Removing signs and barriers from streets could actually make them safer, says CABE

The forest of signs and barriers presented to both motorists and pedestrians on England's streets gives an illusion of safety but, in reality, could actually be making them more dangerous. So says Sarah Gaventa, Director of CABE Space for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), the government's advisor on architecture, urban design and public space.

Gaventa is calling for a completely new approach to the design of our streets, suggesting that we need to design them as places that work for pedestrians as well as motorists. Her speech heralds the publication of This way to better streets: lessons from ten successful streets.

The CABE report encourages local authorities, highways designers and developers to question long-held assumptions about safety that aren't based on solid evidence. In her speech, Gaventa questions whether barriers, signage and pedestrian management systems, installed to keep traffic and pedestrians apart, actually make people safer. She argues that systems installed as a knee-jerk reaction to accidents and perceived risk result in increased traffic speed and create an illusion of predictability and can actually increase accident rates.

Sarah Gaventa says: ‘The proliferation of signs, barriers and crossings could be making our streets more dangerous. We're not suggesting that removing them all is the answer. But for too long we’ve been designing streets for traffic: they’ve become, noisy, congested and cluttered, with people herded behind traffic barriers, ostensibly for their own benefit. Solving the problems of speeding and pedestrian safety doesn’t mean more and more signs telling you to slow down and more protective barriers, it requires clever design thinking.’

This way to better streets shows how the most successful streets seem simple but are actually hard working spaces that fulfil many functions, from meeting places to market places as well as a route from A to B. Using sympathetic materials, narrower lane widths, and not relying on standardised signs and other 'safety' devices, have made them much safer.