I'm feeling grumpy so I'm finally gonna say some stuff about the book Killed by a Traffic Engineer and why it's a stupid title for a book if you want it to create change in how streets are designed. https://islandpress.org/books/killed-traffic-engineer
1/13
If you really want to pick into the behavioral science of creating change, you could start with Dr. Susan Weinschenk's How to Get People to Do Stuff. It's easy to read and well-organized. She covers all the things that whomever chose the title "Killed by a Traffic Engineer" got wrong. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16248733-how-to-get-people-to-do-stuff
The first real problem with Killed by a Traffic Engineer is that the title is inaccurate--traffic engineers don't design roads. Literally, they engineer the TRAFFIC, how (mainly vehicles) move on roads. Think signal timing, queue lengths, merging and diverging, and interpretation of traffic control devices like signs. So yes, traffic engineers influence the design of roads, but they usually don't have the final say. They are a subject matter expert under a design manager.
3/13
Another problem with Killed by a Traffic Engineer is that what ends up on the road is quite rigidly defined by the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). This is why in the past few years a lot of activism was focused on the update to the MUTCD. (IIJA now requires updates every 4 years.) One of the first things you learn as a student in a traffic engineering class is the legal difference between a Manual and a Guide. Who wrote the MUTCD? https://ncutcd.org/honorary-members/
4/13
But anyway, what happens when you call a book "Killed by a Traffic Engineer?" When you mention death, you get people's attention. But you have to be careful how you wield that power, because mentioning death primes "pro-social" behavior. And people have some pretty rigid pro-social behavior around driving privilege and victim blaming for victims of traffic violence. Even if you're not a traffic engineer, the average person is going to feel sorry for the traffic engineer.
5/13
So the title, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer" is really only going to productively get the attention of people who already agree with everything it says. They are the only ones who are primed by the allusion to death to empathize with the victims of traffic violence. What a horrible thing to say, right? Yeah well, those are our societal norms that we lean into when we read the title. The title alienates the people who need the content most.
6/13
Even when you read the description of the book you have to get to the fourth paragraph before whomever was having a morbid party stops reminding you that you are a serial killer by virtue of your work as a traffic engineer or more generic transportation professional and you should read this book. https://islandpress.org/books/killed-traffic-engineer#desc
7/13
And in addition to all the priming of your windshield-biased pro-social behavior, there is other alienating content. Like I said above, traffic engineers aren't in control of our streets. They make recommendations that get squished by the MUTCD or the windshield-biased managers above them. Safety absolutely is NOT an afterthought. If the author gets these fundamentals wrong, why would a traffic engineer or generic transportation professional read this book?
8/13
@HayiWena If traffic Engineers aren't in control of the design, they should refuse to stamp and sign the plans or we should remove that authority. No other Engineering profession signs off on the design of something while abdicating the responsibility for its safety.
@enobacon Traffic engineers don't stamp ALL of the plans. And often, a set of plans only has one stamp on the cover page from the design manager. Other times, each individual page is stamped by each individual discipline lead. So a traffic engineer would stamp the signal timing page and the intersection striping page. As a drainage engineer, I only stamped my hydraulic modeling reports. I did stamp a few utility relocation sheets on another project.
@HayiWena as I understand it, the operational status of every street is under the authority of the City Engineer, granted there's some language in the law about policing, probably different for every city and state, and culturally it's become a Klein bottle or Mobius strip of passing the buck. All of it ends up in front of a judge at some point, at least I'm told that the Engineer of record is at risk of losing their license for going off-book, who is responsible when they follow the book?
@enobacon The test for negligence is generally codified in state law, but there are some States that specifically point to the MUTCD for traffic or other specific reqs for traffic, e.g. PA: https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/067/chapter205/s205.5.html. Generally, the negligence test is "what would a reasonable engineer do in the same circumstances" and that's follow the standards. I think there's a pretty long legal precedent of no liability when "we thought that was safe at the time, but now we know better."
@HayiWena would a "reasonable Engineer" "improve traffic conditions" by maintaining designs that yield a network which is clearly hostile to alternative means of transportation, given the decades-long-studied irrefutable fact of #InducedDemand? "in accordance with ... municipal regulations, standards and manuals" - but the MUTCD, at least, says explicitly that the guidance is no substitute for an Engineer's judgement. Certainly there is windshield bias of judge/lawmakers, but buck stops where?
@enobacon I'm not a lawyer, but therein lies the rub. I am not sure it's a war worth fighting in the courts because it would be your expert witness against Car Brain's expert witness. Courts (and juries!) are not good arbiters of science. We have to change the profession from within, which is why, I think, the terrible title of the book with very good content is such a travesty. Like, cool shock title dude, have fun on the podcast circuit, but the people who need it aren't gonna read it.
@enobacon And also, the idea that in prioritizing safety you have made safety worse is a MASSIVE cognitive dissonance that makes people hella uncomfortable on its own, so don't go there unless you have solutions to offer or people will lean HARD into the alternative way of resolving their dissonance, which is to prove to themselves that you're the one who's wrong and they are doing it the right way. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
@HayiWena thanks for your insights, always grateful for your posts. You're not wrong about the title, I immediately thought it should have been at least "Killed with a Traffic Engineer", just as we often get that wrong in the killed by a car headlines, or even the more fashionable attempts in some circles to reframe the language and cast the driver as the sole actor. I'm, as-ever, still looking for the fulcrums that will move politics and actual streetscapes out of this rut.
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