Interesting... I tend to agree with the sceptical thrust of the first article. I can see the basic logic, at least in urban areas, of creating a situation where drivers going straight ahead are basically forced to slow down as if someone was going to emerge from every side road to the right, because they can't actually see whether there's someone approaching in most cases. But, as the article says, there is no guarantee that people on the straight line will actually do this, including people behind the lead vehicle in a convoy. No regulation on the roads should be an exercise in testing how many people pay attention to it, with "serves you right" as the response if they crash or incur a fine. The point of road safety measures is to protect road users, not to sort the observant sheep from the rebellious goats. If they cause accidents that would not otherwise have occurred, then they are a bad thing. If the authority fails to react to those accidents and abandon the change, then they are morally complicit in whatever deaths, injuries and material damage result.
The article covered quite comprehensively the dynamics involved between drivers on the straight line (e.g. failing to take account of emerging traffic that has priority) and those emerging (e.g. presuming priority and not looking and/or emerging too fast to stop if someone hasn't seen them). But it completely fails to address the needs of and risks to pedestrians. The person emerging from the side road with priority over crossing traffic from the left who just goes because they have priority will not only risk a collision with traffic from the left, but will also not consider the needs (and possible priority) of any pedestrians crossing the mouth of the turn. I don't know the rule in France, but here and in the UK, you should give way to pedestrians who are crossing at a corner where you are changing direction, unless you have a green light and they have a red man. Saying to someone turning right "you have priority" immediately endangers pedestrians in this context.
Given that, it wouldn't surprise me if fewer pedestrians are put at risk if you give the priority to traffic going straight on. Pedestrians don't have automatic priority over this traffic unless there is a crossing, and drivers who are actually turning right are no more or less likely to yield to crossing pedestrians under this scenario than during a right turn executed under PàD.
If the principal issue is getting people to slow down and interact with each other dynamically, including pedestrians, I'd rather see something along the lines of what I mentioned earlier in this thread, where *neither* arm of a junction has a presumed priority, and *no-one* approaching it can blithely say "I have priority" and go sailing out in front of heaven knows what or whom. Basically I'm arguing for a variant of the US four-way stop, but without the absolute duty to stop if it isn't necessary.
