Honest, I never was a civil engineer. Never got past my first year of college. However, there was a prompt that I replied to in which I pretended to be an engineer for a short time. One of my suggestions was to do away with two way streets. One way streets have a lot of advantages.

As you could tell by my post, I would not make much of a city planner. Nonetheless, I did think of a few more advantages to one way streets. However, let me review the advantages I already mentioned.

Left and right turns would equally difficult. No one would ever need to wait for apposing traffic. Going into and out of businesses would be far easier, especially leaving a business onto a 3 or 4 lane road. Because of no turns against apposing traffic, there would be no need for left turn signals. Currently, much of the time shared in the intersection is reserved for left turns, north, south as well as east west. Though traffic must wait for all left turns.

Now for a couple of things I just thought of. The head on collision would almost totally be eliminated. I say almost, because there are cities like Memphis where some drivers would drive the wrong way. And, of course, head on collisions are usually the most deadly because of the relative speed. Two cars hitting each other at 40, have a relative speed of 80.

The U-turn would be unnecessary. 2 left or 2 right turns would serve the same purpose and would be far safer, though, I must admit, the driver would have to travel one more block. Some might not want to admit it, but having to look into headlights is tiring, and maybe even harmful. With one way streets, it would be very rare to have to look into headlights. Incidentally, it would also improve vision, especially at dusk.

As a little aside, considering the number of miles driven each day, there are very few accidents. Mostly, it is when a person disobeys a law either by accident or intentionally. Possibly, it is because of impatience or being in a hurry. I witnessed a few of the intentional ones, mostly running red lights. In Memphis it used to be against the law to turn right on a red light except where posted. They changed the law to read that you can make a right turn when safe and only after coming to a complete stop. It would seem there are many who just go barreling on through as if the light is not there. It makes me wish they never changed the law. It doesn’t hurt to wait a while. It can be far worse without the without the wait.

Kind of a sudden afterthought. It might after result in less out of “out of court settlements” too.