Reddit mentions of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

Traffic calming and safety can be counterintuitive. There's a great chapter in Tom Vanderbilt's book Traffic that compares injury rates in a section of a street that has a high degree of separation between roadway and sidewalks (distance, barriers) and another section where the separation is minimal. Confusingly enough, it turned out that the sections that had higher separation/protection actually had more fatalities. It's not always as simple as it seems and sometimes what we think are good ideas can actually backfire.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, by the way. An absolutely fascinating look into something we don't think that much about (at least in-depth!)

Read Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. He explains it in depth along with lots of other issues with modern traffic systems. Awesome book

> it seems like a better idea to spread out traffic in 2 lanes than have 1 busy lane and one just for passing and turning

It's much more efficient and the road would have higher throughput if everybody used all lanes equally. Nerds who are really interested should get the book Traffic: Why we Drive the Way We Do.

Is this the book you're referring to? "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)" by Tom Vanderbilt. Sounds really interesting.

> helped alleviate our current congestion issues immensely.

And as I stated, only in the short term. Measured in months, not even years. "Induced Demand" look it up.

There is an excellent book on the subject called Traffic. You'd learn a lot about these assumptions you're making.