Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[dtkvictim]

Here, when I am approaching a crossing and a car pulls up to it...and stops RIGHT in front of it, I feel no trepidation about the driver not stopping. They are traveling all of 20km/h and usually in a much smaller car, in a much narrower lane. It just feels safer.

There is definitely a "tipping point" within the context too. In Japan cars turning left (right in Canada) pull around the corner right up to the pedestrian crossing while waiting for pedestrians to clear, and I also never doubted that they would stop. Cars doing that here though feels pushy and uncomfortable, and I do have doubts that they will stop for pedestrians. The difference being that 1) cars are expecting pedestrians 100% of the time, and 2) it may be the only way for a car to make a gap between the crowds of pedestrians.

But there is a tipping point when pedestrian volumes are low and car volumes are high, so the context suggests you don't need to slow down and watch out for pedestrians. This makes the environment so hostile to the few pedestrians that they get worn down and eventually disappear by avoiding the area entirely.

But I do believe that engineering is as big or bigger an issue. Driver attitude and behaviour (and vehicle selection) is a huge problem, but if you put a Dutch driver in a Canadian roundabout, they are going to behave similarly to a Canadian driver, IMO.  The reverse might be harder to achieve, but I still thing engineering is the key.

I do also wonder if some of these problems are just inherent to the large 2 lane roundabouts we almost exclusively build. My impression of the Netherlands is that at-grade roundabouts are almost all a single lane, and multi-lane roundabouts are usually grade separated. This would suggest that cheaper engineering solutions being suggested here aren't adequate for multi-lane roundabouts.