Killed by a Traffic Engineer, Wes Marshall
Killed by a Traffic Engineer, Wes Marshall
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Killed by a Traffic Engineer
Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System

Author: Wes Marshall

Narrator: Stephen R. Thorne

Unabridged: 15 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/25/2025


Synopsis

In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse, yet we continue to accept these deaths as part of doing business. There has been no examination of why we engineer roads that are literally killing us.

In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, civil engineering professor Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.

Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering "research" is outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health.

Killed by a Traffic Engineer is ultimately hopeful about what is possible once we shift our thinking and demand streets engineered for the safety of people, both outside and inside of cars.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nick on October 17, 2024

Four stars for the material. Two stars for the writing — and I’m being generous. This thing needs an aggressive editor willing to cut the dated pop culture references and irrelevant footnotes. The author writes about a study that was never completed and, so, has no results to share. Cut it. Case stu......more

Goodreads review by Elle on April 25, 2024

got this advanced reader copy at the national planning conference! I found it really comprehensible, even with the more technical topics, and it was especially inspiring as I work towards a career in transportation safety myself. even if that doesn’t pan out, I now have the tools and knowledge to be......more

Goodreads review by Johann on July 14, 2024

This book is a very accessible and persuasive introduction to the problems created by the past hundred years of traffic "engineering", which has focused exclusively on making it easy and fast for cars to move through places, to the detriment of all other uses of land in the area. I am already deeply......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on September 17, 2024

Full review to come, but this was excellent and approachable* *except for random footnotes that added nothing, like this one.......more

Goodreads review by Rose on November 08, 2025

not sure if I find all the pop culture references hilarious or cringe, but very eye opening regardless......more