'The Economist'
John Adams, a transport expert at UCL, has compiled data from all over the world to show that laws making drivers wear seatbelts do not make roads safer; they move deaths from inside cars to outside them because they encourage bad driving.
The number of young children killed on the roads has fallen in recent years, he notes-but mainly because they are rarely allowed out alone, so today's teenagers have less skill at navigating hazardous roads; and as a result, the number of teenagers killed in car accidents has jumped. He lauds the Dutch experiment in "naked streets" where most road signs and markings were removed to force travellers to keep their wits about them. …
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