Killed by a Traffic Engineer exposes the absence of genuine science behind street design, arguing that traffic engineering has prioritised speed and capacity over human safety through decades of unexamined assumptions and industry-driven conjecture.
About This Book
Streets kill people — and civil engineering professor Wes Marshall argues this is not accidental bad luck but the predictable outcome of a discipline built on plausible-sounding but largely unproven design logic. Killed by a Traffic Engineer traces how traffic engineering research became outdated, self-referential, and captured by an industry culture fixated on throughput. Marshall works through the mechanisms: the cultural obsession with speed, the capacity-driven design decisions, the reflexive blaming of human error, the unreliable data, and the liability structures that distort how road safety is reported and measured. For urban designers, planners, and architects engaged with the built environment at street level, this book reframes the problem and points toward what genuinely people-centred street design could look like.
Key Features
- 344 pages of thoroughly researched and compellingly written analysis of traffic engineering culture, methodology, and reform
- Author: Wes Marshall, civil engineering professor
- Published by Island Press
What You'll Discover
- How traffic engineering research has remained largely unexamined, relying on conjecture rather than rigorous evidence to justify street design decisions
- The mechanisms by which speed became culturally disconnected from safety — and how capacity-focused design compounds the problem
- Why liability structures and faulty data collection distort how road safety outcomes are measured and reported
- What a genuine reorientation of traffic engineering education and practice could produce — streets designed for the safety of all users, inside and outside of vehicles
About the Author
Wes Marshall is a professor of civil engineering whose work focuses on transportation safety and street design. In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, he draws on extensive research to build a sustained critique of the assumptions and cultural pressures shaping his own discipline.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 344
- Dimensions: 6 x 9 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781642833300
- Publisher: Island Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Urban designers, architects, city planners, transport policymakers, and anyone working at the intersection of street design, public safety, and the built environment.