Saturday, November 04, 2006

Libertarian Roadways

Coming from a Dutch ancestry, as I do, I am sometimes chagrined by the goings on in the Netherlands, and other times I am quite pleased by the Hollanders’ forward thinking.

Residents of the northern Dutch town of Drachten have already been used as guinea-pigs in an experiment which has seen nearly all the traffic lights stripped from their streets.

Only three of the 15 sets in the town of 50,000 remain and they will be gone within a couple of years.

The project is the brainchild of Mr Monderman, and the town has seen some remarkable results. There used to be a road death every three years but there have been none since the traffic light removal started seven years ago.

There have been a few small collisions, but these are almost to be encouraged, Mr Monderman explained. “We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt,” he said yesterday.

It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk. (bold added for emphasis - ed.)

From an article in the Telegraph titled Is this the end of the road for traffic lights?

The Telegraph also has another interesting article posted on this subject titled Rip them out.

Via Samizdata.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/04 at 01:58 PM
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