The Diverging Diamond Video Lives On

Every now and then someone shares my Diverging Diamond overdub on a random site and I get a blast of negative feedback on our YouTube channel. It just happened again. I find this funny.

I put this video together over three years ago and the underlying notion still holds true. The engineer doing the original video is completely oblivious to what a pedestrian-friendly, cycling-friendly environment looks like. Yeah, I make fun of him and his ridiculous assertions -- engineers who believe these things are fools and deserve our ridicule, especially since they are spending billions of our dollars, endangering millions of lives in the process -- and I also provide some analysis of what we should do differently.

A diverging diamond is a brilliant innovation to do one thing: move cars more quickly on a limited budget. If that's the objective, fine. Let's just not pretend that meeting the pedestrian checklist somehow makes this a good pedestrian environment.

Asserting such in a 10+ minute video makes one sound ignorant. Sharing this with fellow engineers in the echo chamber as some kind of pedestrian accomplishment disgusts me. I play the court jester here because sometimes that's the most effective way to speak truth to power. Get over it, engineers.

And for you non-engineers....don't let your professionals be such fools. You don't need PE behind your name to point out how stupid assertions like the ones in this original video are. Don't be afraid to tell the emperor he has no clothes.