Like countless other communities, this western German town lived for years with a miserable traffic problem. Each day, thousands of cars and big trucks barreled along the two-lane main street, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to scamper for their lives.
The usual remedies - from safety crossings to speed traps - did no good. So the citizens of Bohmte decided to take a big risk. Since September, they’ve been tearing up the sidewalks, removing curbs and erasing street markers as part of a radical plan to abandon nearly all traffic regulations and force people to rely on common sense and courtesy instead.
Europeans try to solve traffic woes by throwing out most road rules - Article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock.
This concept started in the Netherlands with similar techniques tried successfully in Australia. It’s a fascinating idea, totally counter-intuitive for most of us, and apparently extremely successful. It’s a way of making communities more people-friendly and drastically reducing public works costs to release funds for much more important uses, such as public transportation rather than empowering privately owned vehicles.
For more information, we recommend visiting www.mentalspeedbumps.com. David Engwicht’s website. Engwicht wrote the book “Mental Speed Bumps: The Smarter Way to Tame Traffic” which is a delightful, fascinating and informative view of the techniques now being used throughout Europe.
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