Traffic Safety Solution: Design, Not Enforcement

Alon Levy argues that if America is serious about cutting traffic fatalities it will focus on road design. That means "narrower lanes, wider sidewalks, trees, and dedicated bus and bike lanes in order to reduce the number of car lanes as well as provide more room for alternatives. Zoning laws that mandate front setbacks should be repealed, and ideally so should commercial height limits on arterials. In central cities, some road segments should be closed off to cars, if the intensity of urban activities can fill the space with pedestrians."

Levy also argues that we need to reduce the speed of cars in towns "while speed limit reductions offer useful safety benefits, it is important to design the roads to be slower, and not just tell drivers to go slower. Road monotony is especially common in the United States." He goes further suggests that it would be better to enforce these speed laws with cameras, to avoid the bias that humans exhibit in policing.