Liability caps mean that a city can’t be forced to pay victims of traffic crashes above a certain amount, even in cases of gross negligence. This may seem unjust, but this kind of protection can encourage city officials and employees to be proactive in addressing past mistakes and making streets safer. Here’s how.
Read MoreThe continued street/road hybrid approach of America's countless stroads causes needless tragedy, with the side effect of our cities going bankrupt in the process. #SlowTheCars
Read MoreIs the engineering profession institutionally and intellectually prepared for a world in which we recognize that we need to slow down cars on urban streets? Revisiting one of our best podcast episodes of all time, in which Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn asks this question.
Read MoreThe engineering profession -- with a growing number of notable exceptions -- employs a systematic approach to design prioritizing the fast and efficient (but not safe) movement of automobiles over everything else. Engineers show a conscious indifference to pedestrians and cyclists, misunderstanding their needs where they are not disregarded completely. This is the very definition of gross negligence.
Read MoreCar leaves the stroad, smashes into another car which smashed into a daycare killing one and injuring many others. What do the adults here do to keep their kids safe?
Do they slow the cars? Do they address the incompatibility of having highway speed vehicles on a nasty, complex stroad just feet from the doorway to the facility? Do they look at the sidewalks adjacent to vehicles traveling at highway speeds and think it strange, even barbaric, that we would place anyone -- let alone young children -- in such a dangerous environment?
Of course not.
Read MoreThe continued street/road hybrid approach of America's countless stroads causes needless tragedy, with the side effect of our cities going bankrupt in the process.
#slowthecars
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