Letter: Road redesign will not make it safer

In regard to the design of the proposed modification of Mormon Trek Blvd., there are several questions I would like to ask:

There are 18 new apartments for rent on Walden Road this summer. How is reducing Mormon Trek to two lanes going to reduce traffic crashes, when the population of cars is increasing?

Making this street five lanes with turn signal lights would provide the 'safe turns” and still allow for traffic flow and room for traffic increase.

Incidents which are the concern of this proposal are crashes not accidents. They have been caused by human error, not acts of God. A human was ignorant of traffic rules, careless, inattentive or impaired. Will reconfiguring the road eliminate these causes? Who will bear the final cost of this proposal?

Since the quest for elimination of crashes will reduce the cost associated with those crashes, those most benefiting from that saving should be the ones paying for any improvements that reduce crashes. Insurance companies benefit the most.

If the ultimate goal is to change human behavior we should pursue that by allowing the financial cost of: education, signs, fines and legal responsibility, borne by those who have the most to gain financially.

Lawrence O. Reiner

Iowa City