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Road traffic psychology to influence drivers behavior

Psychological traffic calming techniques are set to be introduced in Sheffield Yorkshire, in preference of traditional and often controversial schemes such as road humps.

Sheffield Council has outlined plans to bring in more innovative measures to cut speeding, such as vehicle-activated signs and new road markings. This is about changing the appearance of the road to change people's habits – encouraging people to reduce their speed psychologically through changes in road surface, vehicle-activated signs or road markings, rather than engineering out the problem with measures such as road humps.

At present, there is little formal guidance on these new traffic- calming techniques. Sheffield Council officers visited the national transport research centre in Crowthorne, Berkshire, and also asked consultant Mott MacDonald to carry out an independent investigation into the viability of such schemes.

Solutions that were recommended include road narrowing, the removal of road markings to encourage drivers to take more care as other vehicles approach, a "shared space" that blurs the boundaries between the areas for pedestrians and those for traffic, and speed indication signage.

In the short-term, schemes will include introducing electronic speed indication devices in known accident hot spots, such as the A61 Penistone Road and Manchester Road.

A "child safety zone" in Southey Green East is in the design stage, and will be used to trial these innovative methods of traffic calming on a small number of streets.

In addition to speed measurements, people in the Southey Green area will also be surveyed as to whether they think the schemes are proving successful.

The next stage will be to carry out research with Sheffield University's psychology department and, in the medium term, put various pilot schemes into practice once funding for those schemes has been found.

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