This week we’re joined by Bill Schultheiss of Toole Design to talk about bike facility design guides.
We look at the benefits of both the AASHTO and NACTO guides and discuss the importance of history, political will and the stress of being an expert witness in a trial.
Scroll down below the audio player for a partial edited transcript of the episode — or click here for an AI-generated readout (yes, there will be AI typos).
Jeff Wood: I know you’re steeped in the discussions about updates to the MUTCD as well. I’m wondering how these guides react to that, as well as some of the consternation that maybe advocates have for that process.
Bill Schultheiss: Yeah, the MUTCD is an important document. I served in that committee for 15 years. It’s important because it’s the only document mandated in law to be used, so it creates a federal standard.
And the dilemma in that is it heightens a liability standard for agencies because it’s mandated in law. So if you don’t follow it, all the attorneys in America, if there’s a question, well you didn’t follow that thing that’s mandated law, you did it wrong, I’m gonna sue, you’re at fault. It creates a real challenge when that book is not meeting best practices, that your hands can be tied.
So we had a large period of time where the MUTCD was not updated with best practices following current research, where engineers [were] like, "I can’t do the thing I wanna do because it’s not in that book. And if I do that thing that I know is safer, then they would tell me that I’m at more of a risk of being in trouble if something happens in court."
Now, that’s oversimplifying [it], because any good engineer can document, go through a process and defend it. But the real practical manner I’ve learned to do expert witness work is people don’t wanna be in the situation of being in court and have to testify. It’s really stressful. So if their choice is take the conservative way out and just follow what’s in that book of the MUTCD and minimize [the] risk of being in court, or go beyond it. But then I gotta document, justify it. And then I’m gonna have to potentially be on a witness stand defending that. I don’t wanna do that.
I’d say 90 out of a 100 engineers would say, "I’m not doing that" because we have a lot of personalities that are risk-averse, but also shy [and] conflict-averse. And I’ll tell you, a court setting is the most stressful, intense situation you can be in. I don’t mind it. My personality is okay with it, but it takes a lot out of you to be in the courtroom setting. So a lot of people just will do things to avoid it or in the hope of avoiding it.
Jeff Wood: Do you have any wild stories you can share from the courtroom?
Bill Schultheiss: Oh yeah. I was deposed once for six hours straight. And I got little five minute breaks once an hour. But the lawyers are trying to win a case.
They’re not trying to — I’m oversimplifying a little bit here, too — but of course they want to do what’s right, but ultimately they’re trying to win. They’re not experts in the field, so they don’t care that you’re an expert in the field and they’re trying to trap you into saying something so they can discredit you.
And that’s the part where the stress goes up and that’s what makes these engineers say, I don’t wanna be in that situation where you misrepresent what I’m saying. And that’s actually what happened to me. In hour one of my deposition this attorney read some statement and wouldn’t tell me what the document was from that he was reading. And in hour six of my deposition, h said, "Oh, that document I was reading from was from your staff."
He was trying to trap me into contradicting my own team or to say that we had a bad quality control process that I’m responsible for, to then throw me out as a witness. But I was a little more wise to what he was up to. I didn’t know what he was reading from our document, but I just said, "Look, I can’t give you an opinion on something where you’re not telling me the source."
I’ve learned how to manage that process. I know what they’re doing. But that’s the part that is very confrontational — and nerve wracking — and that’s the part that a lot of engineers say, "I want nothing to do with it," because it’s distasteful at a certain level.
