sexta-feira, junho 04, 2021

"a erosão da autoridade do estado"

"Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer who is credited with revolutionizing our thinking on road design and safety. Imagine having a road or intersection in your town where too many accidents take place. What would you do to improve driving behaviors and reduce the number of accidents? Most people facing such a task will immediately think of putting in place more traffic lights or traffic signs, or more police to monitor the area. But not Hans Monderman. He came up with the concept of the “naked street” based on the principle that the removal of all the things that are supposed to make a road safe—such as traffic lights, road markings, and road signs—would actually make it safer. 
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And he proposed the removal of all street signs, encouraging people to negotiate right of way by human interaction and eye contact.
He argued tirelessly for more than 20 years in favor of such “naked” roads as safer alternatives to roads full of signs and markings. He often complained that road design in the western world was based on the (mistaken) belief that driving and walking were utterly incompatible modes of transport and that the two should be segregated as much as possible. 
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To prove his idea, he undertook a series of experiments where he reconstructed roads by making them narrower and by removing traffic lights and signs. In a famous experiment, he totally redesigned a roundabout (traffic circle) in the town of Drachten, Netherlands by removing all traffic signs, eliminating curbs, and installing art. The result was that traffic accidents all but disappeared. In another experiment in West Palm Beach, Florida, the roads were made smaller and narrower. As a result, traffic slowed so much that people felt safe to walk there. This led to an increase in pedestrian traffic that attracted new shops and apartment buildings. Property values doubled. Successes such as these turned the tide of public opinion on Monderman. Initially vilified as a dangerous maverick, he soon became a traffic engineer “pioneer.”"

Coloco aqui estes trechos a propósito da preocupação de algumas pessoas com a erosão da autoridade do estado. Eu preocupo-me é com a erosão da liberdade de pensamento e de acção dos anónimos. 


Trechos retirados de “Organizing for the New Normal” de Constantinos Markides. 

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