Something I Hadn't Thought Of

From a very interesting episode of Freakonomics Radio:

The safest streets in Europe are streets where pedestrians and cars are entirely intermixed. In other words, where there’s not even really a distinguishable sidewalk. You see those streets in England, you see them in Switzerland, where cars, bicyclists, pedestrians are all navigating, sometimes even without striped lanes, the same roadway. And the reason that that is safer, is because the cars, lacking clear direction as to where their exact lane is and where the sidewalk is, they have to be more careful, so they slow down. The pedestrians, who in such a situation have as much of a right to the road as any, they’re not relegated to sidewalks — can actually feel like they can walk in between cars. And again, despite our intuition, our probably, you know, American mindset, that that kind of situation might be dangerous, it’s actually in many ways safer, because it signals to drivers that they’re not the only users of the road.  -- Sara Bronin

That's at odds with my own prior assumptions, the conventional wisdom, and, I'm pretty sure, the consensus of the Gainesville/Alachua County Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Board (on which I serve).

In fact, on the BPAB, there's usually quite a bit of talk about how to segregate cars, cyclists/scooter riders, and pedestrians.

There's a little (one block, IIRC) pilot project in town that's "Amsterdam-style," with the auto roadway in the middle and separate bike/pedestrian lanes at different heights (i.e. curbs separating each type of lanes from the others), and it's quite nice. But it's also quite expensive.

Could the solution, at least in urban areas, involve throwing all three traffic types together so that everyone feels like they have to pay attention?

I recall reading about a similar phenomenon somewhere in Europe where they did away with traffic signals and stop signs ... and collisions went down, not up, presumably for the same reasons.