traffic court judge demonstrates his ignorance

So I had to go to traffic court today, although it wasn't for a traffic ticket. I had not renewed my car license tag when it was due (I didn't get a notice for it, but I probably wouldn't have renewed on time anyway, so all in all I didn't really mind paying the fine). But it was very interesting listening to the judge talk to some of the defendents whose tickets really were traffic related. There were several tickets relating to accidents at the same location: getting on I-85 north from 400 south. According to the judge, that intersection is poorly designed, and he decided to take advantage of his position (sitting in front of a trapped audience with a microphone) to declaim his opinion about the road. He addressed the first defendent who'd had an accident at that intersection with the following words:

"You are not a bad driver. You're the victim of bad road engineering. If only we would just let the engineers build the roads the way they want to, this problem wouldn't happen. They wanted to use the toll money from 400 to fix that intersection. Instead, they took that money and built Atlantic Station."

Later, he brought it up again, this time in reference to an accident in which a teenager driver hit another car from behind:

"Atlanta is a very difficult city to be driving in," he told the teenager. "We have a problem of too many cars and not enough roads."

Anyone else seeing a pattern here?

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that a traffic court judge is completely oblivious to the real problems behind traffic. But then again, it does surprise me. Studies on the topic have shown that building more roads actually increases traffic instead of alleviating it. In fact, one British study demonstrated that the opposite is actually true: decreasing road capacity is an effective way to decrease traffic. And the judge is right about one thing: more traffic means more accidents.

But he--along with, probably, most residents of Atlanta--thinks that building a somewhat walkable community such as Atlantic Station instead of building up a road is actually causing more accidents in Atlanta.

Well, I guess everybody's entitled to their opinion.

But I do hate it the fact that in a courtroom, the judge's opinion is the only one that matters.