Cellular Loneliness

So many of them here: young people in their insulated realities of smart phones, huge headphones, constantly averting their gaze. It's a problem on many levels; let me tell you about one: traffic fatalities.

There are people who believe, that all the traffic signals and signs had made the streets more rather than less dangerous. We walk, drive, and ride bicycles on auto-pilot, not looking at the most important part of the equation: each other. The concept of shared spaces (also called "naked streets") seems to work: remove most demarkations of sidewalk, roads, signals, and most of the signage, and force people to make eye contact and signal and acknowledge their actions to each other as they navigate the urban environment.

Hans Monderman (1945 – 2008), a Dutch traffic engineer, championed these efforts, and a number of environments following his suggestions has been built all over Europe and a few in America.

Here are some of his more memorable quotes:

“Every road tells a story. It’s just that so many of our roads tell the story poorly, or tell the wrong story.”

“Who has the right of way? I don’t care. People here have to find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains.”

“When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."