By Jeffrey Nadrich
Jeff Nadrich is a car injury lawyer with Nadrich & Cohen, LLP. He has more than 25 years of experience successfully defending clients, and he continues to represent accident victims all across California.
As I often do, I was recently perusing the Web in search of car accident data. I'm always intrigued by anything that helps us make sense of the laws and regulations on our highways. For instance, do anti-cell-phone laws actually reduce car accidents? It may surprise you to learn that some research suggests that cell phones are perfectly safe behind the wheel. Or how about this? Do road diets actually make our streets safer for motorists and pedestrians? Mounting anecdotal evidence suggests that it probably does, but you may have never even heard the term?
What is a road diet, anyway? A car accident lawyer breaks it down
In a very general sense, a road diet works like this: Let's say you have a four-lane street. At any given time, you're going to have numerous vehicles weaving from lane to lane, attempting to navigate toward a desired turn, or perhaps just to find the quickest-moving path. Now let's say that you cut it down to three lanes, and add a couple of bike lanes on either side of the street. This is just one very generic example of a road diet. To put it simply, it involves cutting down the number of traffic lanes in order to improve navigability or reduce the number of accidents. But does this strategy actually work?
Road diets and auto accidents
So I was reading a report out of Ashland, Oregon. Last October, one of the city's major streets—North Main Street, to be precise—underwent a road diet, in order to cut down on accidents and become more accommodating to motorcyclists and pedestrians. According to a new report from the local Mail Tribune, accidents have indeed decreased, and travel times have not increased for motorists. This is information that we can all take to heart. More driving lanes are not necessarily better for major streets.
Why road diets are effective
More lanes just equates to more chaos. No one reaches their destination more quickly, but more people are weaving in and out of traffic in a hurry, and more people are putting themselves at risk. Now I'm not suggesting that road diets are a universal solution, but perhaps more of our streets could benefit from a little restructuring. Just food for thought.
