Over at the Seattle Transit Blog, Adam B. Parast has a great post about the state Department of Transportation’s new program to make our highways safer. How? By making them smarter:

Preventing accidents by managing traffic is smart and practical. In the not-so-distant future, all of these freeways will be tolled, so we might as well get drivers comfortable with being bossed around by technology. A freeway system with the ability to alert you to dangers ahead (this is one good example) is worth having.

I especially like how, in this video, there is the obligatory frame of a jean-and-sneaker-clad leg boarding a sad looking city bus. It is as if the message was, “make your highways safer, because if you don’t you’ll be just another hobo busin’ it to the plasma donation place in Greenwood.”

7 replies on “Smart Highways for Dumb Drivers”

  1. simultaneous thoughts:
    1) good for you, wsdot, congrats on a good system and a good PSA
    2) i’m embarrassed that it’s taken you this long to get it and that you’re pretending this is revolutionary. they’ve had this in europe for decades now.

  2. Oh, but Metro buses make 3 other cameos in this production, at :46, 1:47, and 4:09. The bus is always either mired in the slowest lane of the traffic jam, or lackadaisically turtling along in the slowest lane of moving traffic.
    So see ya later—I’m driving, suckahs!

  3. There is no blood plasma donation place in Greenwood, jerk.

    The closest blood donation location is your standard whole blood donation center run by Puget Sound Blood. It is on 105th, just east of Aurora. That is the Lichton Springs neighborhood, not Greenwood.

    There is a Biomat, who pays for blood plasma, location but it is on Crown Hill, not Greenwood.

    Quit disrespecting our ‘hood.

  4. And yet the drivers in this country commandeer their cars. trucks and vans at night with no lights on. Motorcycle, scooters and cars sold in other countries have lights on at all times to improve visibility. What is the safety “win” for driving invisibly at night?

  5. More distracting signs on our highway. Excellent.

    Also, I wonder how effective stuff like this is on a system like ours. So you see a lane is out on I-5 and the traffic is horrible so you do …. what, exactly? Any “alternative” routes will likely become congested when everyone follows the same advice and reacts in the same way. Right?

  7. This seems like a pretty good idea overall. Does anyone want to take bets on how long it takes until a grassroots campaign starts up asking the question “DO YOU REALLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TELLING YOU HOW TO DRIVE”?

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