In Mexico there are still a good number of 3-lane roads where the middle lane is for passing in both directions. A close family friend died on one: head-on collision with a truck passing a truck on a curving mountain road. (He was an aggressive driver who got lucky for decades until one day he finally didn’t.) Truly horrible road design.
Re:The Stroad
by frosted-flakes on Monday November 22, 2021 @12:31PM
(#29309088)
Middle shared turn lanes are quite safe though, though I don't have actual stats. It's very hard to hit someone in one because no one is driving more than 50 ft in one, and you're always coming to a stop to prepare for a turn. On busy streets they are usually a bit wider than a normal lane, and on 80 km/h highways, they are a full lane-and-a-half wide. On busier residential streets with lots of single family homes, they are a great alternative to two lanes in each direction, because they allow for separated bike lanes and left-turning cars don't block traffic flow. Many 50 km/h roads in my city have been converted like this.
You would never put one in a newly designed road, but when a road needs to be upgraded, they are a great solution.
A 3-lane is a road design where you’ve got one lane in each direction, and a shared passing lane in the middle.
These used to be quite popular as they were not much more expensive than a 2-lane but allowed better throughput, however as density and speeds increased they became more and more deadly as they’d encourage trying to pass and high-speed frontal collisions.
They’re mostly gone now, replaced by either 2+2 or 2+1 (the latter is very popular in europe, it’s basically a 3-lane except there’s a hard barrier which regularly swaps the center lane’s direction to allow safe passing sections — or more rarely a 1+1 with a protected turn lane).