And so Monderman tried something revolutionary. He suggested that the road through Oudehaske be made to look more like what it already was: a road through a village. First, the existing traffic signs were removed. (Signs always irritated Monderman: driving through his home country of the Netherlands with the writer Tom Vanderbilt, Monderman railed against their patronizing redundancy. “Do you really think that no one would perceive there is a bridge over there?” he would ask, waving at a sign that stood next to a bridge, notifying people of the bridge.23) The signs might ostensibly be asking drivers to slow down. However, argued Monderman, because signs are the universal language of roads everywhere, on a deeper level the effect of their presence is simply to reassure drivers that they were on a road—a road like any other, where cars rule. Monderman wanted to remind them that they were also in a village, where kids might play. So, next, he replaced the tarmac with red-brick paving, and the raised curb with a flush sidewalk and gently curved guttering. Cars could stray off the road and onto the verge if they wished. They tended not to. Where once drivers had, figuratively speaking, sped through the village on autopilot—not really attending to what they were doing—now they were faced with a messy situation and had to engage their brains. It was hard to know quite what to do, or where to drive—or which space belonged to the cars and which to the village children. As Tom Vanderbilt describes Monderman’s strategy, “Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity.”
A confusing situation always grabs the attention, as Brian Eno has argued. Perplexed, drivers took the cautious way forward: they drove so slowly through Oudehaske that Monderman could no longer capture their speed on his radar gun. Earl Wiener would have recognized the logic: by forcing drivers to confront the possibility of small errors, the chance of their making larger ones was greatly reduced.
When processes become too smooth, we’ll take our attention off and function on autopilot. This prevents us from doing things carefully and might lead to catastrophic errors. In this anecdote, the roads were too smooth and reminded drivers too much of a highway. They were speeding in a village where kids might walk onto the road. This led to a higher rate of accidents.
By creating mini obstacles and forcing drivers to be in an environment which they have to actively engage in, the drivers had to slow down and put attention towards their driving and there were way less accidents.
Such situations can also find its parallels in the workplace. Important processes that have the potential for significant consequences should provide feedback for users to actively engage in. Being the lazy humans we are, we tend to leave things on autopilot and assume everything’s all right. Feedback or redesigning process which compels us to think can help prevent major errors.
