More cars in body shops, less kids in body bags

Some good things feel bad

Whenever you make a street safer, people feel a compulsion to share their newfound inconveniences of their morning commute to the world. I know the real reason is not the bike lane or the crosswalk exactly, but the disruption of the status quo. Still, we should take their words seriously. Because even when I disagree with their conclusions, their feelings are correct.

Change feels bad.

Sometimes even good change doesn’t feel good.

Sometimes especially good change.

Like how working out leaves your muscles sore, or how giving up an addictive substance feels like losing a part of yourself.

We cannot pretend that change is easily explained, and that explanation makes the discomfort vanish. Today I want to show some solutions that I believe are absolutely good, but that will still be imperfect and resisted. I also want to reflect on what the experience of change feels like. There is no neutral baseline we all share, no common setting where we agree the journey begins.

And maybe, when these changes pop up in your own town or on your own street, you can be part of the conversation. You can help explain why something that feels uncomfortable at first might actually be doing good work.

Making streets more delightful is about making them delightful for the right person in the right moment. And inevitably, there will be others who remain unsettled. Even the best design has losers, and sometimes a safer street still increases risk for someone else.

Take the simple act of designing a sidewalk where people feel safe to linger. To achieve that, the street itself often has to exclude cars, or at least make them move slowly. And the most reliable way to slow a car is not by asking nicely, but by creating an environment where speed feels dangerous. Drivers respond to that instinctively, without thinking.

The result is that while serious crashes become less likely, the number of small, mostly harmless crashes may actually go up. Which is why the old saying rings true: better to have more cars in body shops and fewer people in body bags.

Inattention blindness

The number one thing that kills people on streets is speed. But it isn’t just the raw physics of kinetic energy, although that absolutely matters. It’s also the way speed strips away attention to the environment. The faster you go, the less you notice.

I want to talk about speed reduction mechanisms that do more than slow cars down. They also sharpen attention. There’s a famous video about cognitive blindness that most people fail. I’d love to describe it, but the first-time experience is too good to spoil. But it proves a point known as inattention blindness; we miss what we aren’t explicitly looking for.

A safe street isn’t only about lower speeds. It’s about higher awareness. Your brain should be tuned to the biggest risks around you. And if you are driving, that means the greatest risk is you.

This image from NACTO shows it clearly: higher speeds mean shrinking peripheral vision and longer stopping distances, both directly tied to higher crash risk.

Here are a 6 examples from NACTO . These are examples of designs that might make a road feel unsafe for a driver, or even increase certain types of crashes, but ultimately lowering those involving pedestrians, serious injuries, and fatalities.

Each comes with simples explanations of why they work and where they belong.

1. Median:

Medians can surprise us. The wide, forgiving kind that are meant to be clear zones often make roads less safe by giving drivers a false sense of isolation from danger. But when used in short bursts, medians do the opposite.

They narrow the road, and that sense of limited space makes drivers slow down without even thinking about it. On overly wide neighborhood streets, these medians can carry trees, hold bioswales, or even double as crosswalks. And on streets that once carried streetcars, like the one in my own neighborhood, they can be a way of bringing balance back to the road.

2. Pinchpoint:

A pinch point is the mirror image of a median. Instead of narrowing the middle, it squeezes from the edges. On streets with parking, cars often create this effect by visually narrowing the road and slowing drivers. A built pinch point guarantees that slowdown, even when no cars are parked, while keeping sightlines open for pedestrians. That makes them especially useful at crossings or between two busy places that face each other.

This, and many of these examples, doa good job at Optical narrowing: a design strategy that makes streets look narrower so drivers slow down, increasing safety for everyone. Noah at Street Craft made some excellent illustrations showing how it looks.

Two bulbous across from each other to create a pinch point.

3. Chicane:

Chicanes are alternating bulb-outs that bend a straight road into a subtle curve. They work best on long, monotonous stretches or at especially dangerous points. By forcing drivers to steer with care, they bring attention back to the task at hand and break the trance that speed can create.

The goal isn’t a formula 1 racetrack, but a subtle attention grab for a driver.

4. Lane Shift:

A lane shift is like a chicane stretched out across a longer distance. It works well on streets wide enough for parking, but only on one side. By alternating which side the parking sits on, the street itself demands vigilance, making it difficult to speed even if you try.

This is a perfect example of a lane shift from a street I stayed on in Antwerp, Belgium.

5. Two way yield:

Many two-way yields may have started as accidents, streets built too narrow for comfort. But the effect was so useful that cities now design them on purpose. Even when there is technically room for two cars to pass, the perception of tight space makes drivers slow, stop, and let each other through.

The best street in Chattanooga is 17th street. Fight me. It’s also Two-way yield.

6. Diverter:

I think diverters should be one of the most common tools in gridded neighborhoods near downtowns. Because here’s the thing: rat runs happen when traffic that doesn’t begin in your neighborhood and doesn’t end in your neighborhood still chooses to cut through your neighborhood. And sure, driving through a neighborhood street isn’t illegal, but that doesn’t mean it has to be encouraged.

Streets are public, yes, but they aren’t neutral. They belong to the people who live along them in a way that they don’t belong to people who are just passing through. Unless you live in a gated community and pay for private streets, the public right of way is shared, and that means the people who share it daily should be prioritized.

A diverter makes this principle visible. It forces cars to turn, cutting off the easy straight path that encourages cut-through traffic. It doesn’t ban cars, but it reshapes their routes into something less convenient.

For people on foot or on bikes, a diverter can include what’s called a modal filter, which means the path stays connected for humans but not for vehicles. It’s like putting a lock on the shortcut door. If you’re walking, you can still slip through the hallway, but if you’re in a car, you have to take the long way around. The destination is still reachable, but the neighborhood no longer bears the burden of being everyone else’s shortcut.

I love that this option is both tactical (inexpensive quick setuo) and keeps an opening for cyclist!

Good design is not about forcing people to make safe choices. It is about making unsafe behavior harder to slip into by accident. Most speeders and distracted drivers aren’t weighing risks; they are lulled into a sense of safety that isn’t real.

These design changes will not stop someone determined to drive dangerously, but they will make it harder. And for the vast majority of decent, well-meaning drivers, they create just enough friction to prevent a mistake from becoming life-altering.

Driving in the presence of people walking and riding is dangerous, and these tools help make drivers feel that danger.