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TIL about William Phelps Eno. He invented traffic regulations, the stop sign, the crosswalk, the roundabout, the one-way street and pedestrian safety islands. He never learned how to drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Phelps_Eno

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He didn't invent the roundabout. It was Eugene Henard in France about 30 years prior. He also didn't invent the stop sign (Harry Jackson). There were also one way streets in England before the US existed.

Twinklebreeze

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I don't think the phrase "today I learned" implies truth. OP just learned lies today. /s

criitz

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I was curious about the claims about Eno so I Googled a bit. Eno actually is responsible for a lot of these ideas being put in use, if not inventing them himself. He basically pioneered the concept of standardized traffic rules.

As for the stop sign, Eno proposed the idea in 1900:

In a 1900 article titled “Reforming Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed,” for Rider and Driver magazine, he proposed placing stop signs at intersections. It was a civilizing notion.“That was a new concept and really did introduce the idea that you had to watch out for other people,” Schank says.

Harry Jackson created his octagonal sign 14 years later, in 1914:

Stop signs were invented in Detroit in 1914, which seems the obvious place considering it’s the car center of the universe. Detroit police sergeant Harry Jackson was working an intersection where one lane came in at an odd angle and so he continuously had to stop the cars coming that way. He took a board, cut the corners off and wrote “stop” on it. It did the trick and soon he was telling the other cops about it and it soon caught on.

The invention of the roundabout is a bit more complicated. Circular intersections of some kind predated Eno, but they wouldn't all be considered roundabouts by our definition today.

unexposedhazard

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But you see he reinvented those things in "the US" and thats where the truth is decided amiright?

Dorkyd68

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You can't reinvent something. It either exists or it doesn't. and why is the us in quotations?? Are you implying it doesn't exist or something??

Dorkyd68

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The comments section always lit with the actual truth

seang96

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Reading the Wikipedia it looks like it's not about the inventions of the individual things, but he utilized them together and potentially further optimized them (round about from 2 lanes to 1 to reduce accidents) and established a rulebook that officers should enforce and the public are expected to know and follow.

crapwittyname

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I came here, furious, to say all this. What the hell am I supposed to do with all this energy now?

Paces angrily

Randomgal

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A hero even before this time.

Eczpurt

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Honestly, I bet the roads would be safer today if anyone who made traffic regulations had never driven. As it stands I think rules and design are mainly for driver convenience rather than general safety.

Swedneck

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absolutely, crossings should not exist, all streets should just inherently be safe to cross everywhere and and at roads you should always have grade separation.

johny

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You could word it that way, or you could say: man who was driven everywhere by a chauffeur formalized the taking over of shared pedestrian spaces to car only spaces.

Also I have yet to learn of a member of the skull and bones society that was a good person.

MedicPigBabySaver

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SplashJackson

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What a dickhead