Ranting to /dev/null

On a lighter tone...

The past few posts have been somewhat on the downer side. Here is something a bit more uplifting. Salon has a piece on "second generation traffic calming," a radical urban design plan which furthers the safety and efficiency of intersections by - get this - removing all lane markings, traffic control devices, and other such legislative objects. Basically, just let people, cars, and bikes go where they want to go. By forcing everyone involved to pay attention, safety goes up a lot. Intersections at which people previously died at the rate of two or three per year have seen no fatalities annually after switching to this new plan, and their capacity to transmit traffic has gone up. It's a neat idea. Check it out.