Zen Driving

I swear, drivers are getting worse and worse every year. In more of a hurry. Way more distracted, what with phones and texting and video, and before long, the internet. Not to mention just the rudeness and incivility that results from a general breakdown of social order.

So what can we possibly do to make drivers drive better?

Take away some of the rules.

Huh?

This short editorial appeared recently in The New York Times.

Recently, I have been considering the four-way stop. It is, I think, the most successful unit of government in the State of California. It may be the perfect model of participatory democracy, the ideal fusion of “first come, first served” and the golden rule. There are four-way stops elsewhere in the country. But they are ubiquitous in California, and they bring out a civility — let me call it a surprising civility — in drivers here in a state where so much has recently gone so wrong.

Verlyn Klinkenborg (I wonder if that's the same Verlyn Klinkenborg I was in the Navy with?) found that surprisingly, people tended to behave themselves better at a four-way stop. Drivers will happily run through red lights -- it's "the man", after all, telling you when to stop and when to go. Well, screw him: I'm going! But at a four-way stop, well, we're kind of all in it together.

I find myself strangely reassured each time I pass through a four-way stop. A social contract is renewed, and I pull away feeling better about my fellow humans, which some days, believe me, can take some doing. We arrive as strangers and leave as strangers. But somewhere between stopping and going, we must acknowledge each other. California is full of drivers everywhere acknowledging each other by winks and less-friendly gestures, by glances in the mirrors, as they catapult down the freeways. But at a four-way stop, there is an almost Junior League politeness about it.

Which got me thinking about old Hans Monderman, father of the naked road (warning: a couple of pictures that illustrate this informative article feature naked backsides. Just sayin'.)

The idea that made Monderman, who died of cancer in January at the age of 62, most famous is that traditional traffic safety infrastructure—warning signs, traffic lights, metal railings, curbs, painted lines, speed bumps, and so on—is not only often unnecessary, but can endanger those it is meant to protect.

As I drove with Monderman through the northern Dutch province of Friesland several years ago, he repeatedly pointed out offending traffic signs. “Do you really think that no one would perceive there is a bridge over there?” he might ask, about a sign warning that a bridge was ahead. “Why explain it?” He would follow with a characteristic maxim: “When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.”

It seems counter-intuitive. Or maybe not. The more things you do to slow people down, the more they try to beat it. (Think of the driveway leading up to the high school. More than the speed bumps, it's the curves they put in that force you to slow.) But take away barriers, curbs, and put pedestrinas in play, and guess what? People slow down.

Who'da thunk?