Originally Posted by
chaadster
This is an important point, I think. In my town, they’ve instituted a lot of “traffic calming” measures and built up cycling infrastructure (e.g. protected bike lanes) in an effort to get more people on bikes and public transit. While laudable, there’s a knock-on effect in that increased driving difficulty raises driver frustration, which in turn leads to harsh decision making and sometimes dangerous and risky driving.
Nothing is perfect.
The thing you need to address is whether things are better (or worse) overall after the changes.
Your statement here is suggesting the people who made the change aren't already aware of the "knock on" effects.
The "traffic calming" measures aren't really "an effort to get more people on bikes and public transit" anyway.
They are more of trading one type of "risky driving", speeding (for example), which tends to have worse outcomes, for another, more complicated/slower driving that has less worse outcomes.
Put another way, it's more preferable having people crash at low speeds due to "traffic calming" measures than crash at high speeds.