Laura Keenan and her son, Evan, maintain a photograph of her late husband Matt Keenan, who was killed whereas using his bike in San Diego in 2021.

Courtesy of Laura Keenan

disguise caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of Laura Keenan

Laura Keenan and her son, Evan, maintain a photograph of her late husband Matt Keenan, who was killed whereas using his bike in San Diego in 2021.

Courtesy of Laura Keenan

Matt Keenan was an skilled bicycle owner. He knew the most effective bike routes round San Diego, and purchased the brightest lights for his bike.

None of that was sufficient to maintain him alive.

Keenan was killed by a driver who crossed over the street’s double yellow line and hit him head on within the reverse bike lane. His spouse, Laura Keenan, came upon the subsequent morning.

“I then had to get my 15 month-old son out of bed and tell him that his dad was never coming home again,” she stated.

That was over two years in the past. Since then, Laura Keenan has grow to be an advocate for safer streets. She’s satisfied that a greater street design would have made a distinction for her husband.

“Oh, 100%,” she stated in an interview. “I’m confident that he’d be alive if there was a protected bikeway, or if the street was designed to prevent cars from going deadly speeds.”

Traffic fatalities within the U.S. are up sharply because the starting of the pandemic — particularly for pedestrians and cyclists. That’s bringing consideration to a beforehand obscure federal guide that is generally known as the Bible of street design.

Since 1935, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices has set nationwide requirements for avenue indicators and street design, with main revisions each decade or so. The latest version runs to greater than 1,000 pages. And whereas the MUTCD does not get a lot consideration outdoors of transportation circles, it has a significant impression.

“It is the most important pedestrian safety document that you have never heard of,” stated Mike McGinn, the chief director of America Walks and a former mayor of Seattle.

First adjustments in over a decade

Safety advocates have been urging federal officers to make the guide friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists within the first main revisions to the doc since 2009.

“The old version of the manual really reflected a prioritization of moving vehicles through the community fast, rather than the safety of people,” McGinn stated.

The public weighed in with greater than 100,000 feedback in the course of the newest spherical of revisions, and federal officers say they’re listening.

“We’re trying to find the best path forward that prioritizes safety,” stated Shailen Bhatt, the Federal Highway Administrator.

“When we built the interstate system back in the 50s and 60s, the predominant thinking was how do we move cars and trucks,” Bhatt stated. Today the considering has broadened, he stated, to “a focus on moving people. And reflecting how these roads, streets and highways are also parts of the very communities that we live in.”

Bhatt says the most recent model of the guide consists of some main adjustments that advocates needed. For instance, the bicycle part is twice as massive because it was within the earlier version.

“I do a lot of cycling with my family, my two young daughters,” Bhatt stated. “We want to make bicycling safer.”

Heavy visitors strikes alongside a freeway in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 2023.

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Images

disguise caption

toggle caption

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Images

Heavy visitors strikes alongside a freeway in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 2023.

Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Images

A combat over the eighty fifth percentile rule

Advocates had been additionally pushing for main adjustments to how velocity limits are set. They urged federal officers to eliminate the so-called eighty fifth percentile rule, the usual that is usually used to set velocity limits at or beneath the speed that 85% of individuals will drive with open roads and favorable situations.

Critics of the rule say it encourages visitors engineers to hike velocity limits to ranges which are unsafe, particularly when pedestrians and cyclists are added to the combination.

The newest model of the MUTCD places much less emphasis on the eighty fifth percentile rule — however does not eliminate it altogether.

“What we’re saying is, yes, you need to look at the speeds that are on the roadway,” Bhatt stated. “But that is not the only factor. We want you to consider other factors as well: The context of the road, the other users of the road. Is there any crash history on the roadway?”

But that method upset some security advocates.

“It’s a small step in the right direction, but there’s a lot more that could be done,” stated Cathy Chase, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “We know that speeding is a big factor in crashes, and we were really hoping to see them devalue that rule or get rid of it completely.”

Bhatt defends the selection to maintain the eighty fifth percentile rule as an element. He says the guide has to serve your complete nation, not simply city and suburban areas the place security advocates are most centered.

“We got 100,000 comments. Some people said take [the 85th percentile rule] out entirely. Other people said, give us even more ability to solely use it,” Bhatt stated. “What we’re trying to do with this document is to tell people that we’re giving you some flexibility.”

Safety advocates needed extra

Safety advocates fear that this method makes it too simple for visitors engineers to stick with the established order.

“It really has a powerful effect on traffic engineers who feel they have to do what the manual says, or they’re putting their city at risk of losing money” by way of lawsuits if there is a crash on the street, stated Mike McGinn.

Before he was mayor of Seattle, McGinn labored as a neighborhood activist, and says visitors engineers usually used the MUTCD to dam adjustments that security advocates had been looking for.

“My experiences as a local street advocate was being told by traffic engineers, ‘sorry, you can’t have that, the manual doesn’t allow it,'” he stated.

McGinn had additionally hoped the brand new guide would make it simpler for native security activists to request adjustments of their neighborhoods. “We wanted to make it a lot easier to get signals and crosswalks and the types of street design elements that would slow down vehicles,” he stated.

The newest revisions to the guide are a transfer in the appropriate course, McGinn stated. But they cease in need of what he and different advocates had been hoping to see.

“We’re looking at the greatest rate of pedestrian deaths that we’ve seen in decades right now,” he stated. “So it feels like that wasn’t transformational enough.”