Please read the whole article, it's glorious, life without cops can be a good thing :-)
Anarchy, or Spontaneous Order, on the Streets of Saigon
by Joshua Snyder
News of the several successful experiments by several European cities with getting the state out of traffic regulation created quite a stir last year. (See European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs.) Non-libertarian-minded folks saw it as counter-intuitive, not self-evident, that people themselves would do a better job looking out for their own safety rather than relying on a nanny state to warn them of every conceivable danger. But it turned out that drivers slowing down at intersections and looking both ways was much, much safer than blindly trusting one's life to a mindless green light.
Perhaps these successful experiments with traffic anarchism would have come about sooner had planners visited a city ironically located in a socialist country and renamed after a socialist "icon" of the 20th Century. The streets of what is now called Ho Chi Minh City offer the same lessons learned from the European experience, and much more. Following is a description of what the author experienced on a visit in 1997. In the intervening decade, I'm not sure to what extent archy has broken out, if at all, and destroyed the glorious freedom on the streets of the Paris of the East that I am about to describe.
Anarchy, or Spontaneous Order, on the Streets of Saigon
by Joshua Snyder
News of the several successful experiments by several European cities with getting the state out of traffic regulation created quite a stir last year. (See European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs.) Non-libertarian-minded folks saw it as counter-intuitive, not self-evident, that people themselves would do a better job looking out for their own safety rather than relying on a nanny state to warn them of every conceivable danger. But it turned out that drivers slowing down at intersections and looking both ways was much, much safer than blindly trusting one's life to a mindless green light.
Perhaps these successful experiments with traffic anarchism would have come about sooner had planners visited a city ironically located in a socialist country and renamed after a socialist "icon" of the 20th Century. The streets of what is now called Ho Chi Minh City offer the same lessons learned from the European experience, and much more. Following is a description of what the author experienced on a visit in 1997. In the intervening decade, I'm not sure to what extent archy has broken out, if at all, and destroyed the glorious freedom on the streets of the Paris of the East that I am about to describe.
The full article is linked HERE.
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