White lines are being removed from the middle of roads in London and other parts of the country, including Norfolk, to slow traffic. What other surprising methods can make our roads safer?

Don’t do white lines

White lines have been around since 1921, when they were painted on a hazardous corner in Birmingham. But in recent years, they have been removed from roads in Norfolk, Wiltshire and London, where Transport for London tested whether removal makes drivers more cautious and slows traffic. TfL found that average speeds slowed by 3.3mph to below the 30mph limit on Seven Sisters Road outside Finsbury Park in north London, with speeds also falling on two roads in Croydon. “It’s not really surprising,” says urban designer and movement specialist Ben Hamilton-Baillie. “White lines are there to assist drivers to move faster, so if we are trying to reduce speed, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use them.” Road engineers and experts agree, however, that white-line removal is best in urban areas; it won’t make highways designed solely for vehicles (such as motorways) safer – as the AA points out, new car-safety technology “reads” white lines to alert drivers if they are going off track.

Get in drivers’ heads

The Transport Research Laboratory tested psychological traffic-calming, which aims to reduce speeds not through speed bumps but by using perceptual techniques to increase the perceived risk of a road. Looking at a range of psychological measures undertaken in the Wiltshire village of Latton, they found that “tree buildouts” and “red brick narrowing” were the most effective measures. Red brick paving on road edges made routes appear narrower; similarly, chicanes planted with trees made drivers go much more slowly. Researchers said such measures had a lasting impact – drivers didn’t speed up again when they became wise to these perceptual tricks.

Share!

Dutch traffic engineer (and enthusiastic Saab driver) Hans Monderman decided urban roads would become safer if traffic lights, signs, lane markings and even kerbs were removed, so pedestrians, cyclists and motorists had to share road space. Such schemes are still controversial, but are increasingly popular in Europe, Australia, South Africa, Japan and even some car-dominated American cities. In the UK, Exhibition Road in London is an example, as is a £4m scheme in the Cheshire town of Poynton.

Bay watch

Reducing the linearity of roads makes drivers’ peripheral vision more acute, according to Hamilton-Baillie. Removing yellow lines and creating parking bays disrupts a road’s straight lines very effectively, and has been undertaken in cities and towns including Glasgow, Bury St Edmunds and Halifax.

Keep it bumpy

The TfL study on the impact of removing white lines found average speeds increased on a stretch of resurfaced urban road by 4.5mph. Drivers slow down on rutted, pothole-riddled roads. But, of course, as Paul Watters of the AA points out, poorly maintained roads are more hazardous for bikes and motorbikes.

Let your robot car drive

In the near future, predicts Watters, “autonomous” or driverless cars will be fitted with speed-limit maps that link to GPS and autonomatically limit the speed at which a car can drive. So even if we press the pedal to the metal in a 30mph zone, we will continue at a sedate 30mph.