Chaos is Harmony

[pasithea]

I saw a clip on 'Beyond Tomorrow' the other day about a 'naked' traffic circle in the Netherlands. The idea was basically this: Accidents happen because people aren't paying attention. The solution at this round-about was to make the circle seem more dangerous. They removed ALL traffic signs, crossing signs, etc and replaced them with one rule: Cars must yeild to pedestrians and bicyclists. As a result, the number of accidents has dropped practically to 0.

Having spent the past three years working at a university campus, this makes a lot of sense to me. The most dangerous places for me as a bicyclist are the intersections with stop signs and traffic lights. Car drivers will just turn right without checking because they have the light and don't consider a cyclist or pedestrian might be going straight. They also rush up to a stop sign without checking for pedestrians and when they get stopped at a crosswalk, they're more interested in going than checking to see if there are any bikes entering the road. As a driver, I've bee guilty of this obliviousness too. But... At points where there are no signs, as a pedestrian I've felt less threatened by cars and as a motorist, I've been more alert of people and bikes that might enter my path.

Interesting food for though. Especially considering how it might be applied to other things.

Comments

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

It goes without saying that anarchist theorists have been trying to tell people this for years, usually only to get shouted down by opinionated Hobbesian control fetishists who are convinced such a scenario would devolve into Mad Max within an hour. O:)

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I really like the examples the Netherlands has been setting for the world. They have some of the highest per-capita use of wind and hydro-electric power, humane treatement of prisoners, no death sentences, affordable education for all, public healthcare, anti-discrimination laws for gays and women, and legalized drug use and GUESS WHAT AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES!

They're a prosperous nation, they have very little crime, far lower rates of drug addiction than the US, almost no teen pregnancies, and the devil hasn't bubbled up out of the ground and swallowed them all. GEE WHIZ!


But I think what I really liked about this article was that I was thinking about it in conjunction with my thoughts about how to create better animation in a way that's similar to linux open-source. In the past, I've thought about the rules that would need to be established and the organizational structure that would need to be put in place to make it work and I've not come up with any successful ideas. But if I go in the other direction and use the naked intersection and open source as an example, I think I start getting somewhere really really interesting. Yes, there still has to be a way to organize it all but I think I almost understand how to make that organization transparent to the creative talents. It's a way off organizing and stimulating people without any kind of imposed rule system, just a means for communication.

I've got several pages of this idea written down from some brainstorming earlier but I ran into a snag in how to link up two stages so I need to think about it some more.

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

The Netherlands is awesome, but have you heard of Christiania, an autonomous city in Denmark? They've apparently had some problems, and some of them haven't just been from the Danish government trying to shut them down on legal technicalities. But they've done some impressive stuff. For instance, they used to have an area called "Pusher's Row," where hard drugs were sold openly. They realized this was a *major* problem both legally and socially -- so they cleared the dealers out via pure community initiative, no violence, no police force, no sudden authorities, no nothing. My knowledge of the place isn't that thorough, so I might be missing some details, but what I read sounded very encouraging...

The idea of applying this to art is really interesting and I'm curious where you'll go with it...

[shizouka.livejournal.com]

I know that I have enough trouble with people who while turning right, are only looking to their left.

I think that they should also have a bit in driver's school where they have to deal with pedestrians and bicyclists while turning, etc.. people just don't think about them... only in the rut about cars.