Fewer rules = fewer accidents

Rules |  Without traffic rules, total chaos should ensue with more accidents. But experiments in a few German and Belgian towns show the opposite. When traffic regulations were removed, accidents fell drastically.

Too many rules can be dangerous. It has been discovered from trials in several European countries that if people use their heads instead of trusting that everyone is following the rules, traffic becomes safer. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorists forced to deal with each other use common sense.

“The effect of rules is to deprive us of the ability to be considerate. The more regulations, the more we lose our feeling of personal responsibility,” says traffic engineer Hans Mondeman, initiator of the first experiment, conducted in the Dutch city of Drachten.

A number of European cities have abandoned traffic lights, road signs and even pedestrian crossings and pavements. Examples are Ejby in Denmark, Ipswich in England, Ostend in Belgium and Drachten in Holland.

Hans Mondeman noticed that it had become impossible to take in all the road signs and that they seemed not to reduce accidents. He succeeded in getting the city council of Drachten, a town of 45 000 inhabitants, to test his thesis. The result was a strong reduction in accidents.

Many rules are introduced without a study of their consequences. The simplification of traffic regulations is interesting because monitoring the effects can be relatively easy.

Some experiences in Sweden confirm the Drachten results. For example, a so-called ‘zebra law’ was introduced in Sweden in May 2000 to make it mandatory for motorists to cede to pedestrians on pedestrian crossings without traffic lights. Figures from VTI, the Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute, show that the frequency of injuries actually increased after the law was brought in. The Swedish Road Administration was so concerned that several pedestrian crossings were removed.

Stefan Fölster