To
some it will seem like libertarianism run amok with 4,000-pound
automobiles as the weapon. To others, it will be Scottish moral
philosopher Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” righting
the chaos that is the everyday urban traffic we all curse. Whatever
the case, the Shared Space concept, which calls for the complete
abolition of traffic laws, is the singularly most revolutionary
— some would say scariest — idea ever applied to traffic
management.
Since 1982,
a few cities in the Netherlands (more recently, Bohmte, Germany,
and even West Palm Beach, Fla.) have been experimenting with
the almost total elimination of the traffic regulations that
govern modern driving. That means no traffic lights, no stop
signs, not even the bicycle lanes that cyclists so vociferously
promote as mandatory for their safety. Hell, there aren’t
even any pedestrian crosswalks, that one truly demilitarized
zone where even the smallest and most vulnerable of pedestrians
are free to roam our roadways. The only rules are mandatory
speed limits and guidelines for rights-of-way at intersections,
our good behaviour dependent only on our social consciences.
As incredibly
naïve as that may sound, for Hans Monderman, the Dutch
civil engineer credited with traffic management’s radical
revolution, traditional rules of the road make motorists and
pedestrians not only stupid, but also overconfident, diminishing
the attention they pay to their surroundings. Only by giving
drivers the full responsibility for the consequences of their
actions, says the Shared Space philosophy, do they become fully
engaged in the art of driving. “When you don’t exactly
know who has right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with
other road users,” Monderman told Deutsche Welle in 2006.
“You automatically reduce your speed, you have contact
with other people and you take greater care.” Indeed,
the whole process comes down to eye contact, pedestrians now
responsible for making sure car drivers see them, while drivers
must be always at the ready — as opposed to only paying
attention at specific designated spots — for pedestrian
and cyclists intruding on their thoroughfare.
If it all
seems to require a little too much faith in human nature, the
good news is that, in certain circumstances, it works. Though
implementation is still rare, at least some cities are reporting
dramatic improvements in road safety. In the absence of strictly
codified behaviour, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians all report
more civility.
That said,
there are numerous naysayers, perhaps the vociferous being advocates
for the visually impaired, who note, rightfully, that the eye
contact at the root of Shared Space’s social contract
is not possible for their community. And the system would seem
more successful in small towns than big cities, the awareness
of the need for personal responsibility so crucial for Shared
Space’s success a lot easier to communicate in a closed
community than in a large rambling metropolitan area such as
London, England. Indeed, even in Bohmte, Germany, one of the
towns crediting Shared Space as a boon to road safety, the locals’
single remaining concern is of drivers entering their town for
the first time.
More interesting
— at least for those interpreting driving as a social
experiment — is the cultural influence on the acceptance
of the Shared Space concept. In Germany, with its history of
libertarian driving (the speed-unlimited autobahn, for instance)
and innate culture of individual responsibility, the implementation
of Shared Space would seem a grand success. In authoritarian
England, on the other hand, where every private citizen’s
actions are ruthlessly recorded on closed-circuit cameras, the
backlash against unregulated driving has been boisterous, a
House of Lords report labeling the experiment “frightening
and intimidating.” One English protester’s comment
that “there’s nothing to tell me, as a driver, that
I should let pedestrians cross the road” is a damning
demarcation between British and German psyches.
Pedestrians
can be their own worst enemies, but the onus is on drivers to
be vigilant.
And where
would we Canadians stand on the rights versus responsibility
spectrum? All the authoritarians out there (the majority of
Canadians, I suspect) who believe the only reason our country
doesn’t descend into Nietzschean nihilism is a strict
adherence to carefully crafted regulation, would be appalled
at such a free-for-all, no doubt predicting all manner of doom
and gloom. On the other hand, I would posit that the safest
Canadian motorists ever drive is when there is an electrical
malfunction at one of our traffic signals, complete civility
— some would say fear — on display as drivers try
to cross a signal-less four-way without crunching bodywork.
With our social
conscience on display at every street corner, this might be
the grandest cultural experiment ever conducted from behind
the wheel. As a path to universal traffic management, Shared
Space is almost assuredly doomed to failure. As insight into
motorized morality, it is possibly the most intriguing experiment
in 125 years of internal combustion.
For more of David
Booth:
Fathers
and Cars and Tergenev
