Introduction
In casual conversation regarding the viability of statelessness and the abolition of taxation, I often get responses like this:
“What about roads? You use roads, don’t you? The state provides us with the streets and highways we drive on. Without taxation, how would they be funded and built?”
I always respond to that with another question:
“How well does the state, as a monopoly, construct and maintain roads?”
Results
Every year, more than 42,000 people are killed in car accidents and the number keeps rising. What does the state do to try to reduce traffic fatalities? The answer: nothing.
Governments do supposedly “address” the problem, but unfortunately, as coercive monopolies, they face no risk of losing their “customers," who are forced to pay for the product whether they want to or not. Predictably, then, their usual approach is to pile on ever more exploitative, complicated, and easy-to-break rules and regulations.
In this absence of competition, where is the incentive to develop innovative solutions to traffic problems? Where is the incentive to improve quality and safety?
Making matters worse, the state does have incentive to generate ever more “revenue” – i.e., to take in money in any way that it can. The sad result is that when state bureaucrats are choosing a “solution," effectiveness in addressing the problem takes a back seat to potential revenue.
Part I of this essay will explore issues with intersections and state “solutions” to managing them. We will explore facts that demonstrate that the state’s inherent disincentive for solving problems results in fatalities, injuries, and traffic congestion, while the incentives that do pertain result in brutal, unethical exploitation and mass negligent homicide. We will also consider information about available alternatives and examine the possible reasons why these far safer and less exploitive solutions are not widely used today.
Actions Speak Louder
As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. The actions of state bureaucrats show that they have little concern for health and safety and, at the expense of tens of thousands of lives every year (not to mention injuries and property damage), plenty of concern for how much money they can bilk from you at the point of a gun.
According to an August 2000 article in the Insurance Journal:
Each year in the United States more than 800 people die and an estimated 200,000-plus are injured in crashes that involve running a red light.
A growing body of evidence suggests that traffic lights create more problems than they solve.
For one thing, they are difficult to manage – take a look at this traffic-signal information page on the Washington State Department of Transportation website:
To achieve optimum efficiency, traffic signals must be monitored and adjusted to serve changing traffic patterns. Traffic engineers collect detailed information about traffic patterns, volumes and speeds. Once this data is analyzed, new timing plans are developed and field adjustments are implemented as required.
The department also admits that traffic signals cause the number of rear-end collisions to increase:
Rear-end collisions usually increase when a signal is installed. Normally, traffic engineers are willing to trade off an increase in rear-end collisions for a decrease in the more severe angle-type accidents. However, when there is no angle-type accident problem at an intersection, a traffic signal may actually raise the number of accident in a given area.
What about cost to the taxpayer?
It costs the taxpayer $100,000 to $150,000 to purchase and install a traffic signal. Electric bills and routine maintenance amount to about $3,000 a year. Drivers also have increased costs for fuel, time delay, and accidents. This adds to the reasons for installing signals only where clearly justified.
Blame the Consumer
All too often, state bureaucrats’ so-called “solution” to a problem is to pass laws, then collect fines from those who break them. The state rakes in billions every year in fines. Who’s paying? We are. You, me, and everyone who has ever received a traffic ticket, been in a car accident, or lost a loved one in a car accident. This “blame-the-consumer” mentality can only come from a monopoly. In a competitive market, such attitudes are weeded out.
This July 2001 Fox News article concerns Ann Sweet, whose daughter was killed when a semitrailer ran a red light. Now a spokesperson for the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running, Sweet “avidly” supports the use of cameras to nab people who run red lights.
Sweet’s grief and anger are, obviously, understandable, and her energy and activism are laudable. What she doesn’t understand is that she, and groups like the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running, are being taken advantage of by state bureaucrats. In campaigning for traffic-light cameras, she is asking the same coercive monopoly responsible for road safety, and hence her daughter’s death, to exploit human error for its own financial gain, rather than consider alternatives to the traffic-light-controlled intersection.
The questions she probably hasn’t thought to ask are, “Would the accident that killed my daughter have happened at all if those roads and that intersection had been constructed differently? Could there be a better way?”
To anyone who’s read George Orwell’s 1984, traffic-light cameras serve as an unnerving reminder of the direction in which our government is headed.
Lights, Cameras…
So do traffic-light cameras curb accident rates? Houston, TX’s first such cameras went live on September 1st, 2006. One week later, the Lone Star Times quoted the Houston Chronicle:
The [Houston police] department projects the [eventual total of fifty] cameras will record about 360,000 violations annually or $27 million potential revenue. But the city expects only about a quarter of the violators to pay the fine, which would bring in $6.7 million. Tuton said that estimate is low, and most cities using ATS technology see a payment rate of 75 percent to 90 percent.
As the Times sarcastically asks, “But remember, it's all about ‘safety,’ right?” The article goes on to cite a study by the Federal Highway Administration in which statistics were collected from seven jurisdictions using traffic-light cameras. These jurisdictions did experience an average 23.2% reduction in right-angle crashes; however, they also experienced an average 17.4% increase in rear-end collisions. Three of the jurisdictions actually experienced a net increase in number of crashes.
In October 2005, the Washington Post reported on the District of Columbia’s traffic-light cameras. The Post’s analysis showed an overall increase in the number of collisions at intersections with these cameras, an increase equal to or greater than collision increases at intersections without traffic-light cameras.
The analysis shows that the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled, from 365 collisions in 1998 to 755 last year. Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame.
Considering that the cameras have “generated more than 500,000 violations and $32 million in fines over the past six years," it's not surprising that this situation has been allowed to continue. The article quotes Lon Anderson of AAA: “They are making a heck of a lot of money, and they are picking the motorists’ pockets on the pretense of safety.” Looking at the statistics, it’s hard to disagree.
Texas Two-Step
In 2003, the Texas legislature passed a bill allowing the use of traffic-light cameras, despite the fact that a majority of legislators had voted against allowing them. How did this happen?
According to this source:
The Legislature has for the past several sessions turned down requests to allow cities to use cameras to catch violators. In 2003, the House voted 103-34 not to allow cities to use cameras to issue criminal citations to red-light violators.
To get around state restrictions, state Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, inserted an amendment in the 2003 transportation bill giving cities the right to regulate transportation matters civilly or criminally.
A very large majority of elected legislators were against the use of traffic-light cameras. Do legislators ever actually read the list of whims they pass? This kind of lawmaking supports Stefan Molyneux’s assertion that “democracy is just a suggestion box for slaves.”
Can Laws Change Physics?
By their very nature, traffic lights do not and cannot constitute a physical barrier to speed. This results in the following two problems:
- The physical capabilities of automobiles make it easy for a driver to run a red light due to inattentiveness, excessive speed, or unexpected adverse road conditions (e.g., slickness).
- Psychologically speaking, it is often in an individual’s self-interest to deliberately speed through yellow or even red lights.
If Joe Leadfoot is running late for work, or just spaced out, can a traffic light force him to stop or slow down?
I’ll Be the Roundabout
So are there alternatives to traffic lights? The answer, according to the Insurance Journal and Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, is the roundabout: an intersection with a raised island at the center. Traffic is directed counterclockwise around the island; a car leaves the circle in the driver’s desired direction. The modern roundabout may also feature a triangular island in each approach to the intersection, to help force cars to slow down as they enter the circle.
The Insurance Journal reports the following:
Researchers at Ryerson Polytechnic University, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the University of Maine studied crashes and injuries at 24 intersections before and after construction of roundabouts. The study found a 39 percent overall decrease in crashes and a 76 percent decrease in injury-producing crashes. Collisions causing fatal or incapacitating injuries fell as much as 90 percent at some intersections.
Wired magazine quotes Monderman regarding a roundabout that he designed:
“I love it! Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrians, and everyone looks out for each other. You can’t expect traffic signs and street markings to encourage that sort of behavior. You have to build it into the design of the road.”
The roundabout concept is more than a century old, yet in the United States, roundabouts’ use remains extremely limited. Why? According to the Insurance Journal:
Roundabouts have not been popular in U.S. engineering because slowing down is a seeming inconvenience to drivers, according to IIHS. And American universities and institutions that influence road planning and engineering have reinforced the historical practice of building high-speed intersections.
However:
The safety benefits [of roundabouts] do not hamper traffic flow. In fact, the study found that where roundabouts replace intersections with stop signs or traffic signals, delays in traffic can be reduced by as much as 75 percent.
Freedom to Choose
Imagine how much safer driving would be if traffic problems were truly addressed. Imagine a road system in which traffic paths do not physically intersect due to better design and the exchange of traffic lights for roundabouts. Imagine how much safer driving would be if the basis of traffic control were the roads themselves, not signs and lights that drivers can violate.
Almost anything government does in the name of safety means less freedom for citizens. And when it comes to roads, any genuine concern about safety is trumped by inefficiency and opportunities to take bribes and extort money from citizens. Actions speak louder than words. Traffic problems could be addressed in ways that would save lives, time, and money. Unfortunately, governments have little incentive to do so.
If you get bad food or service at a restaurant, are you forced to go back there again? Of course not! And naturally, you would choose not to. A restaurant must maintain standards in order to remain in business.
Similarly, if we were spared the state’s draconian taxation and allowed to choose among competitors to build our roads – roads that were cheaper, safer, and more efficient than what government provides – wouldn’t you jump at the chance?
The bottom line is that the state is a monopoly. Like all monopolies, it is exploitative. Furthermore, it is overtly coercive. As such, it has no competition, and little incentive to provide a quality product for the “consumer."
Because there is no accountability on the part of the manufacturer, it has become standard practice to blame the “consumer” for flaws in the product. Disagree? Try suing the state for defective road design and see how far you get.
The need for roads is one of the most-frequently-cited arguments for the necessity of government and taxation. But as one considers all of the problems and exploitation inherent in state-constructed and state-managed roads, the argument rapidly loses force. To say that by paying taxes I am paying for roads would be like an armed robber stealing $500 dollars from me at gunpoint, leaving a beat-up old car in my front yard, and claiming to have sold me the car.
To be continued: Stay tuned for Murder on the Roads: Part II – Streets & Freeways.
November 20, 2006
