Why can't our city traffic engineers learn this? When the public asks questions of the engineering staff all they get is more signs and more engineering-jargon-babble. This is dangerous by design!
In Boone, North Carolina, a driver rolled through a stop sign and hit a pedestrian. This is a common occurrence at this intersection and in many cities. But why? A psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness might play a role. You’re surrounded by a lot of visual stimuli all the time. If you had to pay attention to all of it, you’d get overwhelmed and not be able to function. To protect you, your brain often filters out things that you’re not consciously looking for. This is especially true when you’re doing a complicated activity that already uses a lot of mental capacity, like driving. This means that your brain can filter out the sight of a stop sign or a pedestrian crossing sign, especially if nothing in the street design forces you to pay attention. North America’s default for dealing with inattentional blindness is to add more signs, which just increases visual stimuli and forces your brain to filter out even more information. To actually address the problem, the street design needs to force drivers to pay attention through concrete, tangible measures, not just visual cues. Some cities do this is through raised crosswalks, others through curb extensions that narrow the street at crossing points. Broader traffic-calming measures, like narrowing the whole street, also force people to pay attention and makes it more likely that they’ll notice signs. Want to learn more about this crash? Join the free Crash Analysis Studio webinar tomorrow, where a group of experts will analyze the crash site and discuss the factors that contributed to it. (Link in the comments.)