But locals also know the area better, pretty much by definition. That usually makes them safer drivers.
I know that the streets near my house are filled with kids because of the three schools nearby that use the park as a playground, that almost (not quite) every other intersection is a two-way stop instead of a four-way, and that even though the streets are wide the speed limit is 25.
A flash mob of commuters is not going to have any of those advantages, and they'll be trying to route-find at the same time, so they are going to be less safe drivers. And they're probably going to be frustrated from dealing with traffic and going too fast on top of it.
>>If the street has insufficient safety measures on it
"Sufficient safety measures" is a function of the traffic load. eg, 2-way stops work fine with small volumes of traffic, but not at all for large volumes. Changing safety measures takes lots of time and some money - they cannot possibly react quickly enough to deal with flash mobs of commuters.
It's the opposite... knowing an area well usually makes dangerous drivers. Most accidents happen within some miles from home, mainly because one "knows" the area so well one lets their guard down.
Or, that result is just an artifact of how most driving happens within a few miles of the driver's home.
If 70% of one's driving is within 5 miles of one's home, but 55% of accidents occur in that radius, then people are indeed safer drivers near their homes -- probably because of familiarity.
Source? It seems much more likely that most accidents happen within some smallish radius from home because one is much much more likely to be driving there as home is the presumably, on aggregate, most frequent starting or ending point for a person (besides, possibly work or a transit hub, etc.) – the other end points are much more dispersed, but home definitely biases the distribution of driving location and therefore one would expect to see more accidents near home even if the moment by moment probability of getting into an accident was uniform.
Certainly knowing an area can breed inattention, or risky behavior based on familiarity. My hunch is that it still works out to be safer on average, but admittedly I have no data for that.
I was always under the impression that accidents happen close to home because that's where people spend most of their time so they get a lot more chances to have an accident there.
A flash mob of commuters is going to know whether a stop is 2-way or 4-way (there are signs), and they are going to know what the speed limit is (there are signs). If someone is as attentive as they need to be while driving, it's irrelevant whether the park is a playground or there are three schools nearby or whether there are kids in a given house. I don't know about you, but if I'm somewhere I've never been before because I'm going around a traffic jam, I am even more attentive than normal.
If someone isn't as attentive as they need to be, that's a different problem altogether.
I know that the streets near my house are filled with kids because of the three schools nearby that use the park as a playground, that almost (not quite) every other intersection is a two-way stop instead of a four-way, and that even though the streets are wide the speed limit is 25.
A flash mob of commuters is not going to have any of those advantages, and they'll be trying to route-find at the same time, so they are going to be less safe drivers. And they're probably going to be frustrated from dealing with traffic and going too fast on top of it.
>>If the street has insufficient safety measures on it
"Sufficient safety measures" is a function of the traffic load. eg, 2-way stops work fine with small volumes of traffic, but not at all for large volumes. Changing safety measures takes lots of time and some money - they cannot possibly react quickly enough to deal with flash mobs of commuters.