Right of way in car traffic is now decided trough mortal combat. How do you perceive this will affect everyday life?

There's some areas in the Netherlands and Germany where they removed all signage, traffic lights and sidewalks to create an open, shared traffic area where all participants need to be careful, alert, and communicate with each other to determine right of way and avoid accidents.
The idea was to create uncertainty about who gets to go first and force drivers to slow down.
It reduced the number of accidents and injuries.

Somehow I think this wouldn't work in the US.

36

We have this in my town. Ambiguous zones. The idea is it creates confusion, and slows traffic. However, in my state, pedestrians have right of way on ALL roads. So the car simply slows. Mostly.

11
- I live in Washington, and people just walk into the road as if it was nothing. People be like "pedestrians have the right away", but they forget that the rule of tonnage still applies.
  
  1
They did something similar in a big refurbishment of the town centre of the place I grew up in (in the UK). No road markings, roads and pavements both done with Belgian blocks, and just some big stone bollards to separate the pedestrians and traffic. Turns out drivers kept hitting the bollards so now they all have hi-vis reflective strips on them. Which definitely did not grant me much confidence in the driving skills of my town.

9
- In my town they replaced the metal bollards with bendy rubber ones to reduce accidents that cause damage.
  But 1 in 4 or 5 bollards is still metal, and looks just like the others from a distance.
  I can only assume it's to keep drivers from just running over the bendy ones.
  
  6
I feel this would work in some areas in the US, i.e. smaller towns, possibly in the residential areas of larger cities. But in rush hour type areas? Hell no, it would be a massacre after people got used to these spaces.

4
- Yeah and despite this it feels like it's normal in like India and so on. I would not last 10 minutes in their traffic. 😱
  
  3
This suprised me when I read Killed by a Traffic Engineer. But in hindsight it makes sense. The road is not a regular, never-gone-wrong place despite our best effort to make it looks like one

4
As a us citizen I can’t speak for everyone but I feel like the majority of drivers are responsible enough for it to work with only a few zooming BMWs

Meanwhile I’d probably hold up traffic because if I feel like I can’t make a decision with 100% certainty on the road I don’t execute, better safe than sorry

I may be over exaggerating a bit but mostly with stuff like unprotected left turn and matters that aren’t time sensitive and I have time to analyze I feel like if I have to ask myself “can I make this” and usually the answers no if I’m even asking

It has made me look like an idiot at some blinking yellows but it’s better than being t boned

Thank you for coming to my ramble

4
Do you have more information about this? I would love to read more.

3
- This is a good starting point:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space
  
  6
This suprised me when I read Killed by a Traffic Engineer. But in hindsight it makes sense. The road is not a regular, never-gone-wrong place despite our best effort to make it looks like one

1

I think it would be a few months of Mortal Kombat on the off-roads to interstates and at all kinds of junctions as the assholes on the road fight each other to the death. After these guys (it's always dudes) get out of the way, there will be a long period where statisticians say loudly over and over again that getting a licence before the age of 26 is the most dangerous thing a young man can do. They will run campaigns about it, with Republicans somehow convincing people that the safer thing to do would be to get the 16 year old boys in the country driving as quickly as possible. The higher up Republicans will be saying that the men who are getting into Mortal Kombat are the better drivers and that the ones that die are worse at driving and manning, so the roads are safer as a result of the Road Kombat Accord (RCA), especially for men, even more so for young men. The lower down Republicans will act like the RCA is a great honor to get to fight in and that Road Kombat is how our ancestors have done it for generations. Liberals will be sweating and wringing their hands while weakly citing the statisticians. The Republicans will Uno reverse this line of thinking into a no-brain slogan by the name of, "trust 'Ole Statty" so that liberals are afraid to tell people to look into the statistics for fear of getting told that they are in the pocket of 'Ole Statty. Republicans will tell liberals that they are in love with, "'Ole Holes", glory holes that Ole Statty is said to frequent. Liberals will then get confused at this bizarre line of attack on their heterosexuality even though they don't believe that homosexuality is negative or deviant and so all efforts to reverse the RCA will end. Most men would just sigh and not get their driving licenses until they turn 23, with the daring ones only waiting until 20. This would settle into a constant, relatively few, Road Kombats in the end; just a constant statistic of young white trash + minorites getting killed along with a bunch of 20-something's. Most people end up assuming that the deaths were unavoidable and that there is no way to stop them. People state the stats as if they are the natural order. When people point out that the all-cause road deaths are lower in countries without Road Kombat, they will be treated as unpatriotic and ignored, becoming crackpots in the eyes of the many.

19

This was amazing to read, thanks.

5
- It's almost as if it's a metaphor.
  
  6

I will be yielding. A lot. I ain't risking my life any more than I already am by driving just to go to work.

9

No yield. Only mortal combat.

3

In NYC, no change

9

Charlotte, NC no change either... probably because a bunch of peeps from NYC have moved here

1

My car was built in the 90's by swedes who welded I-beams together at 90 degrees. My opponent is my crumple zone. I will be fine.

9

God, traffic was murder today

8

Cars are going to have an advantage over pedestrians most of the time.

6

The fuck!? I'm already late for work, I don't have time to Finish Him, or anyone! I got to get to the office!!

6

^ My response to my boyfriend with a case of the morning hornies.

7
Exactly what went through my mind lol

2

Midway Games stock is gonna shoot through the roof selling all the extra copies to make this system work. :P

6

Sure I'll get my Sega Genesis up and working, with a little projector in the trunk of my prius, but I think this will make traffic slower.

4

massive traffic delays as every right of way takes a minute or two or longer if it goes three rounds. I mean I assume the game is booted up and ready to go and the network links will work from the get go. if not oof.

5

Make sure it's lethal to both parties... enjoy the fuckcars endorsed future.

5

Justice crash!

But seriously, though: if it were hand-to-hand combat, cyclists would have an advantage, on average. That's both because of better physical fitness, and also because they can pick up their bicycle and throw it.

5

I bring my kid to school on a bike. I follow the right-of-way rules at the 4-way stops and at left turns. But every day there are 1-3 drivers who wave me ahead, and refuse to move until I go first. I don't care what the rules are - I just want consistency!

3
- Oh man, that's also my pet peeve. And it's a no-win scenario, too: either you go out-of-turn and contribute to normalizing the bad behavior, or you refuse and make them think cyclists are ungrateful. Either way, it makes things worse for cyclists in the long run.
  
  2
- Once, a month or two ago, someone gave me the right of way when I wanted to cross the road next to a blind corner, and I stood there and refused to cross, the driver became visibly agitated, but then another car came screaming around the corner the other way and it would've shot me into orbit had it hit me.
  
  2

We will now manufacture cars where the turn signal causes the horn to blow at the same time, but it sounds like a boat horn and fire comes out the exhaust.

4

For pedestrians vs cars it already is

4

Less traffic.

4

Installing counter-airbag systems on my car, roughly like ERA (explosive reactive armor), to make sure that onlylarge cars trigger it and that they lose their advantage.

3

...Houston, Texas...

3

...a real-life case study

2

So, the same as always? (perspective: Germanys most traffic jam ridden city)

2

Perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare for ramming speed!

2

If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the Fury Road!

2

The words "finish him" will be a lot more common.

1

Y'all in trouble. Also I'm driving waaaayyy more.

0