Shared space

This is either an anarchic nightmare or a libertarian's dream, depending on where you draw the line:

A town council in Germany has decided the best way of improving road safety is to remove all traffic lights and stop signs downtown.

From September 12, all traffic controls will disappear from the centre of the western town of Bohmte to try to reduce accidents and make life easier for pedestrians.

In an area used by 13,500 cars every day, drivers and pedestrians will enjoy equal right of way, Klaus Goedejohann, the town's mayor, told Reuters.

"Traffic will no longer be dominant," he said.

The idea of removing signs to improve road safety, called "Shared Space", was developed by Dutch traffic. specialist Hans Monderman, and is supported by the European Union.

The idea that we can all figure out how to use "shared space" with no directions might be even more libertarian than I'm willing to experience, but it's surely an interesting experiment.

If you talk to libertarians about what they expect from the law, traffic regulations should occur to you as the epitome of what they want. By driving on the highway, we give our implied consent to obey the rules of the road. Those rules are designed to let us all get to where we're going without killing each other. No judgments are made about where we are going or why or how we get there.

I thought about all that a long time ago and decided that the four-way stop sign is the perfect law. We all know that the first driver who gets there has the right of way. If we get there simultaneously, the person on the right has the first option to go. If we can't firgure it out, pretty soon one driver will signal to the other to go ahead. That is minimal control and those controlled figuring out how to deal with it. If we did not all understand the rules of the four-way stop and abide by them, we would be paralyzed at those stop signs. But we do understand them, and accept them and obey them.