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 recognised the logic: by forcing drivers to confront the possibility of small errors, the chance of them making larger ones was greatly reduced.
