While driving a car is a ‘simple’ act for most people, traffic is a complex phenomenon with so many variables and influences. Therefore, no matter how good a driver you are, the risk of an accident is always with you. So, is there a way to reduce the number of accidents in traffic and to make traffic a safer environment? Absolutely yes, at least in theory.
United Parcel Service, or UPS for short, a U.S.-based cargo and transportation company, updated its delivery routes to minimize left turns for drivers in 2004 to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. While this is a very interesting and relatively minor change, UPS was able to save approximately 37 million liters of fuel per year thanks to this change.
Restricting Left Turns at Some Intersections Can Significantly Improve Traffic
So if this interesting change has been successful for UPS, could it be beneficial for all traffic? Definitely yes, according to an article by VIKASH V. GAYAH on Inverse. GAYAH, who also worked as a transportation engineering professor at Penn State for a while, states that he carried out a study on which left turns should be restricted at which intersections to improve traffic.
Stating that 40 percent of all accidents, 50 percent of serious injury accidents and 20 percent of fatal accidents occur at intersections, GAYAH said that although traffic lights provide a certain control in controlling intersections, left turns at intersections generally slow down the traffic and the driver’s ‘ He states that it depends on his skills.
More than half of all crashes at intersections happen on left turns.
Of course, it is not possible to completely ban left turns. For this reason, it is necessary to identify the points where restricting left turns will benefit the most. According to GAYAH, these points are the points with the highest density in city centers rather than intersections outside the city. GAYAH shows that accelerating the flow at heavy traffic points positively affects more people and proportionally fewer left turns are made at these points.
According to the information conveyed by GAYAH, 61 percent of the accidents that occur at intersections occur during left turns. Therefore, restricting left turns at intersections will not only help traffic flow faster, but will also help reduce traffic accidents at intersections. However, the feasibility of this proposal is open to debate.
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