[bedobi]

This is a solved problem and it's astonishing the world hasn't just adopted the Dutch traffic engineering standards outright. It's FASTER for cars and safer for people.

[ajmurmann]

The lack of adoption of best practices from other countries is generally baffling to me. When I first visited China grim Europe and saw traffic lights with countdowns (like in the US) I thought we did immediately adopt this in Europe. Cultural inertia and lack of looking outwards is really frustrating.

[Tarq0n]

Research on countdown traffic lights is inconclusive with regards to their safety [0]. They can not realistically be described as best practice.

[0] https://www.maxapress.com/data/article/dts/preview/pdf/DTS-2...

[CalRobert]

A countdown on a traffic signal seems like a fun way to encourage drag racing.

Though it's nice on pedestrian signals.

[iggldiggl]

Countdown signals don't work with adaptive signalling where phases are dynamically lengthened or shortened (or sometimes entirely skipped) in response to traffic flows. They especially don't work with public transport priority.

[Kuinox]

How are countdown signal better ?

[sjg1729]

Which standards are you referring to?

[masklinn]

https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/principles-safe-road-network (national institute for road safety research)

https://crowplatform.com/product/design-manual-for-bicycle-t... (non-profit advisor to the ministry of transport)

[Ensorceled]

They are literally referring to the "Dutch traffic engineering standards" when they say "Dutch traffic engineering standards"

[kjkjadksj]

The hard problem isn’t figuring out what to do. Its to get people on board with shifting from a like for like infrastructure development model where the roads and built environment look more or less the same for decades, to a potential status quo changing model of infrastructure development. If you can solve that fundamental issue, traffic is just a footnote of the long list of problems you also solve on our planet.

[Salgat]

To clarify, aren't these standards mostly relevant where heavy bicycle traffic exists? Do they still apply in areas with little to no bicycle traffic? I'm assuming you're mostly referring to this famous manual: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROW_Design_Manual_for_Bicycle...

[andrepd]

There is no bicycle traffic because there are no bicycle roads. It's incorrect to claim that we shouldn't build bicycle roads because there's no bicycle traffic :)