Cover art for Killed by a Traffic Engineer
Published
Island Press, September 2024
ISBN
9781642833300
Format
Softcover, 344 pages
Dimensions
22.9cm × 15.2cm

Killed by a Traffic Engineer Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System

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In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse

in recent years, yet we continue to accept these deaths as part of doing business. There has been no examination of why

we engineer roads that are literally killing us.

Fixing the carnage on our roads requires a change in mindset and a dramatic transformation of transportation. This

goes for traffic engineers in particular because they are still the ones in charge of our streets.

In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, civil engineering professor Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is

behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not

trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs

remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.

Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering "research" is

outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from

point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health. Marshall

examines our need for speed and how traffic engineers disconnected it from safety, the focus on capacity and how it

influences design, blaming human error, relying on faulty data, how liability drives reporting, measuring road safety

outcomes, and the education (and reeducation) of traffic engineers.

Killed by a Traffic Engineer is ultimately hopeful about what is possible once we shift our thinking and demand streets

engineered for the safety of people, both outside and inside of cars. It will make you look at your city and streets (and

traffic engineers) in a new light and inspire you to take action.

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