The center turning lane isn't there to avoid rear end collisions, which are only problematic due to too-high speeds in a commercial area.

They are about improving throughput.

What makes them dangerous, particularly in the five lane configuration, is the poor visibility for crossing uncontrolled intersections of multiple traffic lanes.

Center turning with five lanes? wow, that's crazy...

The examples in the article show anywhere from 5 to 7 lanes. The outermost lanes in one of the 7-lane examples are parking lanes.

There's a stroad on Staten Island that scares the crap out of me - Hylan Blvd. I have family that live on it. It's six lanes with a median, but sometimes and in certain places parking is allowed in the outermost lanes. So you can suddenly come up on parked traffic but only at certain times of day in certain places. It's totally insane.

To get in the driveway, you have to loop the block to the closest light, wait for the green, and then drive halfway down the block and back-in before the light changes and traffic starts up. It's quite stressful.

Over here we have that, well something similar, outside of towns and cities for one lane. In cities max 2 lanes, with a 50 kmh speed limit. And those are rare, street cross section have traffic lights and those from parking lots are scary enough. And slow enough, it is sometimes faster to not cross lanes and just turn around at the next traffic light.

Commonplace in suburban Chicago.