OP-ED: New Fed Road Guide Enshrines Danger into Law | Scott Brody, Streetsblog USA

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

Shortly before former President Trump left office, the Federal Highway Administration proposed an update to its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), an influential regulation that controls a host of roadway elements including signs, signals, and markings.

“The notorious MUTCD,” joked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in March. “A seemingly dry and technical thing … could actually have a lot of consequences in terms of how people get around.”

Some of these consequences appear to include negative impacts on public safety. During the 2010s, when the 10th edition MUTCD was in force, the U.S. experienced unusually poor traffic safety performance for an advanced nation. The decade ended with the Covid-19 pandemic, when fewer people drove but the total number of crashes went up. In 2020, America’s crash fatality rate ballooned to nearly six times that of Sweden, and initial data suggests deaths will again rise in the first half of 2021.

Link: 

OP-ED: New Fed Road Guide Enshrines Danger into Law | Scott Brody, Streetsblog USA

MoBikeFed comment: Earlier this year MoBikeFed joined hundreds of organizations and many hundreds of thousands of individuals in registering feedback on the proposed update to the MUTCD - which had severe deficiencies.

The MUTCD is, basically, a little-known technical manual that is used by nearly every department of transportation across the U.S. and affects at the deepest level how every road and street in the country is designed and works.

The MUTCD has been serious broken for many years, and the 2021 revision is an opportunty to repair much of that. We will see if the Federal Highway Administration is able to address the many problems in the first draft of the new MUTCD.

Brody's article is a good rundown of the problems with the proposed MUTCD.

Read MoBikeFed's comments on the MUTCD, sent to the FHWA in May 2021, here:

https://mobikefed.org/2021/05/missouri-bicycle-pedestrian-federation-com...