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

American drivers’ bad safety record can be attributed to poor street and highway design rather than personal error, according to this incisive debut polemic. Civil engineer Marshall lays out how transportation engineers have “designed and built a system that incites bad behavior and invites crashes” due to their overreliance on standards (e.g., roadway widths) that have little scientific basis. Engineers should instead treat standards as guidelines subject to good engineering judgment, according to Marshall, but he further contends that transportation engineers generally consider safety less important than mobility (i.e., moving vehicles as quickly as possible). Marshall delves into esoteric transportation literature, liberally quoting from standards manuals and research articles to portray—and lampoon—how transportation engineers think. He documents the inadequacy of safety research—which is warped by government funding requirements, the contortions of legal liability, and pressure from the automobile industry—and critiques current design standards, including what he describes as the flawed premise that speed of travel matters more for mobility than access (e.g., off-ramps and cross-streets), a misconception which he says hinders both mobility and safety as it leads to logjams and dangerous maneuvers by drivers. Marshall’s breezy narrative, with section titles like “What Are We Doing Here?,” plunges surprisingly deeply into the nitty-gritty of engineering standards, giving many specialist terms a vigorous, exasperated working-over. Transit nerds and advocates for safer streets will relish the detailed conceptual battle map drawn here. (June)