Laura Keenan and her son, Evan, maintain a photograph of her late husband Matt Keenan, who was killed whereas driving his bike in San Diego in 2021.
Courtesy of Laura Keenan
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Courtesy of Laura Keenan
Laura Keenan and her son, Evan, maintain a photograph of her late husband Matt Keenan, who was killed whereas driving his bike in San Diego in 2021.
Courtesy of Laura Keenan
Matt Keenan was an skilled bicycle owner. He knew one of the best bike routes round San Diego, and purchased the brightest lights for his bike.
None of that was sufficient to maintain him alive.
Keenan was killed by a driver who crossed over the street’s double yellow line and hit him head on within the reverse bike lane. His spouse, Laura Keenan, discovered the subsequent morning.
“I then needed to get my 15 month-old son away from bed and inform him that his dad was by no means coming house once more,” she mentioned.
That was over two years in the past. Since then, Laura Keenan has turn out to be an advocate for safer streets. She’s satisfied that a greater street design would have made a distinction for her husband.
“Oh, 100%,” she mentioned in an interview. “I am assured that he’d be alive if there was a protected bikeway, or if the road was designed to stop automobiles from going lethal speeds.”
Site visitors fatalities within the U.S. are up sharply because the starting of the pandemic — particularly for pedestrians and cyclists. That is bringing consideration to a beforehand obscure federal guide that is generally known as the Bible of street design.
Since 1935, the Handbook on Uniform Site visitors Management Units has set nationwide requirements for avenue indicators and street design, with main revisions each decade or so. The newest model runs to greater than 1,000 pages. And whereas the MUTCD would not get a lot consideration outdoors of transportation circles, it has a significant influence.
“It’s an important pedestrian security doc that you’ve got by no means heard of,” mentioned Mike McGinn, the chief director of America Walks and a former mayor of Seattle.
First modifications in over a decade
Security advocates have been urging federal officers to make the guide friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists within the first main revisions to the doc since 2009.
“The previous model of the guide actually mirrored a prioritization of shifting autos by the group quick, moderately than the security of individuals,” McGinn mentioned.
The general public weighed in with greater than 100,000 feedback through the newest spherical of revisions, and federal officers say they’re listening.
“We’re looking for one of the best path ahead that prioritizes security,” mentioned Shailen Bhatt, the Federal Freeway Administrator.
“Once we constructed the interstate system again within the 50s and 60s, the predominant pondering was how will we transfer automobiles and vans,” Bhatt mentioned. Right now the pondering has broadened, he mentioned, to “a give attention to shifting folks. And reflecting how these roads, streets and highways are additionally components of the very communities that we stay in.”
Bhatt says the most recent model of the guide consists of some main modifications that advocates needed. For instance, the bicycle part is twice as giant because it was within the earlier version.
“I do a whole lot of biking with my household, my two younger daughters,” Bhatt mentioned. “We wish to make bicycling safer.”
Heavy site visitors strikes alongside a freeway in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 2023.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Photographs
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Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Photographs
Heavy site visitors strikes alongside a freeway in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 2023.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Photographs
A battle over the eighty fifth percentile rule
Advocates have been additionally pushing for main modifications to how velocity limits are set. They urged federal officers to do away with the so-called eighty fifth percentile rule, the usual that is typically used to set velocity limits at or beneath the speed that 85% of individuals will drive with open roads and favorable circumstances.
Critics of the rule say it encourages site visitors engineers to hike velocity limits to ranges which can be unsafe, particularly when pedestrians and cyclists are added to the combo.
The newest model of the MUTCD places much less emphasis on the eighty fifth percentile rule — however would not do away with it altogether.
“What we’re saying is, sure, you might want to take a look at the speeds which can be on the roadway,” Bhatt mentioned. “However that’s not the one issue. We would like you to contemplate different elements as effectively: The context of the street, the opposite customers of the street. Is there any crash historical past on the roadway?”
However that method disenchanted some security advocates.
“It is a small step in the fitting route, however there’s much more that might be accomplished,” mentioned Cathy Chase, the president of Advocates for Freeway and Auto Security. “We all know that dashing is a giant consider crashes, and we have been actually hoping to see them devalue that rule or do away with it fully.”
Bhatt defends the selection to maintain the eighty fifth percentile rule as an element. He says the guide has to serve your entire nation, not simply city and suburban areas the place security advocates are most centered.
“We bought 100,000 feedback. Some folks mentioned take [the 85th percentile rule] out solely. Different folks mentioned, give us much more potential to solely use it,” Bhatt mentioned. “What we’re attempting to do with this doc is to inform those that we’re supplying you with some flexibility.”
Security advocates needed extra
Security advocates fear that this method makes it too simple for site visitors engineers to stick with the established order.
“It actually has a robust impact on site visitors engineers who really feel they need to do what the guide says, or they’re placing their metropolis vulnerable to shedding cash” by lawsuits if there is a crash on the street, mentioned Mike McGinn.
Earlier than he was mayor of Seattle, McGinn labored as a neighborhood activist, and says site visitors engineers typically used the MUTCD to dam modifications that security advocates have been in search of.
“My experiences as an area avenue advocate was being instructed by site visitors engineers, ‘sorry, you may’t have that, the guide would not enable it,'” he mentioned.
McGinn had additionally hoped the brand new guide would make it simpler for native security activists to request modifications of their neighborhoods. “We needed to make it rather a lot simpler to get indicators and crosswalks and the varieties of avenue design parts that might decelerate autos,” he mentioned.
The newest revisions to the guide are a transfer in the fitting route, McGinn mentioned. However they cease in need of what he and different advocates have been hoping to see.
“We’re trying on the biggest fee of pedestrian deaths that we have seen in a long time proper now,” he mentioned. “So it looks like that wasn’t transformational sufficient.”
