Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[skyrise32]

And, of course, this idea that road fatalities are just accepted and never investigated is also ridiculous.  Just because we don’t have the resources to investigate every accident in detail like we do for major plane accidents doesn’t mean it never happens.

Major accidents (like say the Humboldt Broncos accident) are looked at in depth and recommendations are made to try to prevent similar accidents from ever happening again.  Wide scale accident statistics are looked at and acted on.  For example, we have concrete barriers for most of our divided highways because we found a common cause of death was crossing over through the ditch into oncoming traffic.

I did not say "never", I said, when the number does not exceed the expected number.  It's literally exactly what the city does.  The region has a list of intersections that they investigate for collisions.  That list is ordered by how much the injury rate EXCEEDS THE EXPECTED NUMBER.  I.e., how many more people are killed beyond the number they expect to be killed--you know, the number that it's okay to kill or injure.

Go ask a traffic engineer, they have actual numbers for the expected number of injuries and deaths for different intersections in the city, including brand new ones.  This is how the field works.

The situations you describe are when there was "more than expected" collisions.  I am not joking here, I'm not exaggerating, I am being absolutely serious. Traffic engineers have an rate of injury and death that is considered normal, and only in cases where that rate is exceeded is there a "problem".

Tou think that all engineering disciplines are the same, that isn't true, no bridge designer has an acceptable number of collapses greater than zero.  Yes, sometimes bridge do collapse, due to mistakes, or lack of repair, or misunderstanding the design, but those are considered failures.  Yes, sometimes there are suicides, and as plam points out, those too are worked to prevent, by installing guard rails, nets, phones, etc.  On our roads, it isn't, it's an accepted part of the design.

If we accept death, then we will have deaths, if we choose not to, we can work to eliminate them.  The Swedish have done it, they have done it without banning cars everywhere (although some places, where it makes sense), they have done it in a sparse country with a lot of rural roads and driving.  To pretend that we cannot is a lie, and it is only to justify killing people out of fear of being inconvenienced.

You are comparing apples to oranges with bridge design safety factor to what you are saying in regards to roads. Obviously no bridge designer has an acceptable number of collapses. In the same light, roads are not designed to fail either...they are built to strict standards and inspections and don't collapse (except for outside factors such as watermain leaks causing sinkholes), in regards to highways you can trust that the road will not fail and the barriers will take a hit from a car.
Its the human factor that traffic engineers have to take into account, one person will fall asleep at the wheel, bad drivers, speeding, drunk driving... which will always happen out of their control. Same people will use the bridge and possibly kill a pedestrian in the same way.
A bridge engineer and road engineer both design the same way..to take the expected load and last x number of years, its the municipality/mto that will decide if its safe, additional safety factors, speed limits etc.