Europe's no-sign experiment

"Counter-intuitive" is how one British urban planner describes it. Indeed.

European planners and traffic engineers are in the midst of an experiment designed to reduce auto accidents and make drivers act more humanely toward one another. Quite simply, they are removing all road signs, billboards and traffic lights from busy streets. All that clutter confuses people and might make them angry.

If people feel the government is setting too many rules, they will start to ignore them, or so the thinking goes.

We applaud the Europeans for thinking outside the solid white lines, but it probably would be smart to wait for some reliable statistics before Utah rips up all its stoplights. Still, it is encouraging that officials observed a 60 percent decrease in pedestrian injuries after removing 850 yards of barriers and signs from London's Kensington High Street, which is anything but a lightly traveled road.

In the United States, traffic planners have been pushing the concept of "traffic calming" for years. This involves the use of a variety of designs and other aesthetic measures that act as subconscious prods to make drivers slow down and exercise caution. Tree-lined streets are encouraged. Crosswalks are raised slightly. Roads are narrowed slightly, or stoplights are replaced by round-abouts. Salt Lake City began using these methods a decade ago, as did a few other Utah cities.

Results have been mixed. In 2005, the state experienced its lowest level of pedestrian-motor vehicle deaths in eight years. But that number rose dramatically during the first half of 2006. It's hard to say whether traffic calming has had an impact of accidents overall, but it likely hasn't hurt.

But do away with signs all together? How would visitors find their way? How would drivers know the speed limit?

The Dutch say not to worry. An Associated Press report said a square in the Dutch town of Drachten is alive with 22,000 cars a day, but the lack of traffic lights have forced people to be careful and to interact like human beings, not like mechanized road-rage artists.

Of course, everyone probably would be extra careful if all the lines and medians were removed from roads as well. But it might be harder to get anywhere quickly.

The answer probably lies somewhere this side of total sign removal. But American planners would do well to keep a close eye on the European experiment.