Originally Posted by
coldfeet
Interesting, would you say this has some connection to the places in Europe where they are taking out the road signs?
What they are finding, is when there are "no rules" everyone starts getting cautious. This junction looks so much of a free for all, that I, for one, would drive it with my head on a swivel, and maximum alertness.
That is interesting. I had no idea that this was happening.
I think that it makes examining a local area for trouble spots difficult. Suppose the reason why there are a lot of accidents at one intersection is due to another intersection being dangerous.
Roughly outlining the idea, a dangerous intersection that requires extra care has everyone slow down and raise their level of awareness. If you think that after passing the high-risk area that people (1) increase their speed to make up lost time and (2) lower their awareness to recuperate from the effort then accidents would rise.
Alternatively, consider that people in the area learn that a particular intersection is high-risk. So they avoid that intersection and travel though an alternative increasing traffic past its "safe" capacity.