How to fix Houston's plague of bad drivers

Houston's roads are so deadly, we rank among the top ten in every measure: (a) pedestrians hit, (b) bicyclists hit, (c) speeding involved, (d) on interstates, (e) pedestrians on interstates, (f) DUI involved, (g) drugs involved, (h) multiple fatalities, (i) trucks involved, (j) at intersections, (k) traffic backups involved, and (l) resulted from rage chase. How many of you have had to suddenly stop on the interstate & looked in your rear view mirror praying that the next few vehicles react in time or have yanking the vehicle into the breakdown lane as a well-practiced maneuver? While I could go on with many, many, many examples, the Houston Chronicle has done an excellent job providing a clear record on just how dangerous driving here is: https://www.houstonchronicle.c...

Recognizing that simply the act of driving kills more community members than any other cause year after year after year, the City of Houston has initiated the Vision Zero program in an attempt to tackle the many issues that contribute to dangerous driving: http://www.houstontx.gov/visio...

Think of how much accidents costs our community:
A) Tomball's City Manager: https://news.yahoo.com/tomball...
B) A Spring ISD Principal: https://abc13.com/spring-isd-p...
C) A Spring Fire Dept, ESD#7 Commissioner: https://www.springhappenings.c...
D) And many, many, many more

In Safety, there are several approaches to making an environment safer. The best solution is an engineering control, one that protects people from a known hazard. Then there's administrative controls (e.g. speed limits), training (e.g. defensive driving), and finally personal protective equipment (PPE) such as seat belts. (Note that airbags are an engineering design solution.) I have an engineering solution to propose.

Based on the 2019 work of Karamihas, Gilbert, Barnes, and Perera, "Measuring, Characterizing, and Reporting Pavement Roughness of Low-Speed and Urban Roads" [Reference 1] (special THANKS! to Texas A&M University's Transportation Institute for pointing it out to me), I have come up with the safety engineering design of The Coffee Limit.

The Coffee Limit

To appreciate the existence of The Coffee Limit, take a look at your local newspaper (or call up the public works office) and find a section of road imminently due for construction work. Pick a time in which no work would be occurring during the project. PRIOR TO the construction, settle in at that time and watch the traffic speeds for bit. A way to gauge the speeds is to use the broken pavement markings ("Broken lines should consist of 10 ft. line segments and 30 ft. gaps, or dimensions in a similar ratio of line segments to gaps as appropriate for traffic speeds and need for delineation", Reference [2]). Once the construction has begun, the road will be in much rougher shape than it was before. Return to observe the traffic speeds at the same time that was selected. Under most conditions, it will be slower. Why? Because it is rougher. Return again when construction is complete & the road is presumably much smoother. Are the average speeds possibly faster than what you initially observed prior to construction? I hypothesize that they will be.

So why does the road roughness slow down the vehicle traffic? For those of us driving on less than ideal roads, the problem is one of vibrations through the vehicle. My theory is that when the vibrations become violent enough that the driver will likely spill coffee (or whatever beverage they may have in hand) on themselves, then they will have reached their maximum comfort speed, The Coffee Limit. Of course some drivers have vehicles that manage rough roads better and others are simply in too much of a hurry to slow down. But you don't have to slow everyone down, just enough vehicles to draw down the average speed to something not-so-excessive relative to the speed limit.

So this is my idea: (1) Identify those roads with the average speed exceeding the speed limit and more than two fatalities; (2) roughen up the road gradually and observe the change in the average speed limit. While this solution is designed to address excessive speeding as opposed to incapacitated drivers, let us acknowledge that Houston road fatalities are a dynamic problem and multiple approaches will be needed.

References

[1] 2019 work of Karamihas, Gilbert, Barnes, and Perera, "Measuring, Characterizing, and Reporting Pavement Roughness of Low-Speed and Urban Roads" https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25...
[2] Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdo...

Elizabeth Jensen, PhD, PE, CSP
Referee PAC
https://refpac.org/