Friday, January 29, 2010

Cars Videos Part 2

Now, here's another old video. But this one is real footage, 7-minutes of traffic in San Francisco in 1906 a few days before the earthquake. What's cool here is how cyclists, cars, public transportation, horses and pedestrians all share busy Market Street equally. What makes this work is that they're all traveling at about the same speed - a nice example of how lowering speed limits on busy streets and roads makes them much safer and more pleasant to use for everyone.

1 comment:

Susan said...

Besides the lower speed, there's another important factor that makes this all work: everyone is paying attention.

In nearly every frame of this video, someone is getting out of someone else's way - by swerving, speeding up, slowing down, or pausing. In our current culture where no one is willing to get out of anyone's way, and precious few are paying attention to their surroundings as they drive, ride or walk, lowering the speed would have little effect other than decreasing the severity of injuries from the crashes that would continue to occur.