook message was more important than paying attention to what is going on in front of your car. We’ll have a thingy on the street that will blink and sound an alarm whenever a child dares to come near your car. Speed on. No problem.’
Compensating reckless behavior with technology will even make gross neglect seem like an accident or system fault.
If we don’t change our thinking, this will get worse.
With the declared goal of greener mobility and continuing loss of public space to mobility or mobility-related needs (like parking), the number of vulnerable traffic participants will go up, not down.
And the players lining up to disrupt urban mobility aren’t excactly reassuring. Example?
Google — wait, sorry: Alphabet — is moving into the urban planning business. What will that mean for mobility and sustainability? Maybe they’ll surprise all of us, but something tells me it’s going to be more of the same ideas on semi-autonomous cars and technology taking over responsibilities from human beings.
Chances are that they’ll behave like yet another tech giant who thinks that literally everything can be solved by technology. Like BMW, who can build fancy cars, but have no clue about how to safely overtake cyclists.
Technology doesn’t solve jack.
Technology is not a silver bullet. It tends to simply amplify everything: The good and the bad. I don’t think that ultimately, technology will solve problems that are rooted in peoples bad behavior. But if you really want to give it a shot, here are some ideas on how to use technology to really have an impact on vulnerable road users:
- Use GPS and assisted-driving technologies to enforce speed limits for cars.
- Build smaller cars that need less space on the road, moving or parking.
- Turn off cell phone service in cars so drivers will not be so easily distracted.
- Put level limits on car stereos so that drivers can hear a little bit of what is going on around them.
- Use proximity sensors not only to avoid parking damage, but also to enforce save distances while overtaking.
- Stop using technologies like sound-dampening or seat-heating for emotional and sensory removal from the road and other road users.
If you want children, pedestrians, cyclists to be safer, start with the number 1 cause of road deaths: Cars.
And until then: Be a responsible person. Behind the wheel, behind your handlebars.
