In Austin Texas we have an absurdly well marked crosswalk on the way to the elementary school, to a close approximation nobody has ever stopped to let us cross. Our daughter was nearly killed once, so far.
It seems so many people in America are so fat now they don’t imagine people would ever walk, so they drive without regard for pedestrians and active hostility towards cyclists and park in the way of sidewalks, making walking or riding bikes to school seem so scary and unpleasant that few kids do it anymore, leading to more fat Americans who would never imagine walking. It is really depressing.
Can you link to this crosswalk on Streetview? I have a mental image of the kind of crossing you're describing and I want to see if it matches with the reality.
When I lived in LA, it was downright dangerous to try and cross a road as a pedestrian. I once ended up on some guy's hood who decided that red lights just didn't apply to him. No major harm done thankfully, but if he'd have been going any faster I wouldn't be here today.
To reconcile this with the parent comment... yes. Crosswalk markings, however bold and bright, alone are insufficient to make an intersection safe for pedestrians.
Why do you need to look for such far fetched explanations when you can clearly see massive amounts of people texting while driving? I drive quite a lot (for European standards) and I've seen the amount of people holding phones increase massively. I can recognize it from a mile away by the way people are driving.
One thing mentioned in the article that rings very true is that vehicles are getting bigger. It’s not unusual to see trucks where the front grill is too high to see a child, or even some adults. We have the statistics to know that these vehicles are disproportionately likely to kill pedestrians, but vehicles sell based on the safety of people inside the vehicle, not people outside of it.
It’s a vicious circle, too. If everyone else has an SUV, you also want an SUV so you’re not crushed by one in a crash.
Maybe. Again, there have been ginormous trucks and SUVs around the rounds since the 90s, why would we see a sudden spike and not a gradual increase since then?
My personal opinion is blaming a spike on a things that have not changed recently (car sizes, pedestrian friendliness of cities, human nature) is not logical:
The most likely candidates (again, in my opinion) are:
changes to driver psychology somehow due to the pandemic (empty roads, then full roads again, greater anxiety or stress related to traveling back and forth to work, or something like that)
changes in enforcement of driving laws (the protests of 2020 caused changes in police budget allocations or how police enforce minor laws like traffic laws OR staffing issues due to the pandemic with law enforcement agencies, or both)
A near universal change in how drivers are certified / licensed (could be due to changes in the pandemic or some other factor?)
OR this is a statistical fluke someone hooked onto and we are all drawing far-reaching conclusions from.
Cars are bigger and faster but with the same fundamental reliance on humans not to speed or be dicks as when Model T was on the road.
Fwiw, many groups are attempting to build self-driving cars it would be easy to produce cars that drove at sensible speeds as an intermediate step. That this hasn't happened says something about how a society values drivers', and drivers rights to break the law versus those of the innocents they routinely kill or maim as result.
No, it's people. Everyone is so fucking angry now. The only (convenient) road out of my neighborhood is through two school zones. People will PASS me in a school zone. Not the normal pass, but the floor it I'm angry pass. It's happened multiple times. They're so fucking selfish they would endanger CHILDREN just to not have to wake their sloppy ass up 10 minutes earlier so they can get to work on time.
It really is not just that. The netherlands didn’t fix their traffic by telling people to drive better (in fact they did relatively little of that), but by redesigning the entire driving conditions around the results they wanted.
Properly incentivising, and taking advantage of human psychology for other reasons than exploitation, is much more reliable than scolding people.
Getting stuck on “it’s people!” will be largely ineffective, because it’s not how people work. Though if your only goal is to have something to moan about, carry on, that’ll certainly keep.
Its just where you live. Welcome to large cities. You can move to more hospitable parts of the country where people still have basic respect for people. The politics in the South sure have annoyed me, but dealing with the public (i.e. people who you don't know) in everyday life is miles different compared to living in NY, CA, FL, TX etc.
It's more you trade sets of respects and disrespects. Small towns are great as long as you conform to a narrow set of socially conservative expectations. The south isn't all bad, but the bad escalates faster than in other places the further you are from a major highway.
Definitely agree with this sentiment. My perspective on receiving more respect in the South probably has a lot to do with being a redneck looking white guy.
It really depends. I took an entire geography class back in college called "The South", and a big part of it was defining what exactly the south is. Some people would consider Texas and Florida to be parts of the south, but most do not. Florida and especially Texas, are part of their own thing. You're also right that its partially an urban versus rural thing, drivers in Atlanta or Charlotte can be very aggressive, but its nothing compared to trying to commute in Boston etc.
The south has its own terrible, aggressive drivers. See angry, rebel-flag-waving pickup truck drivers. I’ve lived in the south my whole life, and much prefer it to the rest of the country, but we do have some terrible drivers. IIRC, the Greenville, SC area has some of the worst wrecks per capita in the US (or something like that, when I first got insurance here).
I’m in Ireland and there is a signposted pedestrian crossing that cars routinely ignore in a park near my house. A good technique, I’ve found, is point your phone at them as you prepare to cross. It seems to scare them into stopping.
Normalisation of dangerous driving is a global phenomenon where car culture reigns.
Such active traffic calming measures can be combined with more passive ones (lane narrowing, visual obstructions) to create a psychological slowdown effect in addition to the physical ones.
This works especially well combined with pedestrian and cycle passthroughs and such, including to avoid “drive-through” neighbourhoods without having to make the neighbourhood entirely impassable and a pain in the ass to residents.
>including to avoid “drive-through” neighbourhoods without having to make the neighbourhood entirely impassable and a pain in the ass to residents.
I suspect that Google Maps and the like have worsened the level of driving through residential neighborhoods as they route you through a maze of residential streets to save (in theory) two minutes.
Mostly Waze as it uses real trip times for its estimates and so can find “hidden shortcuts” through side streets. Though the rise of traffic avoidance in GPS likely contributed.
But that’s the point of traffic calming, they make trips take longer in real time so the route becomes less attractive as traffic avoidance, while not being a huge issue for “normal” local traffic.
The problem with speed bumps is they tend to make drivers speed up in between the speed bumps to make up for lost time; it's probably the least effective traffic calming measure. The most effective one would probably be shrinking the width of the road so that the lanes are narrower, which makes high speed difficult along the entire length of the road, not merely the stretches around speed bumps.
Municipalities have learned to just ignore requests for speed bumps and traffic calming stops because the same people who ask for them will be right back in front of them next month complaining about noise and pollution from all the accelerating cars. That is a problem to which there's really no good solution that the town can implement. The net result is the initial complainers are still not satisfied and the silent majority who thought the area was fine the way it was are now annoyed by the stops or bumps. From a "keeping the townsfolk as happy as possible given the resources we have at our disposal" it's an obvious waste.
So “let’s make walking even more inconvenient but find ways to moan about how much they cost to boot”.
Sinking roads and giving all surface level to pedestrians would be an active improvement, though obviously not a cheap one. The great bit is when you remove the cars you can backfill the dig and forget about it entirely.
In the age of Peloton and other indoors-only fitness trends, being fat is no requirement at all for hostility towards any means of outdoors transportation that isn't a Very Large Wheelchair.
I forget where this was, but I recall seeing video of police crossing on a crosswalk undercover and whenever a vehicle would fail to yield a cruiser would appear and pull the offender over.
I would like to see a lot more of this. In Chicago, people have always blown red lights at speed right in front of parked police cars because they know police won’t do anything (and I’m not even sure if the police are allowed to do anything—allegedly they can’t chase suspects unless they believe they are a threat to society, and I’m not sure that includes “reckless driving”).
The article didn’t mention it, but I also wonder if this (like the surge in violent crime) is driven in part by changes in policing following the BLM protests (e.g., police make fewer traffic stops for fear of finding themselves in an incriminating situation).
The problem is, it doesn't scale, especially in a city as big and violent as Chicago. It only works so long as police keep their foot on the gas (so to speak); they minute they let up on traffic enforcement (because of competing priorities) things will get worse again.
If one person speeds, that person is an idiot. But if everyone speeds, the road engineer is an idiot. A systemic problem like this is a result of poor road design, not individual deviant drivers. Police should not be burdened with the responsibility of ensuring safety in a system that is unsafe by design. The roads need to be redesigned so that drivers naturally feel unsafe at high speed.
As it stands, Chicago has police cars all over the place (in every neighborhood I’ve lived in anyway) often just sitting there parked and by my estimation there’s close to zero traffic enforcement, so we certainly seem to have a lot of capacity for maintaining this sort of enforcement and I suspect it would be like introducing a few wolves into a national park—it doesn’t take much enforcement to drive significant, broad changes.
> A systemic problem like this is a result of poor road design, not individual deviant drivers.
In many cases, I agree that there is a systemic problem at play, but these cases tend to be highways (i.e., no pedestrians) and the issue is politicians setting speed limits which traffic engineers understand to be unsafely low for the road’s design (the safest speed being that which 85% of drivers would naturally drive if unencumbered). And it hardly matters how engineers design the road because politicians will always respond to a vocal minority who argue that the limits should be lower.
However with respect to streets (i.e., places where pedestrians belong) rather than highways, the issue is only systemic with respect to enforcement—many other parts of the country (or even the same places with different enforcement) have similar streets but drivers are better behaved. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t room for improvement everywhere, but only that the issue isn’t “Chicago has stupid street engineers”.
> The problem is, it doesn't scale, especially in a city as big and violent as Chicago. It only works so long as police keep their foot on the gas (so to speak); they minute they let up on traffic enforcement (because of competing priorities) things will get worse again.
Why would you need active policing to enforce traffic lights and pedestrian crosswalks?
I don't like them either, but traffic camera work.
We have automated pictures/registration and ticketing for cars that blow past a red light or somewhere else a camera is installed, if you have enough of them nobody speeds anywhere (without punishment)
I recently saw a video of an awareness campaign by police at a crosswalk. Someone in a heart costume was trying to cross the road (at the crosswalk) and nobody stopped. When one car did end up stopping, it got rear ended by another car that didn't.
How exactly did you get to “the cause of reckless driving is fat people who don’t walk everywhere?” Show your work.
In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas.
Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
Separately, the US does have an obesity problem, and exercise would help, but the biggest issue by far is dietary sugar/carbohydrates.
It could have to do with how they are paid for. When the sidewalks were repaired on my street, each resident received a bill, proportional to how many of the segments were in front of their house. When the road was rebuilt, the money came from Somewhere Else.
Yeah, Somewhere Else is ultimately the same place, but homeowners don't see it as personally flowing out of their own pockets.
I must say I was not aware that people can be responsible for the maintenance of the sidewalk in front of their house if there is one. But it's quite common to have to shovel that sidewalk (or pay someone to do it)--at least in the city--and you can be fined if you don't. It's probably an easement on your property so you're responsible for it.
Yes having to keep the sidewalk traversable sounds like a possible duty as, as you note, you have an easement.
But having to pay for it directly sounds extremely counter-productive.
And even the first part is dubious really: there should be sidewalks most everywhere including non-residential locations or the like, which the city would almost certainly have to clear alongside the roadway. Surely in that case it’s more efficient and simpler to just clear everything uniformly?
The situation in most US cities is that there are neighborhoods with and without sidewalks. Some subdivisions have them, others don't. And it's not like you can readily add sidewalks after the fact, without wreaking havoc.
In my town, for the most part the neighborhoods without sidewalks also have extremely little car traffic, and pedestrians walk in the street without issue. The drivers also tend to behave themselves.
Changing anything that requires substantially raising the city budget is hard, because the state makes many of the rules for city budgets and taxes. Adding a large seasonal workforce and equipment for clearing sidewalks would be a tough nut to crack. They do clear the sidewalks around parks, schools, and the like. There's also a matter of the preferences of residents. For instance I don't want a ton of salt poured onto the sidewalks in front of my house, and am happy to keep it clear of snow. Every 3 or 4 houses, somebody has a snowblower that rarely gets used.
Are you part of some private community, that is able to make purchase orders on behalf of its members?
Otherwise, what you describe is not normal. The bill would be paid by whoever issued the PO. If it wasn't me, I'm not paying. If it was not on my property, then not my problem, and if it was, you have also trespassing on top.
So the only alternative that occurs to me that you are a part of some community, with common maintenance of shared property and where the bill is footed by members.
The bill is called a "special assessment." It does permit you to do the work yourself if you want, but that's much more expensive typically. Right to work on the property is called an "easement."
These measures are common in urban areas in the US.
Just adding a note that there are other easements as well. For instance the back line of my family's property grants an easement to the utilities for maintaining the electric and telecom wires.
Another way of thinking about it is that the notion of "ownership" is limited in a variety of ways. We also don't have mineral rights or control of the airspace above our house.
There is more to it than just the direct cost of the concrete.
In most cities single family neighborhood sidewalks are "owned" by the property owner, not the city. However they are an "easement" which means the property owner has no control over the property, or ability to limit access to the property but assumes all costs in maintaining, and all liabilities for injury or other city ordinances (like snow removal, grass cutting, etc) basically all the downsides of ownership with none of the upside.
>Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
Doesn't this actually imply that it's the low density that is financially unsustainable, rather than the sidewalks? I mean if your settlement pattern can't even afford a place for people to walk, what the hell are you doing?
No, this is a matter of different strokes for different folks. Many people have chosen to live in low density areas even though there are no sidewalks. They have chosen for themselves what to do with their limited resources. For people who choose to live in cities because there are sidewalks there, they are the ones making the tradeoff that you like.
Yes, I think the generous interpretation is that it isn't the sidewalk, but perhaps the sewage, water, electricity, comms, and maybe garbage collection that become expensive in less dense areas. All stuff that is related to the sidewalk, but not actually the sidewalk.
The idea of walking is foreign to a huge number of Americans, regardless of how fat/thin they might be. Try living in the suburbs and telling someone you’re going to walk an errand that’s 5 miles round-trip. You might as well tell them you’re going to Mars.
I grew up and lived in rural/suburban Florida (god-awful weather) and I never learned to drive. I walked everywhere (no sidewalks). People whose lives revolve around cars just can’t imagine a person walking longer than the distance from the parking lot to the front door.
Nearly everybody wishes they could drive less but nobody will actually drive less.
I don't do treadmill, but I used to run in the street and have since stopped. I mostly row now. My reasonings for treadmill vs running in the stret
- Safer than running on the street (crappy streets, ignorant drivers, etc.)
- I can concentrate on running, not on staying away from getting creamed by cars.
- They've got TV, I could get my garbage news fix (I don't read/watch news regularly)
- They've got bathrooms, running makes me shit sometimes, if I go out in the morning.
Of course, I stopped going to a gym because I do have an erg at home, and I don't really want to go to a large indoor location where people are huffing and puffing right now.
> In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance.
Which is because we’ve specifically built everything such that there are large distances involved which necessitate cars. You’re taking this as that natural order of things instead of a deliberate decision, which it was. We could have just built towns and cities with the right level of density instead. Even where there aren’t “large distances” involved such as the suburbs where the grocery store and doctor’s office have to be built a half mile or so away everyone has to drive because surprise surprise we’re stupid and made it so that you’re crippled and have to drive to go any distance, not just actual long distances.
> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
All the roads and highways are unsustainable too, more so, in fact. The difference is the government subsidized these instead of subsidizing sidewalks or more density to create the illusion of progress. Can’t be stagnating as a society if there’s a new road!
I actively resist putting sidewalks in my neighborhood, and actively bought into this neighborhood because it lacks them
Why? Because do not want to incur the costs of maintaining them, nor the liability that comes with them from either a city stand point, or injury standpoint
If sidewalks where maintained by the city, including snow removal, and repairs, then maybe. but the fact is in most location they are an imposition on the property owner that comes with large costs and liabilities.
Rules for these things vary by state. Personally I view your take on cleaning sidewalks off of snow (again which vary by state) as really concerning and antisocial.
The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them. How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers? Who knows. But it’s gotta be more expensive than shoveling your sidewalk off.
>>The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them.
The cost is not the problem for me, and I would prefer to get a bill for every single one of those items. Honestly if city employed people to remove the snow from the sidewalks and sent me a bill like they do trash collection I would have less of a problem with them. That is not what they do though...
>How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers?
> Honestly if city employed people to remove the snow from the sidewalks and sent me a bill like they do trash collection I would have less of a problem with them. That is not what they do though...
I'm not kidding - the other day some kids walked by and asked if they could shovel my sidewalk and driveway before I got the chance to do it myself and I just paid them to do it. How cool is that? Why do you need the city to solve your problem here? If money isn't the issue... I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
> Solve that problem by getting teens off the road.
How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere? Do you not see how circular this is? Once they grow up they become adults, and then they die on the road too as yet another leading cause of death.
Because not everyone has neighborhoods of kids offering to shovel snow, I even tried to contract it out however most of the companies around here want commercial contracts not residential snow removal, and the ones that do offer "best effort" time tables where their commercial customers come first.
The last home I had with sidewalks the city would fine you if they were not cleared in 24 hours, contractors would come 3-5 days later
>How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere?
never said it would not create other problems, I solve the teens dying problem the same way everyone solved the COVID problem, just lock down. it "worked" then right ;)
it is amazing the leaps some people take. If you did not have full throated support for every terrible policy every government enacted in their panic around covid, I must be a "COVID Denier"
I bet since I oppose Vaccine Mandates I am also an "anti-vaxxer" as well right? even though I am vaccinated from every illness for which there is a vaccine I am eligible to get including COVID.
If you do not support authoritarian government you must be anti-science, this is an amazing timeline..
I’m talking about sidewalks and roads and you turned the conversation to COVID lockdowns. Whatever you want to call yourself, I’m not interested in engaging further.
> it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable
I call bullshit.
The smallest 50 people village in the Netherlands has sidewalks. It’s not that it’s unsustainable, it’s that nobody wants to pay for it. Or that americans build too friggin big.
Indeed. It's a very strange argument - sidewalks require significantly less to sustain.
For a start, the build quality can be a lot lower - a sidewalk doesn't need to support lorries with 13t loads.
As for maintenance, the damage to them is far less, and repairing a sidewalk would usually be a small diversion rather than the drama of a road closure.
I'm not quite sure why anyone would think sidewalks are an unthinkable burden.
Here's Virginia's cost guidelines for roadway[1] (2000, so the numbers are surely higher now). Even at $350k/mile, sidewalk is 2/3 the cost of a paved suburban road.
It depends on the city/state/county you are in and the local building codes. The city I grew up in the code was to have a sidewalk in pretty much all new construction building conditions except in some very narrow ones. It was very nice. Biking/walking was easy and 'built in'. The sidewalk at my parents house I think is the original one the builder put in, in the 1940s. With a small segment replaced because tree damage. If you DIY the cost is fairly low, just a lot of work. But if you hire a contractor to do it, the cost can spiral pretty quickly. If the cost is folded into the price of the house you would not notice it much. But to add on after the fact it can be a bit of sticker shock.
His point is that our highly dispersed environment is largely of our own making. Particularly low density suburbs, where you have to drive to get milk and eggs, you have to drive to go to school, you have to drive to work. Literally nowhere to walk - if you're relatively wealthy, you might have a neighborhood pool and tennis courts.
There's no good reason these suburbs can't be more walkable, it's mostly adding sidewalks that link to other places. And possibly smaller schools (and the 4000+ pupil high schools we get are a whole different problem).
No. Distances are high because of low density. Sidewalks are financially unsustainable because of low density. People are obese also because they don't walk because of low density.
Low density is caused by car culture pushed by car manufacturers and oil companies.
Because I don't want to live in some 3x3 postage stamp with close neighbors and people peering in and no yard, let alone an apartment sharing walls between people. Screw high density, I've lived in it and it sucks. Oh and I am extremely fit, obesity is bad choices not "car culture".
Sidewalks are an optional extra on road building so...in his defense...you can't build a sidewalk without a road, which makes it significantly more expensive.
Only if sidewalk is really literally just a bit to the side of the road that you walk on.
As I’m not American, I don’t know if this is or isn’t how y’all use the word, but I did assume it was just the American term for a public footpath, and those don’t need to be beside a road.
And if that isn’t what being discussed here, it ought to be, because the value is in being able to get around on foot rather than specifically to duplicate the road network.
(Likewise, I don’t think it would be valid to say “ahh, but each end connects to a road”, because that’s like including the cost of the M25 in the cost of the A111).
(it was sarcasm, I honestly went back and forth several times about whether to add an indicator and decided it was unbecoming)
My wife and I are a one car household. On a typical day we both alt commute - I run or bike 7 miles to work and she runs/walks 3-4. We walk our daughter to and from daycare - even in the rain. These are choices we are barely able to make because we live in the near burbs of a pedestrian focused US city.
The US built infrastructure isn't just 'cheap' on pedestrian safety it is actively hostile. There are neighrborhoods that resist sidewalks for 'safety' reasons where safety means - only poor people walk and poor people are criminals. When I used to live in Phoenix Arizona, It would take me both hands to count the number of times i was stopped by police while walking because I was 'suspicious'. I would say I have a scary experience at least once a week alt commuting.
My bike lane to work goes from no bike lane to physically separated rails to trail to protected bike path to just suddenly ending and dumping me into traffic. It is ABSURD. I was once physically talked off my bike by a driver because I yelled at them for driving in the bikelane. The police who responded threatened to cite me for disorderly conduct.
I could go on.
I watch the youtube channel Not Just Bikes as a form of catharsis. I thought I had it good until I saw just how good places like the Netherlands have it.
I live in the Netherlands and the cycling and pedestrian infrastructure is indeed better than anywhere else I've been. Apart from maybe Denmark, I doubt there's anywhere that comes close to the Netherlands, so comparing the US to it is pretty useless.
There's still plenty to improve, and plenty is improving, to be fair. In the last few years, I've seen quite a few impressive changes in Amsterdam's cycling infrastructure, which was already amazing. Streets getting redesigned now are taking cycling very seriously.
There's also Bicycle Dutch on a similar note to Not Just Bikes, but less polished.
I think the biggest shift I have noticed in watching comparisons is not a particular single change, it is a paradigm shift.
There seems to be actual thought put into how space for moving people is, should be, and will be used. It doesn't begin with an assumption of building a road and then work from there. That change in planning assumption is enormous. I'm hoping the pandemic does something to shift the US culture of infrastructure building but I am not hopeful.
> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
That is complete nonsense. Sidewalks are not a significant additional expense to the road it’s on, even at a much lower level of build quality / complexity require very little maintenance as the only damage is environmental (pedestrians and cyclists do 6 or 7 orders of magnitude less damage to the surface than sedans do, per unit of distance, add 4 for a loaded truck).
"Sidewalks are not a significant additional expense"
Depends on your definition of significant and sidewalk. It does add cost, so it's not insignificant (you can observe it with confidence). For states that are already struggling with infrastructure costs, it would not be feasible (look at PA and it's bridges).
Most states or municipalities actually have codes that the sidewalk has to follow. So it it's not legally possible to build something low quality. Technically a sidewalk doesn't have to be paved at all. In many places, you have a 3-6 foot right of way on the sides of the roads - aka a sidewalk - that does not have to be paved. This can vary by state and municipality though.
>Depends on your definition of significant and sidewalk. It does add cost, so it's not insignificant (you can observe it with confidence).
What a bad-faith definition you're using here. By this definition if you reimbursed a road worker for a penny they dropped during their shift building the road it'd be a significant expense.
It seems you are making a bad-faith interpretation. If you read the rest of my comment you will see I gave an example of a state that it would not be feasible to build sidewalks for all roads given the current economic situation. Furthermore, your example of a worker being reimbursed for dropping a penny seems to be entirely fictious.
Do you have any actual data to support the idea that sidewalks for all roads are a feasible goal?
The spanish shut down in mid day due to heat, and stay up late to take advantage of cooler nights. We can't expect every society to just emulate the spanish (who, probably unrelated to their mid day shut down, are not in an excellent financial position now.)
Get there earlier and relax in the AC? Bring a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant? Cool off with water and baby wipes in the bathroom? Deal with being sweaty and smelly.
Whether that is worth it or not to you is up to you to decide. But you've just found another excuse for driving when walking is possible (not possible for everyone, but possible for some).
All your suggestions are lots less convenient. Carrying clothes and deoderant, having to go early and sponge bathe mtself, or putting other people off when they smell me. I shouldnt have to do those for a few blocks walk like to and from lunch.
"In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas."
That seems like a problem that could be solved through zoning. Solutions that by your definition inherently put people at risk seem an easy thing to re-evaluate.
Do you have evidence of this? If I'm reading the comments right, the person you're responding to called out rural areas. I believe many rural areas around the world do not have sidewalks (assuming you mean the paved kind) where there are miles between houses.
My comment was tongue-in-cheek. I don't have evidence that all countries on earth have sidewalks in all rural areas.
That said -- I was born, raised, and have spent most of my life in rural UK and it would be absolutely preposterous if those areas didn't have pavements.
It absolutely varies. I've done multiple long distance walks in the UK and I've definitely run across areas where's there's not only no sidewalk but a complete lack of shoulder between the road and a hedge or stone wall.
In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance
Which is 100% our own fault. We could build suburbs with walkable shopping and schools, but we don't. Hell, even in my sort-of-walkable suburb (Reston, VA) sidewalks and bike lanes are both a bit of a bodge. It's on in the last year that there's a continuous sidewalk from my house to the school complex <1 mile away (but the neighborhood was built in the early 1970s). And despite that continuous sidewalk with zero major road crossings, there's still public school bus service (which actually takes longer to get kids home than walking because of the way it loops around). But, kids and parents sit patiently at the top of the street instead of walking a few blocks.
Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
They're less expensive than roads by an order of magnitude. The only place they aren't feasible is true rural zones. But, the vast majority of Americans live in cities or suburbs - there's no good excuse for not having sidewalks in these areas.
In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance.
That is true to an extent, but it is equally true that there are lots of areas that could be quite walkable, but aren't due to lack of infrastructure. My friend lived less than a mile from the mall, but it was impossible to walk there since it was cut off by a 4 lane road with no way for pedestrians to cross. My grandparents lived in a gated community that was literally across the road from a Walmart, but the only way to get there was to drive 1 mile up the road, turn around, and drive back.
It's not so much that sidewalks are financially unsustainable--at least if they're built at the same time as the road. But, for example in the semi-rural area where I live, literally no one would use a sidewalk if there were one. There's nowhere to walk other than to a neighbor and you don't need a sidewalk to do that. And it's going to be unusable for a few months a year unless it's maintained because of snow. (And I sure wouldn't want to be on the hook for maintaining/shoveling a sidewalk on my long frontage for something no one used.)
A lot of the replies to my comment about sustainability of sidewalks have been either “bullshit, just look at the roads” or “we did this to ourselves”.
I am not making a judgement about the desirability of sidewalks. Indeed I said that more would be nice.
To the latter criticism, I say, yes, we did, but it doesn’t change where we are.
To the former, I say that government monopoly on infrastructure (which means that taxes pay maintenance) combined with sprawl have led us in the US to a place where literally in many places the money does not exist to maintain the infrastructure that was already built, much less build new infrastructure.
Moved to Austin during the pandemic, and my experience has been the same. It feels very dangerous to walk or bike anywhere, even in residential areas, because of the aggressive drivers. Even when I’m driving, the pervasive road rage here is much worse than anywhere else I’ve lived (including 3 other major cities). It’s been a real disappointment.
I'm all for cycling, but as a former bike messenger this take feels a bit extreme. The obesity crisis is real and people should get out and be more active.
No matter how many concessions are made, most people are just unable to get over the lack of inertia and start cycling. Even if we allow for a hypothetical safety utopia, comments here will cite sweating as a deal breaker.
I understand and empathize with beginners who are not acclimatized to cycling on a busy road. However it doesn't change the fact that you have to start somewhere and build your comfort levels. Pragmatically, this is the more important self-fulfilling dynamic. If you don't start building your skills and instead blame drivers...
There are hostile drivers out there. After decades of riding (sometimes wildly irresponsibly) I can only count on one hand motorists who were actively trying to run me over. In those cases the sentiment was mutual and we had already exchanged words or otherwise escalated. Would have been easy to avoid. Contrast this to the cultural/class rhetoric against pickup-truck drivers.
As a self-appointed expert in the domain, this doesn't ring true for me. It fits better with the theme of Internet hyperbole and media alarmism.
Somehow it's perceived as a norm that you can't arrive at work, a restaurant, or the store, with any amount of sweat on you. There's a bit more to it than this, of course. Most American cities have more extreme climate, longer commutes, and more hills, than in the northern European cities that are held up as the gold standard of cycling culture, but people ride bikes in southern Europe too.
In turn, this makes it "necessary" to wear special cycling garb, change, and shower when you arrive at work. Vanishingly few workplaces provide a convenient place to shower and change.
But I ride my bike to work year-round in a city that gets (for instance) about 10 degrees hotter than Amsterdam, and I manage it.
I got acclimated and the incidents involving aggressive drivers piled up to the point where I made the decision to stay off the roads. During the summer we have a steady stream of experienced dead cyclists here. Usually a hit and run.
> After decades of riding (sometimes wildly irresponsibly) I can only count on one hand motorists who were actively trying to run me over.
I don't see how this is a good thing? I've been riding my bike since I was a little kid (in the Netherlands) and I've had zero people actively try to kill me, I'm not sure why any nonzero number is not a big deal.
The point being that there are people out there who might be provoked, but as you observe it certainly isn't the norm. It isn't as prevalent as comments here would suggest. Bicycling is safe, despite all of the alarmism. Hope this helps.
Someone in Indiana honked at me for using a crosswalk yesterday thinking I was supposed to yield to them for some reason. I think people from rural areas and suburbs just aren’t used to driving in smaller streets.
I and colleagues used to have to cross a moderately busy street in Orange County, CA. A marked crossing section a block from the train station. I was routinely honked at and vehicles would swerve around. I started carrying a strobe flashlight and would glance it towards fast moving cars. This usually slowed them down but pissed them off more. Not blinding them mind you, just a flash. Sooooo put out that they will have to slow for up to 20 seconds.
Can you show me this crosswalk on Streetview? I'm trying to get an idea of the kinds of environments people are talking about in this thread (I'm non-American).
That doesn't look safe at all. Five lanes! And you have to cross them all in one go, with no signaling!!! My goodness. Such a thing would never be constructed here (UK)*. There would be, at minimum, a protected pedestrian island in the middle, so that in crossing you only need to look in one direction at a time. Almost always a set of pedestrian-controlled traffic lights too. In the Netherlands they might even go a step further and put in a continuous sidewalk (i.e. the surface the pedestrians walk on remains at the same level as the sidewalk, so that cars have to rise onto it like a speedbump).
Here is an example comparable to yours: a 4-lane major road intersecting perpendicularly with a 2-lane minor road. Pedestrians have controlled crossings across the major part, and protected islands so they never have to cross more than two lanes in one go:
This design is standard everywhere. And it isn't even optimal (it doesn't accommodate cyclists very well).
*If you searched high and low across the country you might find a counterexample or two, but the fact remains that this kind of junction is thoroughly alien to the British built environment.
In Toronto there are paid people with fluorescent traffic warden clothes and signage who attend all crosswalks and traffic light for the student travel periods, AM, Noon, PM. Other times they have walk buttons that start flashing lights and an overhead banner (flasher lighted)
And that still doesn't seem to stop reckless driving from killing pedestrians.
The only thing that will slow drivers down is when they feel unsafe themselves, or have a risk to their vehicle.
Adding signs or automatic fines doesn't do anything. You need narrower streets utilizing actual traffic calling techniques. It's such a sad sight to see signs with a "traffic calming zone" sign, but absolutely zero traffic calming done. It'll be a wide open street, we'll paved, no trees right against the road or bollards in the middle or speed bumps.
Watching this video feels like an alternative reality that never happened and it seems great.
Yes, good video. Canada and the USA has this demonic granting of speed rights to drivers. They could put in automatic speed traps on all street, with a fine by mail of a small amount, say $10 = a nuisance, but as they pile up the constant nag by mail, with a forced full payment to renew the plate will have a coercive enduring affect. It is important to keep it small - with a caveat. You are allowed to go yo court. If you challenge in court = higher tier of fines + time wasted burden. After a few months most will comply. Now manned speed traps have huge fines, huge police/court $$ burden. Cops tied up at speed traps prevent no crime, just fine a few people/day as the ticketing process at the street level is very slow. Automatic radar speed traps are fast. People hate them because they also have huge fines = lobby politicians a lot. The small nominal fine will get compliance without the same amount of lobbying and other pushback,
Are you actually in the crosswalk when people don't stop?
I imagine most people don't know the law this well, but... the vehicles don't have to stop unless you have at least one foot in the crosswalk in most states. So they could just be assuming you are letting them go, or they're jerks.
> America are so fat now they don’t imagine people would ever walk
It's got nothing to do with obesity. The personal auto is the US government-dictated and subsidized default transportation method. Anyone not using a personal auto is "less than". In other words, if you're walking, you're a subhuman.
I briefly worked in one of the statistically worst states for bicycle safety, but I was still surprised to learn how many older people fantasized about running over cyclists, or had a "they probably deserved it" attitude whenever a cyclist was struck by a car.
One time, a couple of coworkers were riding single file in the generous shoulder of a wide nearly empty multi-lane road in the early morning when they were both run over from behind in a hit and run. One had to have his spine fused. I still saw the same attitude of contempt, even from coworkers who otherwise liked them.
Ah. Not seen so much of that in London though in the comments section of the Daily Mail some people rant about cyclists. Guess it's more seeing them as an enemy tribe rather than them actually cluttering the road. In London the bigger aggression issue I've seen is cyclists having a go at pedestrians which also puzzles me a bit if less so.
Framing your argument in terms of "fat people" weakens it considerably. There are plenty of lazy skinny people too, and the biggest problem is people's sense of entitlement. Pitting pedestrian/cyclist entitlement against driver entitlement is IMO less effective than treating transportation as a matter for sharing and cooperation instead of competition. As competition, non-drivers will always lose. And no, I don't think that's right, but the universe doesn't care what either of us thinks is right.
Well that correlation can work in the other direction too.
What if poor US urban planning has led to sedentary lives where walking to places like grocery stores, parks, or transit is unpleasant, inconvenient, or impossible.
So we sit on our butts and drive our cars everywhere, which means more lanes and more parking lots which in return keeps things farther apart and less walkable.
People who are never pedestrians perhaps have reduced empathy for being one, and being in a big metal car vs passing in-person on the street leads to less personable reactions (ie road rage). And car-focused infrastructure decisions lead to more dangerous interactions between fast traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The tiny bit of time I have spent in some dense european-style walkable neighborhoods left me feeling much more a part of the neighborhood and like I would be a much healthier person in general living in such a place long term.
Another piece to this is that being able to drive a car is in many parts of the US considered essential to being able to work, buy groceries, etc.
Which I think leads to lax driver training and enforcement. Suspending someone’s license is potentially destroying their livelihood.
Whatever the cause, our driver training, enforcement, penalties, and general respect for piloting a vehicle in a safe manner seem lower than many European countries.
> It seems so many people in America are so fat now they don’t imagine people would ever walk, so they drive without regard for pedestrians and active hostility towards cyclists and park in the way of sidewalks, making walking or riding bikes to school seem so scary and unpleasant that few kids do it anymore, leading to more fat Americans who would never imagine walking. It is really depressing.
In my experience the mentality that drives this is "the road is for cars, you should not be here at all". You see this not just in the US where the infrastructure is extremely car-centric, but also in e.g. New Zealand.
With smaller roads people seem to instinctively understand that it needs to be shared, but with larger roads this understanding seems to go away.
Some of the psychological theories they have to explain the figures sound like a bit of a stretch to me. I dont see how they could test or prove them.
In other countries the pandemic + less driving has resulted in less deaths, as one would expect.
The bigger safer cars theory seems like a valid one to me. There is data supporting this theory in general, that when people are given safer cars they drive more recklessly. Also there is a significant measurable difference between the US and other countries in the size of cars.
Regardless of how badly designed roads in America are and have been for decades, what I have noticed during the pandemic is that antisocial selfishness has become a valid way to behave, so people no longer attempt to suppress their antisocial selfish tendencies.
I believe this was already in motion under Trump. He himself exemplifies antisocial selfish behavior. It's his entire gimmick. His election and his words/actions as president affirmed the validity of those feelings in people. The pandemic just accelerated the phenomenon.
I think people might even see antisocial selfishness as a kind of individual affirmation of freedom, a personal protest against the perceived tyrannies of modern life. And I don't think it's limited to specific political or cultural groups, because there are antisocial selfish people everywhere.
And so this manifests in people being rude to servers, blowing traffic lights, etc.
I think it's the same reason people buy SUVs that aren't specifically work vehicles for rugged terrain. It's a conspicuous and continuous self-aggrandizing affirmation of one's individual greatness and strength.
Not to be too dramatic, but it seems a bit like we are regressing as a society to animal kingdom behavior. Politeness is dead!
Yes, and I think some of the media directly drove the "outrage economy" and profited from it. You get a little blip of adrenaline getting angry about something for a second and you get accustomed to it. Then you get accustomed to getting it from being angry.
Maybe aggressive driving is part of that elevated adrenaline addiction: as you go about your day you need little doses from other places like the gas pedal.
> it seems a bit like we are regressing as a society to animal kingdom behavior
Hey, on behalf of my animal brethren, I resent that! ;-)
Seriously, while nature can seem cruel --- red in tooth and claw --- there also exists in nature a definite "politeness", i.e. the context for aggression is well defined (for example, predator-prey, maintenance and challenge of group hierarchy, defense of territory) and outside of that context violence is generally avoided. Humans, both primitive and civilized, are among the more aggressive of animals and in particular display aggressive behavior with less reason or provocation than most species. To some extend civilization actually makes this worse; it's easier to act aggressively when the aggression is less likely (because of existence of laws and police) to turn into deadly violence, and violence is less likely to be deadly because of hospitals and antibiotics.
Otherwise I agree completely with you. In particular, I also suspect that Trumpism has done more harm to polite civilization than Covid.
I didn't say anything about primates... I was talking about nature in general. And I didn't say that humans are more aggressive than all other animals, only that we are among the most aggressive. And yes, chimpanzees and some other primates are pretty similar to humans in aggression. But very few other animals are; aggression is usually confined to fighting over mating rights or territory, and the former is often quite ritualistic.
US infrastructure is focused around cars. People don't walk much because cities are spread out for wide roads meant for cars, highways, and parking lots. That makes the distances less walkable. Bikes don't have safe dedicated lanes in many places. Many cities eschew trains because they would rather put another lane on a road because of traffic jams. However, because of induced demand, and the infrastructure forcing everyone into cars, the traffic jams happen anyway.
So it's a cycle that makes cities ever more built around cars. We need more trains, light rail, subways. As those become more entrenched, the city reshapes itself around them. Train stops become areas of development, which brings more things closer to people without needing cars.
Also urban areas tend to get destroyed very quickly because of the culture the media and politicians connected to it push to the people living there (a Marxist oppression ideology with no categorical imperative so why not steel? There’s nothing you can do to improve things.) As soon as decent transit and walkability shows up everyone leaves.
I'd argue we simply need more walkability, and to place shops and destinations closer to people. Public transit is great, but is not an effective way to fix our auto-centric land use.
In Strong Towns this is discussed. Transit should come to enhance and solve the transportation needs of already great, walkable places. Transit should not be created to try to induce great places.
Buses are not an effective way to fix car-centric land use, but trains are. Places built around infrastructure made for cars are not walkable. Places built around train stops are.
Train stations are generally planned for places where people are already going. The development that happens around them is a natural result of them being there. Unlike bus stops, train stops are not easily moved and generally have more people passing through on foot. That makes it a good bet developing around there.
If your business relies on foot traffic, a bus stop is a risky place to set up next to. The service could move or shut down the bus stop without much effort. Not so with a train station. Buses also use roads, which take up much more land per traveler than trains do.
If you want a walkable city, you still need to get people in and out of it. Simply blocking off roads will give you a wide moat of parking lots around the city. Trains are necessary for walkable cities.
Here's kind of a weird hypothesis worth at least considering:
Record pricing for used cars suggests that there's a car shortage.
Ironically, less cars and less driving could lead to
1. Faster driving because of clearer roads, and
2. More walking.
Combine those and it wouldn't be surprising to get more auto-pedestrian accidents.
One test would be to compare changes to car accidents with changes to pedestrian accidents. Reckless driving should bring both up. More pedestrians should only bring the latter up.
The Not Just Bikes Youtube channel consistently points out how Dutch street design focuses on making driving seem "scarier" to lower driving speeds as a safety measure. These aren't ridiculous measures. These are sensible measures such as eliminating one way lanes where possible (people tend to drive much faster in one way lanes), not having car lanes that are excessively wide, having level crossings for pedestrians, which means it's the cars that see a bump in the road, etc.
The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. I see people, often enough, walking in the road with traffic. Experienced walkers tend to know this.
Realistically, this should never happen on a halfway busy city road - and by the time you get to neighborhoods, it shouldn't be an issue because of (hopefully) low speeds. We should have sidewalks and other barriers to keep pedestrians safe: Making sure they have the right of way only increases this. The only time someone really would need to walk on the other side is on country roads, and honestly, there is only so much walking on the other side will do.
Just to point out, a sidewalk is not really a barrier. It's easy for a car to hop the curb and kill someone. It can still be a good idea to face traffic so at least you have a chance at dodging (if they're coming from behind you could be able to hear them getting too close to your side; also somewhat less likely that they would drift that far).
"This seems odd to me because a pedestrian is almost never going to be able to dodge oncoming even slow-moving traffic."
If you work the field at an AutoX course, you'll know that it is quite possible to dodge them. The chances of dodging a car when paying attention are substantially higher than if one is not.
I don't know. Anecdotally traffic around where I am seemed to be pretty much back to normal surprisingly early on. I decided I really lived in a bubble because most people I knew were definitely staying home a lot more.
Rush hour traffic is always going to be a bell curve. Fewer total people driving just makes the bell more narrow. 8:30 - 9 will always suck but 10 might be okay now.
The car shortage is relative to demand. Demand isn’t just from new drivers, it’s from people using the extremely low-interest loans available combined with an influx of stimulus money across the economy (filtered down to some consumers) to upgrade to new cars. The chip shortage, among other shortages, is also constraining supply of new cars.
It wouldn’t necessarily increase the number of people walking or fewer cars on the road. The net effect is a shift to newer and more expensive cars among drivers.
Here in the UK they have just changed the Highway Code (the rules that given all road users, including pedestrians) so that pedestrians have ultimate right of way in almost all cases. It’s the opposite of the situation in the US, a pedestrian in the UK can cross the road anywhere and I believe cars have to stop and make way.
It’s going to be interesting to see how it effects accident numbers, I’m worry it may actually make accident numbers go up.
The small US city I live in made such a change, it we had several pedestrians get hit in the first year or so because drivers aren't used to it, can't see people very well, and pedestrians just figured everyone would now just stop. We changed the laws to restrict it to only crosswalks and added in a ton of new crosswalks. Even then, it was still a problem because pedestrians don't realize when someone can see them. If the are in the shade of a tree on a bright day, they can't be seen. There was a lot of learning and training to be done (some of it dumb), but now things are ok.
"Crossing the road anywhere" is quite dumb, I think, and I guarantee you'll see a spike of pedestrians getting hit for a while. Just because you can legally do it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
> "Crossing the road anywhere" is quite dumb, I think, and I guarantee you'll see a spike of pedestrians getting hit for a while
Wrong. It's the very opposite. Research shows that drivers increase their attention when they know that there can be obstacles and/or the road is not wide and straight.
You’ve been able to cross a road anywhere since the dawn of time in pretty much the entire of Europe (U.K. included).
The changes in Highway Code really just say that cars should give way to pedestrians that are crossing minor roads, while walking down a major road.
I.e. the general rule is that all traffic going down a major should wait and give way to continuing traffic, regardless of if it’s a car, bike or pedestrian, when they enter or leave the major road to/from a minor road.
There’s is still an expectation that all road uses take care and respect other road users. You don’t ever have a “right of way” only the obligation to “give way”.
Yes I know. But the change makes it clear you shouldn’t impede continuing traffic (including pedestrians walking down the pavement), and you should consider the pavement part of the highway (which it is), rather than a separate part of the road which automotive traffic is allowed to cut through with impunity.
Obviously cars should always give way to pedestrians in the roadway, the alternative is running them down. I don’t think we need a Highway Code rule to make it clear why that’s a bad idea.
Cars of course have used the pavement as part of the highway for years, constantly driving and blocking it, mowing down about 40 pedestrians a week on the "safety" of the pavement, just for the convenience of the driver.
The police nor council do anything about it.
> I don’t think we need a Highway Code rule to make it clear why that’s a bad idea.
While the UK is far better than the wild west of the US (pedestrians killed per million people per year. UK=5, New Jersey=22, New Mexico=47), there's still about 1 pedestrian a day killed by drivers, and 10 per day seriously injured.
20 children are killed or seriously injured every week for the "crime" of walking, almost all in towns where there is no need to be traveling more than 15mph (2 miles to get out of town or onto a major artery road, at 30mph that takes 4 minutes with no traffic lights, at 15mph that's 8 minutes)
In the US you aren't allowed to cross the road wherever you wish as a pedestrian? That seems bizarre to me, in the UK it's completely normal for pedestrians to cross the road wherever they want to.
> and I guarantee you'll see a spike of pedestrians getting hit for a while.
I guarantee the UK has a lower incidence of traffic collisions than the US, per capita or per miles driven.
In theory, you're supposed to use crosswalks where they exist and obey Walk/Don't Walk signs. In practice, people adhere to this most places about as frequently as never exceeding the speed limit by even a little bit in a car. I think I've maybe heard on one person in my life getting a ticket for jaywalking. (On the West Coast I think which at least historically paid more attention to this sort of thing than in the East.)
Can't imagine getting a ticket for jaywalking in New York although the city has cracked down on cyclists running lights from time to time.
“Jaywalking” is rarely enforced in most places, even if it is a law at all, so yes you can probably cross anywhere you want. That doesn’t mean traffic will yield for you when waiting to cross, which is what we’re discussing here. Definitely look both ways before crossing in the US; drivers don’t expect pedestrians to randomly appear in the middle of the street.
> We changed the laws to restrict it to only crosswalks and added in a ton of new crosswalks. Even then, it was still a problem because pedestrians don't realize when someone can see them. If the are in the shade of a tree on a bright day, they can't be seen.
Yeah, nice one. Blaming the pedestrians, not the drivers. If the drivers can't see the pedestrians at a crosswalk, they simply need to drive slower.
There's a difference between a small city (or even a big city) in the middle of a massive country making a change, and the entire country making the change.
The former will almost always lead to more issues, no matter what the change is.
That has long been the law in California, but enforcement is poor. California also has the "jaywalking" law that clearly prioritizes automobiles over pedestrians.
It's worse for bicycles: almost nowhere in the USA are drivers punished for killing cyclists, despite what's written in the vehicle code.
"California also has the "jaywalking" law that clearly prioritizes automobiles over pedestrians."
The cars are still obligated to stop to avoid hitting someone. It just allows a pedestrian to be ticketed for impeding a vehicle's travel (which is dangerous) while not being in an established crossings (which I believe includes implicit ones at intersections, but unsure about that part).
Well yes, that's the law as written, but generally not as enforced.
I'm not sure what an implicit crossing is. In California every street intersection is explicitly a pedestrian crossing per CVC unless otherwise marked.
That's what I mean - intersections do not need a marked crosswalk as the law treats it as one. Some people don't know this and think if it doesn't have a painted crosswalk, then it isn't one.
Frankly, almost no law is enforced as it's written. Law enforcement discretion and judges legislating from the bench are extremely common in all areas. That said, if you hit someone, you will be investigated (how thoroughly depends on the circumstances).
> California also has the "jaywalking" law that clearly prioritizes automobiles over pedestrians.
As an avid jaywalker, in what situation do you think you should be legally prioritized over a car on the road? If the car can stop in time sure but otherwise you're the one causing a problem.
We have controlled access roads (aka "freeways") which are the natural domains of automobiles. Pedestrians, pets, bicycles and other impedimenta are out of bounds there. We have fenced and raised rail roads and their cars should be able to assume that pedestrians et al won't be encountered.
Everywhere else...I don't believe cars should be allowed to drive as if they have the right of way. Sure, it's bogus to leap out from being hidden between parked cars, but that's a corner case akin to sticking a fork in a power outlet.
A hard example is the unprotected rail lines that run through residential neighborhoods with no fencing or other separation between the rail road and kids. These aren't just in the Central Valley -- you can see this right in Redwood City. Even at a glacial pace a train full of cars can't be expected to stop on a dime.
> Everywhere else...I don't believe cars should be allowed to drive as if they have the right of way. Sure, it's bogus to leap out from being hidden between parked cars, but that's a corner case akin to sticking a fork in a power outlet.
What style of street are you thinking of? Stop sign streets? Main streets with stoplights? Are just wanting to literally walk across any road without looking and force all traffic to stop?
Is walking down to the nearest stop sign/traffic light really that inconvenient?
> What style of street are you thinking of? Stop sign streets? Main streets with stoplights? Are just wanting to literally walk across any road without looking and force all traffic to stop?
Essentially, yes. Roads are for people, and of course drivers and passengers are people using the street too, but they don't deserve top priority over other uses, especially as the effort for them to get around is low (they are using external power to move themselves; the other users are not).
> Is walking down to the nearest stop sign/traffic light really that inconvenient?
Depends on how far and if it's safe to walk there. I live in a town with walkable footpaths on every street, and even between some streets, but neighboring towns are not so accommodating. There are plenty of places where the footpath simply ends in the middle of the block.
Anyway it's less convenient than being pulled to the intersection by a motor.
In my experience, if you are in the road then, in the mind of the driver, you should not be there and there are various ways in which they will demonstrate this to you. Ranging from an angry face, at one end of the spectrum, to purposely accelerating towards you, at the other.
So, yes, I think you're right, casualties are more likely to increase since few drivers are going to be changing their behaviour any time soon.
I've been yelled multiple times this last year for crossing the road...at a stop light when I had a "walk" light. I always treat cars as if they are trying to kill me, but the levels of callous disregard for the safety and wellbeing of other road users seems like it has reached new highs.
I think we need to get much more proactive about revoking licenses. I am also heavily considering getting a dashcam to start recording and reporting violators.
The police won't do anything, unless you get hit. But having a "dashcam" while walking is something I'd recommend. Some cyclists already do it. With that, at least in the worse cases, you'd have great evidence it was the driver's fault. Not having that uncertainty in an otherwise their-word-against-your-word situation should also make it easier to press charges or get insurance to pay.
As much as I understand that sentiment. I don't think license restrictions are a very good idea, except in really egregious cases. It would be nice to see in really extreme cases where pedestrians / bikers are disregarded in a really callous manor, but unfortunately I'm not sure the police see many clearcut cases of this.
Taking away licenses is not a clean and easy thing in the US, because you basically make someone the ward of someone else, or an outlaw. People can't get by without vehicles, and much of the time they just have to risk it. Best case scenario someone else has to babysit them.
I definitely agree we need to make it easier for people to get by without their cars. I just can't stomach making people second class citizens, which is what these laws do. I'm only in favor of them in really egregious, repeat violation situations. Like people that refuse to stop drinking and driving; the ones that just keep doing it over and over. Even then, I'm willing to talk about options in the grand scheme of things like ignition interlock systems (actually not even available to many repeat offenders in my state)
It varies by city/state, as some other comments noted. In any case, in a few smaller towns I've been to in the UK, there are numerous crossings that seem incredibly unsafe to me from both a US and western European perspective. In much of the latter regions, marked crossings that aren't full-on zebra crossings with pedestrian-priority are incredibly rare, while these crossings (in which pedestrians yield to vehicles in a marked path) seem the norm here. With neither a pedestrian signal nor a priority marking, I find them rather alarming and pointlessly confusing given that vehicles sometimes have a signal for these same intersection, leaving pedestrians to just... guess?
I've slowly grown accustomed to accepting the priority of vehicles over pedestrians here compared to in the US and continental European cities I lived in, but London seemed far more pedestrian-friendly and there are certainly US cities that are even worse than the above.
The placement of crossings is less about giving pedestrians right of way, and more about designating places where it's safe to cross.
Unfortunately, the opposite often happens due to political pressure. People know that a blind curve is dangerous for pedestrians and demand a crosswalk and signs/ signals, which only encourages more people to cross at the unsafe location. (Even if it now has lots of paint on the pavement and flashing lights.)
Yes, the big picture solution should be to minimize places where it's dangerous to cross via road design, but that isn't always possible or practical for various political or engineering reasons.
The typical US laws are mostly misunderstood: Even where vehicles have the right of way, they have an obligation to yield to avoid hitting a pedestrian, just as having right of way doesn't permit you to intentionally cause a wreck.
And unfortunately, there isn't a uniform set of rules between states to make row for pedestrians clear, but there has been a trend to at least give pedestrians right of way at all marked crossings, and in places that don't have a marked crossing within ~a block.
"The typical US laws are mostly misunderstood: Even where vehicles have the right of way, they have an obligation to yield to avoid hitting a pedestrian, just as having right of way doesn't permit you to intentionally cause a wreck."
It's not quite the opposite of the US. AFAIK in most states there are laws saying drivers must take all reasonable measures (or some such wording) to preserve pedestrian safety. For example, in my own state there are actually two such laws, plus a third specifically requiring drivers to yield in parking lots and driveways. So it's not the same as giving pedestrians general right of way, but it's not quite "take your chances" either. There are situations in which both a driver and a pedestrian could theoretically be cited, though I doubt that ever happens.
BTW I'm not saying whether those laws are right or wrong either way. Just clarifying what the status quo actually is.
>a pedestrian in the UK can cross the road anywhere and I believe cars have to stop and make way.
Speaking as a UK driver (and pedestrian) - no, that's not really the case. At least not that pedestrians have right of way. I mean cars will hit the brakes to avoid killing you but I wouldn't recommend relying on that. The only place they changed the right of way recently is at turnings with 'give way' markings as shown in your link.
I did not see this data placed alongside the number of traffic fatalities. Our intuition is that the new work-from-home/social-distance world leads to fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars mean higher speeds and possibly, less attentive drivers given the empty lanes. Increased pedestrian fatalities would align with this simple explanation.
I found this article a bit... odd. Not the particulars of the case. Rather, what sounds like ready excuses and what read like an almost utter lack of individual responsibility. Yes, agreed, the lockdown measures aren't fun, and yes, they mean doing things which are uncomfortable (masks), or not doing things we want (gatherings, restaurants, all other restrictions). But how is that different from just being a member of civil society? That smells like... BS.
Though, the "salience saturation" concept sounds like one of the reasons for which people in the MIL world take up smoking.
This article seems pretty misleading. Looking at the historical trends [1], there were more pedestrian deaths per year 50 years ago. And that is before taking into account that the population has doubled since then! There is clearly an uptick in recent years, but this nyt article is trying to hard to hype it up. Coming off historical lows, around 10 years ago, the percentage yearly increase can sound more shocking than it is- same thing when crime rates reach new lows and then bounce back a bit.
I suspect the number of miles walked has fallen quite a lot in the last 50 years. Like talking about how so few children are killed cycling to school without noting that close to no children cycle to school, compared to decades past.
A 45% increase in deaths per mile driven is no joke.
Further, you're also ignoring advancements in medicine, emergency services, healthcare systems, rules (e.g., cities in the US have drastically reduced max speeds), safety focused street design changes, etc. that mean that the odds of a pedestrian dying have reduced in general.
Comparing broadly to 50 years ago is not very useful.
Reduction in miles doesn't proportionally reduce exposure to pedestrians. The bulk of the mileage reduction has been people's commutes and your average commute is dominated by limited access pedestrian free roads.
Did you look at the pedestrian deaths graph/100,000 at the bottom of that page? It's not just 'broadly to 50 years ago', the number of deaths has been decreasing, or pretty steady that whole time. Anyway, it was more just the way it was written that was annoying, like the author was trying to pull a fast one on the reader, cherry-picking stats to make a point.
But i thought that with the push towards shorter commutes werent we also seeing more pedestrians? More pedestrians = more oppertunities for accidents. We cannot get to conclusions about trending driver behaviour before a proper analysis of the underlying statistics.
Also cellphones. 5g = better connectivity on the move = more distracted people driving/walking = more accidents?
There is a concept in kinetics, the 'mean free path', which refers to the distance a particle travels before it hits another. With Covid = fewer cars on the road = longer MFP = higher speeds for the 'mean drivers' before they hit someone.
Holland has found that the true solution is separate bike paths with dimensional hindrances so cars cannot traverse them. Here in Toronto the road stripes were found ineffective - 2000 pound concrete walled earth filled square rectangles commanded instant respect, and also serve as planters. There has been a renaissance of biking here and the government is responding - they could do better with an increase of one way streets that would allow more segregated bike paths.
I live in a dense, walkable Boston suburb that is served by the MBTA commuter rail. But it's also full of "Masshole" drivers and adjacent to a couple of high-traffic major highways. I've observed a sharp increase in impatience and road rage, both on our 25 mph city streets, and on and off Rtes 1 and 93, in the last 2 years. Not to mention ever-more inattentive driving with eyes on phones. It's pretty alarming. I don't let my kids bike around the neighborhood anymore, I'm worried they will get hit.
It does feel like the one-two punch of [Trump + pandemic] has led to people feeling more entitled to let their rage and impatience out in public. I don't know how we recover from this as a society?
I somewhat hesitate to anecdata this in the same general area. But...
For a time, I might have been inclined to put it down to people just weren't driving and had "forgotten" how. But I think that's hard to argue for at this point. I've nearly got run off the road on a merge or had a horn blown at me followed by a pass on the shoulder because I was apparently only going at the speed limit multiple times in just the past month or two.
Boston area driving has been quite aggressive forever. But I don't think I've seen it this actively bad/dangerous as it has been the past year or two. (And a number of people I know have said likewise.)
As someone who has driven quite extensively in SF, LA, NYC, and Boston, I don't know why Bostonians are adamant that their traffic and drivers are as bad as these other cities. My #1 frustration with Boston traffic is how "polite" drivers are. Multiple times, I've had the last car in a string of cars stop at a green light to let me turn left which is probably the most infuriating/stupid thing you can do. What I will say is that Boston has a unique set of infrastructure that involves many lights and convoluted intersections (Davis Square - where 7 streets meet) where you are absolutely punished in terms of time and so I think people definitely push it around these intersections. That being said, I biked 2 miles as my commute this entire fall from Somerville to Cambridge and never encountered anything noteworthy.
LA I don't really know. But SF and NYC (especially) are relatively challenging to drive in as well. I do agree that, especially pre-GPS, Boston/Cambridge/Somerville are most challenging by the almost complete lack of any sort of a grid and all the weird intersections. When I moved back to the area with a car after grad school--though not to the city itself--I think it really took me at least a couple of years before I felt comfortable navigating more or less by instinct rather than having to constantly refer to a map.
Even with GPS there are a number of confusing intersections and if you make the wrong choice you can easily add a ton of time to your journey with no easy way to go back.
I'm totally amazed at how some cities do not have protected left turn signals. During high traffic times, this means you can litterally never have a gap. Which leads to the situation where once the light turns red, 3-4 cars wanting to turn left run the red light. LA was the worst of the places I've experienced this.
Pretty much all of the Cambridge and Somerville "squares" are really larger areas with nightmares of streets coming in and branching off at all sorts of random angles.
Left turn arrows tend to be eventually installed at the worst of the unprotected lefts. (Or left turns are just prohibited.) Locals just learn to expect a couple cars to do a left on red--and for another 2 or 3 to turn as soon as the light turns green.
> During high traffic times, this means you can literally never have a gap.
It is legal to enter an intersection (i.e. cross the white line) when your light is not red. Therefore at least one car can turn left legally per light cycle. Agree completely that this isn't good enough.
Yes, just like Madison Square Gardens which is a round/oval shape building. People don't realize how silly words can be when one's inner child takes hold.
Most of the complaints come from people who live in the fairly well off ring of suburbs from ~I95-495 and are used to lackadaisical, un-urgent traffic that tends to characterize these places.
These people have little reason to got Lowell/Leominster/Worcester/Fall River (one ring outward) or Providence/Hartford/New Haven/Springfield (one ring further still) so Boston is just what they complain about.
If Lexington or Sudbury is your frame of reference then Boston is a f-ing zoo. If Lawrence is your frame of your reference Davis Square (or Kelly Square) is same shit different day.
Well mostly because I heard news reports where they told me they’d measured and found that to be the case. I live in SoCal now and despite all the bitching people do I’d much rather drive in LA.
The whole country has been aggressively pushing the virtues of selfishness for the past 30 years. The eventual outcome shouldn't really be a surprise.
I don't know what its going to take for half the country to finally wake up and realize it can't continue along this course and the philosophy of selfishness has failed.
I live and work in a home office in Western MA, the road outside my office is somewhat busy but is hardly the main road through town. Even so, the number of horns honking and brakes screeching has increased enough that I find myself wincing on calls when it happens. It could be that I'm simply more sensitive since the dramatic decrease of traffic during the pandemic, but my perception is that people are driving more aggressively and are quicker to anger.
I've never seen Trump lumped into the scapegoating of recent traffic deaths onto grumpy motorists, but certainly the pandemic-despair traffic death meme is widespread. Strong Towns has a different explanation that is less dependent on the entire driving public sharing a mindset with a few journalists at big papers: much of the congestion, which acted as the only reasonable limit to speed on our very dangerous roads, has gone missing. Jeff Speck (Walkable City) also recently talked about how he got suckered into the same just-so story until he heard Marohn's explanation.
"much of the congestion, which acted as the only reasonable limit to speed"
Based on my recent experiences, I sort of agree - but more so as a negative control. My area does not have much bumper to bumper traffic, and never has. I have not noticed additional increase in speeding.
The thing I have noticed is bad decision making or inattentive behavior. People pulling out when they shouldn't (possibly due to misjudged speed), or looking at their phone and drifting from their lane.
>The thing I have noticed is bad decision making or inattentive behavior. People pulling out when they shouldn't (possibly due to misjudged speed)....
Possibly the result of the other drivers being able to drive faster, thus giving less space to pull out?
> or looking at their phone and drifting from their lane.
This one is much easier to connect to lower traffic levels. As the complexity of the environment decreases with the drop in traffic, drivers feel safer to do things like be on their phones. Being on your phone is very similar to higher speed in that it is a higher-risk response that many drivers would rather engage in if there is no apparent downside.
I find this explanation to be consistent with the way people respond to weather by slowing down (and do so differently in different locales depending on their familiarity with that weather), or how , when I used to drive up to the SFO airport for Friday night red-eyes, it was rare to encounter cars driving less than 100mph on the pristine, nearly-empty freeway.
"Possibly the result of the other drivers being able to drive faster, thus giving less space to pull out?"
Not that I have seen. I have had numerous people pull out in front of me and my habits haven't changed. I'm even one to go 5 under when approaching two intersections that ate notorious for people pulling out at. Also, at the one intersection, people sit back instead of pulling up further, meaning the have to traverse an additional 15 feet, which they don't seem to amount for when pulling out.
"This one is much easier to connect to lower traffic levels. As the complexity of the environment decreases with the drop in traffic, drivers feel safer to do things like be on their phones."
True, i think this could account for some of the more urban areas. The traffic in this area hasn't changed and I've still noticed an uptick. Maybe carryover from habits developed on those urban roads, but maybe something else.
That might explain the speeding, but I've noticed an increase in road-rage incidents as well. Lots of honking, lots of swerving, lots of high-risk passing. I'm in the DC suburbs, so this isn't limited to Boston either. And I see it on roads that were never bumper to bumper or anywhere close.
Boston drivers were cconditioned for perpetual bumper-to-bumper traffic. With traffic levels down, there was no bumper in front of them to slow them down so they just floor it until they find one.
This made me laugh, and might even be true. There were a number of years where we had the highest number of of traffic accidents in the country and yet the lowest related fatalities. That was because traffic was moving so slowly that most accidents were “fender-benders”.
In some areas it could also be due to policy aimed removing pretextual stops, like rolling through stop signs, not signaling turns, etc.
The rules of the road were put in place as a system to protect people. Things like signaling a turn can be very important to pedestrians crossing a side street. I get that people want to remove pretextual stops to stop bias. But perhaps we should move towards uniform/consistent enforcement rather than simply ignoring the laws.
The use of law enforcement discretion to charge some people but not others leads to the bias. This is on more than just driving laws. Then you end up with a minority population being negatively affected while the majority remain in ignorant bliss. If it affected all equally, then the population would be mobilized to remove bad laws from the books (on the basis that they or someone they know were affected by it).
No matter how much you want it to be true, don't think Trump has anything to do with it as I feel the same about attitude on roads in EU countries where I reside.
>It does feel like the one-two punch of [Trump + pandemic] has led to people feeling more entitled to let their rage and impatience out in public.
Well the fact that you're seeing what you're seeing in a very expensive Boston suburb seems to point in the other direction. Shouldn't that be the place in the country that sees the most pro-social behavior as a result of the pandemic and has the fewest people seeing Trump as something that should be emulated?
There are plenty of Trump voters around here, they tend to have big TRUMP signs and American flags in their front yards so they're not hard to spot.
From my perspective, Trump acted as the human incarnation of rage and impatience for a substantial fraction of the US population, and he fed on and encouraged public displays of bad behavior. Setting that type of example from the White House can't be inconsequential.
Pandemic fatigue is a real thing here too. Just because we have an above-average level of mask-wearing compliance doesn't mean people aren't heartily sick of the whole thing.
I can second that the level of aggression on the roads in the Boston area seems to have jumped substantially over the last 18 months or so. I also very rarely see enforcement happening, my partner and I have long noted that the likelihood you’ll get pulled over in Boston even for overtly bad behavior is next to zero.
I think OP wasn't blaming Trump's actions directly, but rather that the combo of people hating Trump and the pandemic has unhinged people and they've started driving worse for it.
So less about Trump and more about Trump's effects on liberals.
While this driver appears to be facing homicide by vehicle charges in addition to fleeing the scene, it is very common in the US for a driver to kill a pedestrian and face no criminal charges or loss of driving privileges as long as they stop and dial 911. While out walking I often think of a quote from a Freakomomics podcast that goes something like 'the best way to get away will killing someone in the US is to hit them with your car'.
The high rate of pedestrian deaths is a result of policy regarding road design, pedestrian infrastructure and lenient criminal charges. The driving culture is also to blame. Driving is a god given right. Cars equal freedom, and the bigger the better. Pedestrians are a nuisance and cyclists are the enemy.
Vehicles sold now are too fast for their intended purpose. You can buy a Toyota Camry with 300 HP and a 0-60 time of 5.1 seconds. Twenty years ago that was Porsche 911 territory. The upcoming Hummer EV touts a 3.0 second 0-60 and weighs in at 9000 lbs. Insane
This guy is facing vehicular homicide charges because he was driving an unregistered not street legal ATV and fled the scene. Probably also because he has a history of motor vehicle infractions too.
If he were driving a legal registered pickup truck, and didn't flee (and wasn't impaired at the time) it would probably be a moving violation.
It also seems to me really rare that a hit-and-run driver is ever caught. It pains me to say it but it almost seems rational to flee the scene if you were drunk.
In general, I agree. The braking distances on newer cars are actually pretty incredible, even for some of the ones that enthusiasts decry has having insufficient brakes.
I do wish more emphasis were placed on teaching drivers the situations where hard acceleration is actively harmful, though. We are seeing some EV accidents already from people not realizing the differences between expected behavior and their behavior.
100% agree. As a cyclist, I try to stay up on local road design, planning, etc. We design our roads for maximum throughput of cars, without much consideration of other road users. 25mph roads are usually wide enough to safely travel 50mph or more. Trees are removed, which reduces the driver's sense of speed. Crosswalks are an afterthought and signaled crosswalks are a rarity outside urban cores. Bike lanes get introduced alongside 50+mph traffic with no separation.
It's amazing we don't have more deaths. And disgusting we don't do better at designing safe roadway for all people.
Design can be good. I think even with good design we need better driver training.
For example, I have no problem with 55 mph roads along farm fields, even with bikes or buggies sharing them. The idea is that drivers should be slowing and waiting patiently to pass. Many drivers don't even know that the law requires a minimum of 4 feet separation when passing a bicycle. Just like many bicyclist either don't know or don't care to stop at stop signs or walk their bike across a crosswalk when using one (at least slow to walking speed).
>>The high rate of pedestrian deaths is a result of policy regarding road design, pedestrian infrastructure and lenient criminal charges. The driving culture is also to blame. Driving is a god given right. Cars equal freedom, and the bigger the better. Pedestrians are a nuisance and cyclists are the enemy.
Yea, but almost none of those things have changed in the last two year - so does nothing to explain the spike in the last two years.
What has changed in the last two years? Police being told not to police, not to pull people over for minor infractions, police departments being defunded or having their budget's cut - or being threatened with being defunded or having their budgets cut. Can't have to both way folks - like it not, the threat of being ticketed, towed or arrested has an effect on many peoples driving habits.
More like blue flu than any real policy changes. The society at large threatening to hold the police accountable for their actions seems to have made them decide not to do their jobs even less than they were before.
I agree with you regarding lax enforcement, especially in the last few years. But this is also cultural. We have the technology to enforce traffic laws via sensors but even then they are implemented they are often removed by the next local election or blown to bits with buckshot.
My state has targets for acceptable rates of annual pedestrian deaths when designing intersections. I find the fact that we elect to sacrifice lives in order to bump up vehicles-per-hour stats rather disturbing. Again nothing new but helps explain why the US is an outlier.
Attempts to make the police more accountable are the cause of pedestrian deaths?
Do you have any data showing this causal link at all? Maybe broken down by place so we can see links like the pedestrian death increases match the places that did those things. Since you actually list several causal things, it can be broken down by places that limited enforcement for covid reasons vs those that defunded vs those that didn't do those things? Bonus points if you bother to break out the overly broad "defunded" category into actual policy change groupings, there were a lot of reforms that got lumped into that term, many of them having nothing to do with money to enforce laws.
The parent is not just talking about budget cuts. There were policy updates to not pursue most traffic violations and other minor offenses at the beginning of the pandemic (or to take down the info, but not into custody), like in Philly.
There has also been a push to do away with pretextual stops, which includes a lot of traffic law. Not sure that has been wide spread enough, and may also be too recent, to impact these numbers.
To give just a few examples of the legal side of this: Here in NY, killing someone with a vehicle is a misdemeanor (unless you're drunk/high). People avoid this charge by claiming a medical incident while driving, and are often able to drive off from the scene of the crime. Hit-and-runs result in arrest less than 1% of the time. Speed cameras are restricted in number, location (only by schools) and hours of operation (they're off on nights/weekends) by the state. And good luck complaining about illegal/unsafe parking, you might start getting death threats from anonymous phone numbers[0].
It won't shock you to know that people are aware of all of this, and drive accordingly.
Without better/actual enforcement, the alternative is to simply ban cars. Of course, the true choice will be to do nothing and let innocent people die (hey-o covid!).
I live outside Philadelphia and tend to follow the local PHL news (as opposed to NYC's). A couple of times per week, there are reports of hit & runs, as well as an occasional the driver stopped.
In any case, anecdotally, the hit & runs tend to happen a night, late at night. I often wonder if the pedestrian and/or driver were under the influence.* Or, at the very least the car's headlights were off (as I was nearly hit a few months ago because of lack of headlights on).
* afaik, drug and alcohol usage has increased in the last two yrs "due to Covid."
I drove a 1990 Mustang V8 from ‘00-06 or so. It was 0-60 in about 6-flat. So that is a good reference point. Our 4Runner also makes 300hp and is actually sluggish, even by older standards. So not all cars are insane and it is really nice to have efficient 300hp engines for a lot of reasons. My truck makes 500hp and 1000 ft/lbs torque and gets like 18-19 mpg in its stock form. Extremely useful for towing and amazing efficiency given what it does.
So, some cars are too fast, but that efficiency and power also has a lot of practical purpose in many vehicles. Anyhow, I agree with the thrust your statement, but most people are responsible enough to not drive a powerful car recklessly.
Anecdotally, when going on walks in my neighborhood, the cars with massive fender damage in the driveways are the modern "muscle cars": the Dodge Charger, new Ford Mustangs....
Are car manufacturers, knowingly or not, selling a reckless lifestyle?
The demographics that buy cars that are high on the performance per dollar spectrum are the same demographics who are going to think twice before or at least delay spending money to fix cosmetic body issues.
My anecdotal evidence shows it being mostly small cars like civics, darts, etc that have the fender damage. Most of the muscle cars I see are very well taken care of. Also, when I used to drive a muscle car, the people acting like idiots wanting to road race were always in small stuff like an RSX, Golf, etc.
Most car guys love their cars and are well aware of the power and dynamics that can destroy it (or have it seized). But that's just my experience.
"Are car manufacturers, knowingly or not, selling a reckless lifestyle?"
If they are, it's across the board. Any vehicle can be dangerous - civics, F150s, mustangs, minivans, etc. Many people don't understand vehicle limits, dynamics, and their own limitations. A lot of this is because people have rarely experienced situations that would require, for lack of a better word, extreme actions. Things like autocross can give people some understanding of these, provided they aren't the personality that would use it to create false confidence.
> kill a pedestrian and face no criminal charges or loss of driving privileges as long as they stop and dial 911
If drivers were to face high consequences no matter what, would a possible result be that more pedestrians and cyclists die because more motorists would fail to stop and render aid/call 911?
"face no criminal charges or loss of driving privileges as long as they stop and dial 911."
I don't think this is necessarily true. Criminal charges generally require some form of intent. That could be recklessness. Most driving doesn't constitute reckless driving (per case law and customary enforcement). The police do investigate. I would imagine that many of the fatalities include drivers following the law and exercising reasonable care (as based on society's expectations), as well as pedestrians and cyclists not following the law. I would love to see the data to show the breakdown one way or the other.
Possibly. I feel split on this. I believe we need stronger testing. But I also wonder, if someone is following the law (which is vast), what would be the other steps for reasonable care?
They're generally not following the law. But they do something like turn right on red without stopping and we consider that a "mistake". Or they do stop but they have 1,000 yard stare off to their left and they hit a pedestrian legally in the crosswalk. Or they're just speeding and we consider 15 over to try to beat the light perfectly reasonable because everyone does it. Being distracted and driving a bit too fast will also be viewed as "accidental" because again it is so common.
We actually have a very high tolerance for vehicles breaking the law (but then whine endlessly about that bike we saw blowing a red light).
I'd argue that if you wind up killing anyone that you were necessarily negligent in your driving and someone killing someone else when they were actually taking due care is extraordinarily unlikely. Pedestrian deaths should really be automatic negligent homicide charges unless it can be proven that the pedestrian just ran out in the road and got hit or something through their own negligence.
"Pedestrian deaths should really be automatic negligent homicide charges unless it can be proven that the pedestrian just ran out in the road and got hit or something through their own negligence."
This I why I'd like to see the stats/breakdown. There are more laws that apply to pedestrians than many realize. Like walking on the left side of the road, jay walking, not obeying traffic signals. This could be seen as negligence or recklessness.
There are a ton of irresponsible or unknowledgeable drivers, and those same people are also likely to be pedestrians at some point and exhibit similar actions.
Pedestrians inherently move a lot slower and are more predictable even when they're not perfectly following the law.
Since vehicles are moving so much faster, with more limited reaction speed and with massively higher kinetic energy they should be held to a higher standard.
And I've been driving for near 35 years and never once come close to hitting a pedestrian, no matter what kinds of mistakes the pedestrians have made.
"Since vehicles are moving so much faster, with more limited reaction speed and with massively higher kinetic energy they should be held to a higher standard."
And the laws show that (cars are obligated to try to avoid it even if they have the right of way). The question is what qualifies as negligence or recklessness. In civil law there is the idea of contributory negligence. Meaning if the pedestrian breaking the law by being there then they contributed to the situation through their negligence. This may be enough to prove that the driver wasn't at fault through negligent or reckless behavior if they were following the law.
"Walking is a necessity, driving is a privilege."
Driving is a privilege. Walking may be a necessity. However, performing illegal acts is not a necessity. This is crucial in the discussion of negligence and recklessness. Especially if the activity is reckless, as they know the risks of their illegal activity and accept them by doing it anyways.
"Pedestrians inherently move a lot slower and are more predictable"
Slower, yes. More predictable, no. People can change direction more quickly and erratically (no turning radius, etc). Cars can be very predictable because of the constraints their mechanical nature provide. You also have to see them to be able to predict, which could be difficult if they throw open a car door from a heavily tinted (illegal in my state) car parked on the side.
So, to get back to the original topic... we could assume that the act of hitting a pedestrian is de facto negligent unless proven otherwise. But what would 'proving otherwise' mean? Here I'm saying that if the pedestrian was negligent or reckless, then that could provide evidence that the accident was the fault of the pedestrian. This could absolve the driver if they were following the law.
And let's not forget that there are people who will throw themselves on cars for the payout. Upsetting the current balance could exacerbate this issue.
It is mostly all about speed and kinetic energy and the protection of having a cage vs. having protoplasm. That creates an asymmetry, and cars need to not be treated fairly. They need to be discriminated against. You need to be ten times more careful around people when you're driving than pedestrians need to be around cars.
And if you're worried about someone throwing themselves on your car, have a dashcam and/or get security cam footage. And I live in Seattle where we get a lot of people jaywalking indiscriminately who one way or another don't seem to care about their own safety and I've never come close to hitting any of them either.
There's a real simple tactic to avoiding issues like that which is that if you see someone do anything erratic that you slow down and don't assume that just because you've got a legal right of way that you don't need to react at all. I've seen some videos of truly unavoidable accidents involving vehicles, but I don't think I've seen any unavoidable accidents involving pedestrians, other than the people who hurl themselves on the hood of stopped car to try to insurance scam. Those people aren't dead though.
And I don't see where you've offered any evidence that we have an issue with pedestrians being irrational and you seem to be very transparently trying to flip the blame without any evidence. Find that evidence if it exists. I doubt any traffic safety experts will agree with you though. Most will cite speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving and size of vehicles as the predominant factors behind pedestrian deaths. Everything else is pretty much whataboutisms unless you have evidence and not argument. You don't have the default position here, the default position needs to be that car drivers need to change.
Depends on your definition. They don't need to be treated equally, but if the system isn't "fair" then what's the point of anything? Nobody will follow a system they don't believe in and that doesn't make sense. Cars aren't treated equally, and are held to a higher standard.
"And I live in Seattle where we get a lot of people jaywalking indiscriminately who one way or another don't seem to care about their own safety and I've never come close to hitting any of them either."
If the police enforced the law, then perhaps we could protect those people from themselves. That's the way the system is designed - to have all parties be alert and responsible so as to reduce the probability of two irresponsible parties meeting, resulting in an accident.
"And I don't see where you've offered any evidence that we have an issue with pedestrians being irrational and you seem to be very transparently trying to flip the blame without any evidence."
Do you have any evidence of me flipping blame, or are you just attacking me now? I'm not trying to "flip" blame. You can look up contributory negligence if you'd like. You can look up just about any city you want and you will see a significant number of accidents show at least partial fault on the part of the pedestrian. Now, we could look at redesigning infrastructure to be safer, but as it stands pedestrians not following the law account for a large part of the problem under the current system. Simply changing the system to shift the blame around, as you propose, is not going to result in a safer system (you've shown no proof). Link at bottom
"You don't have the default position here, the default position needs to be that car drivers need to change."
There is no "default position" here, and to assume one is uncharitable and detracts from the discussion.
My position is that we need stricter testing for drivers. It's also in opposition to assuming a driver is guilty of manslaughter - I believe in innocent until proven guilty.
In an effort to explore your position, I've repeatedly asked for what proof would absolve a driver under your proposed system of guilty until proven innocent, yet you haven't provided any. We need criteria.
I've given examples of when pedestrians could be at fault by breaking the law. It appears you are the one engaging in whataboutism since my statements are backed up by law and fact, yet you have provided neither.
It does. Have you read it? It shows that pedestrians are at fault in a large percentage of accidents. If we want to change that, then we have to change the infrastructure design. Not just shift blame within the existing system. Just look at their positive example in their article of Toronto having 67% of pedestrian deaths due to driver error. 33% is still a large number worth addressing.
Having read this entire comment sub-thread I think you should spend some time operating some small and nimble piece of equipment in an open pit mine, a rail yard or a harbor. The rules on the road are not perfect but they are not arbitrary and exposure to even bigger size differences makes the reasons slightly more obvious.
Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die.
This question baffles me because where I'm from, hitting a pedestrian or biker with your car, the car driver is almost always 100% liable. And it works. Cars don't want to hit cyclists or pedestrians because they don't want to pay, and cyclists/pedestrians don't want to hit cars because they want to stay alive.
>Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die.
Do they? Where I live, at night, no one ever wears reflectors, save a few cyclists. It seems like people don’t think about this at all. You’re walking around at night and someone driving a car doesn’t see you until it’s too late. I think there is some merit to asking the question about how pedestrians can be safer. I’m happy to practice what I preach and wear reflectors at night but it seems that pedestrians are ignorant about their visibility. You can only be so safe driving a car, it’s not feasible to drive 5mph everywhere you go.
When I drive in Cambridge, I find people dressed in dark clothes constantly darting out to cross streets at random locations at night. As a driver am I alert and keep my speed down? Absolutely. But many pedestrians and cyclists absolutely behave recklessly.
Plenty of sidewalks. Not everyone wants to use them for some reason. There is also the issue of crossing the street where there aren’t crosswalks. I am aware of Not Just Bikes, but that doesn’t remove the need for pedestrians to have awareness of their visibility in car-centric areas.
Why on earth should the responsibility be on pedestrians to wear reflectors? That is _preposterous_. What's next, they should wear license plates and helmets? Something is deeply wrong about the built environment that such an indignity is even considered. If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices.
See also: all of these bright yellow illuminated retroreflective bollards that should have made themselves more visible:
>If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars
They can get around just fine, they just don't want to walk further to get to the crosswalks, which is fine, but I think it's reasonable to ask people to wear reflectors as a trade off. I also can't exactly expect drivers new to the area to intuitively know where someone might decide to cross at night. Thus reflectors. When I see someone walking on the sidewalk, I slow down (even though it's not necessary given the amount of space between the road and the sidewalk). If I can't see that anyone is on the sidewalk at night, how am I going to know to do that? I want people to wear reflectors so I can give them a lot of space to feel safe not because I think it's their fault if they get hit.
>If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices.
Yes, but saying this doesn't just magically make the problem go away. I also think people should wear reflectors at night regardless. When I'm walking around at night, in low-visibility areas, people seem to appear out of nowhere and I'd prefer to keep my distance.
> Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die.
Exactly. So it seems to me the pedestrian would want to avoid the 4 ton vehicular machines and the law here differs from common sense in my opinion.
Seems to me... by virtue of being a 4 ton death machine...the auto should have the right of way in almost every case against a small fleshy pedestrian.
At the risk of taking seriously a sarcastic comment (and doing it by responding instead of downvoting): it's a combination of higher value land use and the magnitude of outcomes. Drivers kill people, make noise, pollution, smells, are expensive to accommodate, and take up a lot of space. People may dent cars while they are being killed, do not have loud engines, have negligible emissions, and generally improve places around them by being present and engaging in commerce. People are also much smaller.
Extremely valuable places have lots of people interacting. Low value-per-acre places accommodate cars well. When there is a conflict between the two, the higher value-per-acre use should be expected to win because, by the mechanism that we use to allocate the space (money), the higher value use is, by definition, better.
Also, from a perspective of what was there first (another principle of ownership): unarmored, walking people are the default state of humans. Armored 4-ton 65mph people are a recent change and a very expensive change, at that. So it stands to reason that we prefer the pre-existing state (though not by the US American traffic engineering system.)
There is also an ethical principle deriving from Judaism, and expanded by Christianity, which says that all people have intrinsic value and by extension should not be killed. This intrinsic value is accepted in western culture and is taken to apply to all people, whether they are too disabled to drive a car, too young to drive, too old to drive, or too poor to drive.
I know this is just a small sampling of the answer to your question, but I don't want to get too tedious here.
Drivers are the leading cause of dead kids. But for some reason we completely ignore it, while focusing on gun violence (which is also bad, to be clear).
I really don't know a solution aside from moving to a country that's better designed. The US seems too far gone.
The researchers found that motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths in the United States, comprising about 20% of all deaths among children in 2016. The chief reason for the crashes was cell phone use by drivers and pedestrians, the researchers found.
Firearms were the second leading cause of deaths among children and adolescents in 2016, according to the researchers. Overall, there was a 28% relative increase in the rate of firearm deaths among U.S. children, likely driven by a 32% increase in firearm homicides and a 26% increase in firearm suicides, the researchers said. They found that the odds of a child being killed by a firearm are 36 times higher in the United States than in other high-income countries.
About 16 children per 100k die each year in the US
Funny thing is, The Netherlands used to have infra that looked more like the US once, but we almost completely rebuild all the infrastructure in our towns and cities during the 80's. It's not too late, it 'just' needs a lot of investment. The biggest problem is US culture around cars and mobility IMO. Better public transport is a nice start.
Yeah, though the Netherlands started before they had gone _too_ far down the sprawling hellscape path. Even with better infra, it's a rotten situation where you need to go 2 miles from home to buy milk. Hopefully we can let nature reclaim the suburbs and increase density in the cities.
Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes also pointed out that in NL they at least had an entire generation or two of people who remembered a different way of living, without being car dependent. All those people have died out in the US now, and even people in their mid-80's came of age when the US was going whole hog on car dependency.
I want better for the US but I'm not optimistic. A new city built of whole cloth (maybe culdesac.com can do it?) might have a chance.
The new thing in Berkeley and Oakland, as of about 2 years ago, is people will pull up on my right at stop lights, as if they are going to turn right, but then they just run the light instead.
Near my house, I have one of those horrid stoplights where there are two lanes that immediate narrow down to one lane. I've lost track of the number of times recently when drivers will not take their turn merging and turn it into a game of chicken. I've taken to just assuming the car in the other lane is going to cut me off.
Anecdotally it seems to match my (and my Nextdoor neighbors') experience. As if reckless driving wasn't enough making the cars noisier is another thing that is bothersome.
People buying old cars and putting money in them is yet another recent trend everywhere that even I've participated in. It's fun to pass time trying to fix older cars.
That's because they are paid per delivery, incentivizing them to go as fast as possible with no regards to the law.
An the companies sending them will have no repercussions if the police will stop the delivery guys - making the companies care less and even encouraging this behavior.
You got the same behavior from Uber drivers. They'll park wherever is closest to their fare, regardless of whether it blocks traffic, because if they don't, the fare gives them a 1-star rating.
Cousin was a city cop. If he told them to move, they'd seriously just ignore him. Now ask yourself if you're going to ticket this guy and possibly suspend his livelihood when everyone else is doing it with virtual impunity?
Though that isn't really a safety issue. Traffic congestion and bad parking is a different type of problem. In parts of London they deal with the bad Uber pickups with cameras that record it and send a parking ticket in the post.
At least they are incentived by their own vulnerability to not hit or be hit by things. As opposed to your average modern car which has made the operator of an automobile super safe at the expense of pedestrians, bicycles, etc.
Taking average statistics of a population group and applying them to individuals is pretty much the description of discrimination.
And anecdotally, I've met plenty of bonkers female drivers, too. Including two who tried to run my bicycle off the road because they felt that cyclists should not be on the road (in both cases, I was in the cycle lane).
Many causes have been put forward for this. However, I'm not sure the all safety aspects here have been well understood.
Here in Dublin, Ireland the few weeks immediately after the lockdowns where horrendous for driver behaviour and aggression. It took a while till behaviours were back to the norm. It was almost as if people needed to get reacquainted with it.
My observation over the past year has been people are disregarding traffic laws more and more. The light is red? No worries! I'll just go through the intersection. And that's for traffic going straight! We've always had the problem of the left-turners slipping a car or two through after the light has gone red. Now it's 3, 4 and sometimes even 5! I'm now starting see people just go through red lights, treating the light like a 2-way stop. People never used to do that kind of stuff before, at least not in my neck of the woods. Oh and lane drift! Holy crap! People can't stay in their lane anymore. That's gotten a lot worse!
I too was thinking this was caused by the lockdown but now I'm not so sure. My state never locked down too hard in the first place and we've been largely "fully open" since last Spring - yet the driving has gotten worse. I was talking to my insurance agent about it and they said the number of accidents is skyrocketing. Great - so we have increased insurance premiums to look forward to which of course will be blamed on "inflation."
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] threadIt seems so many people in America are so fat now they don’t imagine people would ever walk, so they drive without regard for pedestrians and active hostility towards cyclists and park in the way of sidewalks, making walking or riding bikes to school seem so scary and unpleasant that few kids do it anymore, leading to more fat Americans who would never imagine walking. It is really depressing.
I honestly don't even feel comfortable wearing earphones when I'm walking in the woods much less on a city street.
It’s a vicious circle, too. If everyone else has an SUV, you also want an SUV so you’re not crushed by one in a crash.
The most likely candidates (again, in my opinion) are:
changes to driver psychology somehow due to the pandemic (empty roads, then full roads again, greater anxiety or stress related to traveling back and forth to work, or something like that)
changes in enforcement of driving laws (the protests of 2020 caused changes in police budget allocations or how police enforce minor laws like traffic laws OR staffing issues due to the pandemic with law enforcement agencies, or both)
A near universal change in how drivers are certified / licensed (could be due to changes in the pandemic or some other factor?)
OR this is a statistical fluke someone hooked onto and we are all drawing far-reaching conclusions from.
Fwiw, many groups are attempting to build self-driving cars it would be easy to produce cars that drove at sensible speeds as an intermediate step. That this hasn't happened says something about how a society values drivers', and drivers rights to break the law versus those of the innocents they routinely kill or maim as result.
It really is not just that. The netherlands didn’t fix their traffic by telling people to drive better (in fact they did relatively little of that), but by redesigning the entire driving conditions around the results they wanted.
Properly incentivising, and taking advantage of human psychology for other reasons than exploitation, is much more reliable than scolding people.
Getting stuck on “it’s people!” will be largely ineffective, because it’s not how people work. Though if your only goal is to have something to moan about, carry on, that’ll certainly keep.
Normalisation of dangerous driving is a global phenomenon where car culture reigns.
anyway, there are many ways to calm traffic.
This works especially well combined with pedestrian and cycle passthroughs and such, including to avoid “drive-through” neighbourhoods without having to make the neighbourhood entirely impassable and a pain in the ass to residents.
I suspect that Google Maps and the like have worsened the level of driving through residential neighborhoods as they route you through a maze of residential streets to save (in theory) two minutes.
But that’s the point of traffic calming, they make trips take longer in real time so the route becomes less attractive as traffic avoidance, while not being a huge issue for “normal” local traffic.
Sinking roads and giving all surface level to pedestrians would be an active improvement, though obviously not a cheap one. The great bit is when you remove the cars you can backfill the dig and forget about it entirely.
I would like to see a lot more of this. In Chicago, people have always blown red lights at speed right in front of parked police cars because they know police won’t do anything (and I’m not even sure if the police are allowed to do anything—allegedly they can’t chase suspects unless they believe they are a threat to society, and I’m not sure that includes “reckless driving”).
The article didn’t mention it, but I also wonder if this (like the surge in violent crime) is driven in part by changes in policing following the BLM protests (e.g., police make fewer traffic stops for fear of finding themselves in an incriminating situation).
The problem is, it doesn't scale, especially in a city as big and violent as Chicago. It only works so long as police keep their foot on the gas (so to speak); they minute they let up on traffic enforcement (because of competing priorities) things will get worse again.
If one person speeds, that person is an idiot. But if everyone speeds, the road engineer is an idiot. A systemic problem like this is a result of poor road design, not individual deviant drivers. Police should not be burdened with the responsibility of ensuring safety in a system that is unsafe by design. The roads need to be redesigned so that drivers naturally feel unsafe at high speed.
> A systemic problem like this is a result of poor road design, not individual deviant drivers.
In many cases, I agree that there is a systemic problem at play, but these cases tend to be highways (i.e., no pedestrians) and the issue is politicians setting speed limits which traffic engineers understand to be unsafely low for the road’s design (the safest speed being that which 85% of drivers would naturally drive if unencumbered). And it hardly matters how engineers design the road because politicians will always respond to a vocal minority who argue that the limits should be lower.
However with respect to streets (i.e., places where pedestrians belong) rather than highways, the issue is only systemic with respect to enforcement—many other parts of the country (or even the same places with different enforcement) have similar streets but drivers are better behaved. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t room for improvement everywhere, but only that the issue isn’t “Chicago has stupid street engineers”.
Why would you need active policing to enforce traffic lights and pedestrian crosswalks?
I don't like them either, but traffic camera work.
In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas.
Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
Separately, the US does have an obesity problem, and exercise would help, but the biggest issue by far is dietary sugar/carbohydrates.
What makes sidewalks expensive to maintain, relative to roads?
> the biggest issue by far is dietary sugar/carbohydrates
This is not clear. See this highly fascinating series on the obesity epidemic: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p.... Other suspects are HFCS and seed oils.
Yeah, Somewhere Else is ultimately the same place, but homeowners don't see it as personally flowing out of their own pockets.
But having to pay for it directly sounds extremely counter-productive.
And even the first part is dubious really: there should be sidewalks most everywhere including non-residential locations or the like, which the city would almost certainly have to clear alongside the roadway. Surely in that case it’s more efficient and simpler to just clear everything uniformly?
In my town, for the most part the neighborhoods without sidewalks also have extremely little car traffic, and pedestrians walk in the street without issue. The drivers also tend to behave themselves.
Changing anything that requires substantially raising the city budget is hard, because the state makes many of the rules for city budgets and taxes. Adding a large seasonal workforce and equipment for clearing sidewalks would be a tough nut to crack. They do clear the sidewalks around parks, schools, and the like. There's also a matter of the preferences of residents. For instance I don't want a ton of salt poured onto the sidewalks in front of my house, and am happy to keep it clear of snow. Every 3 or 4 houses, somebody has a snowblower that rarely gets used.
Otherwise, what you describe is not normal. The bill would be paid by whoever issued the PO. If it wasn't me, I'm not paying. If it was not on my property, then not my problem, and if it was, you have also trespassing on top.
So the only alternative that occurs to me that you are a part of some community, with common maintenance of shared property and where the bill is footed by members.
These measures are common in urban areas in the US.
Another way of thinking about it is that the notion of "ownership" is limited in a variety of ways. We also don't have mineral rights or control of the airspace above our house.
In most cities single family neighborhood sidewalks are "owned" by the property owner, not the city. However they are an "easement" which means the property owner has no control over the property, or ability to limit access to the property but assumes all costs in maintaining, and all liabilities for injury or other city ordinances (like snow removal, grass cutting, etc) basically all the downsides of ownership with none of the upside.
for some people this makes sidewalk undesirable
Doesn't this actually imply that it's the low density that is financially unsustainable, rather than the sidewalks? I mean if your settlement pattern can't even afford a place for people to walk, what the hell are you doing?
I grew up and lived in rural/suburban Florida (god-awful weather) and I never learned to drive. I walked everywhere (no sidewalks). People whose lives revolve around cars just can’t imagine a person walking longer than the distance from the parking lot to the front door.
Nearly everybody wishes they could drive less but nobody will actually drive less.
- Safer than running on the street (crappy streets, ignorant drivers, etc.)
- I can concentrate on running, not on staying away from getting creamed by cars.
- They've got TV, I could get my garbage news fix (I don't read/watch news regularly)
- They've got bathrooms, running makes me shit sometimes, if I go out in the morning.
Of course, I stopped going to a gym because I do have an erg at home, and I don't really want to go to a large indoor location where people are huffing and puffing right now.
Which is because we’ve specifically built everything such that there are large distances involved which necessitate cars. You’re taking this as that natural order of things instead of a deliberate decision, which it was. We could have just built towns and cities with the right level of density instead. Even where there aren’t “large distances” involved such as the suburbs where the grocery store and doctor’s office have to be built a half mile or so away everyone has to drive because surprise surprise we’re stupid and made it so that you’re crippled and have to drive to go any distance, not just actual long distances.
> Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
All the roads and highways are unsustainable too, more so, in fact. The difference is the government subsidized these instead of subsidizing sidewalks or more density to create the illusion of progress. Can’t be stagnating as a society if there’s a new road!
Why? Because do not want to incur the costs of maintaining them, nor the liability that comes with them from either a city stand point, or injury standpoint
If sidewalks where maintained by the city, including snow removal, and repairs, then maybe. but the fact is in most location they are an imposition on the property owner that comes with large costs and liabilities.
The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them. How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers? Who knows. But it’s gotta be more expensive than shoveling your sidewalk off.
OK And? I fully admit I am anti-social.
>>The other issue here is that you still pay for the roads, maintenance, police patrols, rest stops, expansion, environmental degradation, snow removal, insurance for cars, gas infrastructure, and all of those things related to roads but since you don’t get a specific bill in the mail with the line item for roads that you don’t think you’re paying for them or a huge cost for them.
The cost is not the problem for me, and I would prefer to get a bill for every single one of those items. Honestly if city employed people to remove the snow from the sidewalks and sent me a bill like they do trash collection I would have less of a problem with them. That is not what they do though...
>How much does it cost to have car accidents as the leading cause of death of teenagers?
Solve that problem by getting teens off the road.
I'm not kidding - the other day some kids walked by and asked if they could shovel my sidewalk and driveway before I got the chance to do it myself and I just paid them to do it. How cool is that? Why do you need the city to solve your problem here? If money isn't the issue... I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
> Solve that problem by getting teens off the road.
How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere? Do you not see how circular this is? Once they grow up they become adults, and then they die on the road too as yet another leading cause of death.
The last home I had with sidewalks the city would fine you if they were not cleared in 24 hours, contractors would come 3-5 days later
>How can you do that when they have to drive everywhere?
never said it would not create other problems, I solve the teens dying problem the same way everyone solved the COVID problem, just lock down. it "worked" then right ;)
I bet since I oppose Vaccine Mandates I am also an "anti-vaxxer" as well right? even though I am vaccinated from every illness for which there is a vaccine I am eligible to get including COVID.
If you do not support authoritarian government you must be anti-science, this is an amazing timeline..
I call bullshit.
The smallest 50 people village in the Netherlands has sidewalks. It’s not that it’s unsustainable, it’s that nobody wants to pay for it. Or that americans build too friggin big.
For a start, the build quality can be a lot lower - a sidewalk doesn't need to support lorries with 13t loads.
As for maintenance, the damage to them is far less, and repairing a sidewalk would usually be a small diversion rather than the drama of a road closure.
I'm not quite sure why anyone would think sidewalks are an unthinkable burden.
Here's Virginia's cost guidelines for roadway[1] (2000, so the numbers are surely higher now). Even at $350k/mile, sidewalk is 2/3 the cost of a paved suburban road.
1 - https://www.virginiadot.org/business/resources/gasb-roadway_...
(European here; but I've spent some time in US. You seriously underestimate the distances in US).
There's no good reason these suburbs can't be more walkable, it's mostly adding sidewalks that link to other places. And possibly smaller schools (and the 4000+ pupil high schools we get are a whole different problem).
Low density is caused by car culture pushed by car manufacturers and oil companies.
As I’m not American, I don’t know if this is or isn’t how y’all use the word, but I did assume it was just the American term for a public footpath, and those don’t need to be beside a road.
e.g. the north-south paved footpath between 11 and 65 Southbrook Rd: https://goo.gl/maps/JpoTcarePZZ7Neij9 and https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/50.84552/-0.98156
And if that isn’t what being discussed here, it ought to be, because the value is in being able to get around on foot rather than specifically to duplicate the road network.
(Likewise, I don’t think it would be valid to say “ahh, but each end connects to a road”, because that’s like including the cost of the M25 in the cost of the A111).
My wife and I are a one car household. On a typical day we both alt commute - I run or bike 7 miles to work and she runs/walks 3-4. We walk our daughter to and from daycare - even in the rain. These are choices we are barely able to make because we live in the near burbs of a pedestrian focused US city.
The US built infrastructure isn't just 'cheap' on pedestrian safety it is actively hostile. There are neighrborhoods that resist sidewalks for 'safety' reasons where safety means - only poor people walk and poor people are criminals. When I used to live in Phoenix Arizona, It would take me both hands to count the number of times i was stopped by police while walking because I was 'suspicious'. I would say I have a scary experience at least once a week alt commuting.
My bike lane to work goes from no bike lane to physically separated rails to trail to protected bike path to just suddenly ending and dumping me into traffic. It is ABSURD. I was once physically talked off my bike by a driver because I yelled at them for driving in the bikelane. The police who responded threatened to cite me for disorderly conduct.
I could go on.
I watch the youtube channel Not Just Bikes as a form of catharsis. I thought I had it good until I saw just how good places like the Netherlands have it.
I live in the Netherlands and the cycling and pedestrian infrastructure is indeed better than anywhere else I've been. Apart from maybe Denmark, I doubt there's anywhere that comes close to the Netherlands, so comparing the US to it is pretty useless.
There's still plenty to improve, and plenty is improving, to be fair. In the last few years, I've seen quite a few impressive changes in Amsterdam's cycling infrastructure, which was already amazing. Streets getting redesigned now are taking cycling very seriously.
There's also Bicycle Dutch on a similar note to Not Just Bikes, but less polished.
There seems to be actual thought put into how space for moving people is, should be, and will be used. It doesn't begin with an assumption of building a road and then work from there. That change in planning assumption is enormous. I'm hoping the pandemic does something to shift the US culture of infrastructure building but I am not hopeful.
That is complete nonsense. Sidewalks are not a significant additional expense to the road it’s on, even at a much lower level of build quality / complexity require very little maintenance as the only damage is environmental (pedestrians and cyclists do 6 or 7 orders of magnitude less damage to the surface than sedans do, per unit of distance, add 4 for a loaded truck).
Depends on your definition of significant and sidewalk. It does add cost, so it's not insignificant (you can observe it with confidence). For states that are already struggling with infrastructure costs, it would not be feasible (look at PA and it's bridges).
Most states or municipalities actually have codes that the sidewalk has to follow. So it it's not legally possible to build something low quality. Technically a sidewalk doesn't have to be paved at all. In many places, you have a 3-6 foot right of way on the sides of the roads - aka a sidewalk - that does not have to be paved. This can vary by state and municipality though.
What a bad-faith definition you're using here. By this definition if you reimbursed a road worker for a penny they dropped during their shift building the road it'd be a significant expense.
Do you have any actual data to support the idea that sidewalks for all roads are a feasible goal?
Whether that is worth it or not to you is up to you to decide. But you've just found another excuse for driving when walking is possible (not possible for everyone, but possible for some).
That seems like a problem that could be solved through zoning. Solutions that by your definition inherently put people at risk seem an easy thing to re-evaluate.
"No way of preventing this, says person in only country where "this" happens."
That said -- I was born, raised, and have spent most of my life in rural UK and it would be absolutely preposterous if those areas didn't have pavements.
Let's change this to a proactive mode.
How far is too far to walk or cycle?
What would it take for you to increase that distance?
Which is 100% our own fault. We could build suburbs with walkable shopping and schools, but we don't. Hell, even in my sort-of-walkable suburb (Reston, VA) sidewalks and bike lanes are both a bit of a bodge. It's on in the last year that there's a continuous sidewalk from my house to the school complex <1 mile away (but the neighborhood was built in the early 1970s). And despite that continuous sidewalk with zero major road crossings, there's still public school bus service (which actually takes longer to get kids home than walking because of the way it loops around). But, kids and parents sit patiently at the top of the street instead of walking a few blocks.
Separately, it would be nice if we had more sidewalks, but they are financially unsustainable in low density areas.
They're less expensive than roads by an order of magnitude. The only place they aren't feasible is true rural zones. But, the vast majority of Americans live in cities or suburbs - there's no good excuse for not having sidewalks in these areas.
That is true to an extent, but it is equally true that there are lots of areas that could be quite walkable, but aren't due to lack of infrastructure. My friend lived less than a mile from the mall, but it was impossible to walk there since it was cut off by a 4 lane road with no way for pedestrians to cross. My grandparents lived in a gated community that was literally across the road from a Walmart, but the only way to get there was to drive 1 mile up the road, turn around, and drive back.
I am not making a judgement about the desirability of sidewalks. Indeed I said that more would be nice.
To the latter criticism, I say, yes, we did, but it doesn’t change where we are.
To the former, I say that government monopoly on infrastructure (which means that taxes pay maintenance) combined with sprawl have led us in the US to a place where literally in many places the money does not exist to maintain the infrastructure that was already built, much less build new infrastructure.
There are lots of essays on this; here’s one: https://fee.org/articles/the-unbearable-truth-about-infrastr...
No matter how many concessions are made, most people are just unable to get over the lack of inertia and start cycling. Even if we allow for a hypothetical safety utopia, comments here will cite sweating as a deal breaker.
I understand and empathize with beginners who are not acclimatized to cycling on a busy road. However it doesn't change the fact that you have to start somewhere and build your comfort levels. Pragmatically, this is the more important self-fulfilling dynamic. If you don't start building your skills and instead blame drivers...
There are hostile drivers out there. After decades of riding (sometimes wildly irresponsibly) I can only count on one hand motorists who were actively trying to run me over. In those cases the sentiment was mutual and we had already exchanged words or otherwise escalated. Would have been easy to avoid. Contrast this to the cultural/class rhetoric against pickup-truck drivers.
As a self-appointed expert in the domain, this doesn't ring true for me. It fits better with the theme of Internet hyperbole and media alarmism.
In turn, this makes it "necessary" to wear special cycling garb, change, and shower when you arrive at work. Vanishingly few workplaces provide a convenient place to shower and change.
But I ride my bike to work year-round in a city that gets (for instance) about 10 degrees hotter than Amsterdam, and I manage it.
I don't see how this is a good thing? I've been riding my bike since I was a little kid (in the Netherlands) and I've had zero people actively try to kill me, I'm not sure why any nonzero number is not a big deal.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7878268,-117.8588114,3a,75y,...
Here is an example comparable to yours: a 4-lane major road intersecting perpendicularly with a 2-lane minor road. Pedestrians have controlled crossings across the major part, and protected islands so they never have to cross more than two lanes in one go:
https://goo.gl/maps/MYbcyPgQZD1PMAL69
This design is standard everywhere. And it isn't even optimal (it doesn't accommodate cyclists very well).
*If you searched high and low across the country you might find a counterexample or two, but the fact remains that this kind of junction is thoroughly alien to the British built environment.
The only thing that will slow drivers down is when they feel unsafe themselves, or have a risk to their vehicle.
Adding signs or automatic fines doesn't do anything. You need narrower streets utilizing actual traffic calling techniques. It's such a sad sight to see signs with a "traffic calming zone" sign, but absolutely zero traffic calming done. It'll be a wide open street, we'll paved, no trees right against the road or bollards in the middle or speed bumps.
Watching this video feels like an alternative reality that never happened and it seems great.
https://youtu.be/bAxRYrpbnuA
As a fat person and I think I can take the liberty to speak on behalf of other fat people, you are absolutely correct.
So be sure to please get out of the way and stay out of the way.
Another good option is to go to the city council and have them rope off areas of the town for pedestrians only, if you want to be safe.
I imagine most people don't know the law this well, but... the vehicles don't have to stop unless you have at least one foot in the crosswalk in most states. So they could just be assuming you are letting them go, or they're jerks.
It's got nothing to do with obesity. The personal auto is the US government-dictated and subsidized default transportation method. Anyone not using a personal auto is "less than". In other words, if you're walking, you're a subhuman.
One time, a couple of coworkers were riding single file in the generous shoulder of a wide nearly empty multi-lane road in the early morning when they were both run over from behind in a hit and run. One had to have his spine fused. I still saw the same attitude of contempt, even from coworkers who otherwise liked them.
I switched to mountain biking after that.
What if poor US urban planning has led to sedentary lives where walking to places like grocery stores, parks, or transit is unpleasant, inconvenient, or impossible.
So we sit on our butts and drive our cars everywhere, which means more lanes and more parking lots which in return keeps things farther apart and less walkable.
People who are never pedestrians perhaps have reduced empathy for being one, and being in a big metal car vs passing in-person on the street leads to less personable reactions (ie road rage). And car-focused infrastructure decisions lead to more dangerous interactions between fast traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The tiny bit of time I have spent in some dense european-style walkable neighborhoods left me feeling much more a part of the neighborhood and like I would be a much healthier person in general living in such a place long term.
Which I think leads to lax driver training and enforcement. Suspending someone’s license is potentially destroying their livelihood.
Whatever the cause, our driver training, enforcement, penalties, and general respect for piloting a vehicle in a safe manner seem lower than many European countries.
Raised crossings[1] or deliberate narrowing [2] forces people to pay attention and slow down.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raised_Crossing_In_P...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5376862,-0.1105682,3a,75y,19...
In my experience the mentality that drives this is "the road is for cars, you should not be here at all". You see this not just in the US where the infrastructure is extremely car-centric, but also in e.g. New Zealand.
With smaller roads people seem to instinctively understand that it needs to be shared, but with larger roads this understanding seems to go away.
In other countries the pandemic + less driving has resulted in less deaths, as one would expect.
The bigger safer cars theory seems like a valid one to me. There is data supporting this theory in general, that when people are given safer cars they drive more recklessly. Also there is a significant measurable difference between the US and other countries in the size of cars.
I believe this was already in motion under Trump. He himself exemplifies antisocial selfish behavior. It's his entire gimmick. His election and his words/actions as president affirmed the validity of those feelings in people. The pandemic just accelerated the phenomenon.
I think people might even see antisocial selfishness as a kind of individual affirmation of freedom, a personal protest against the perceived tyrannies of modern life. And I don't think it's limited to specific political or cultural groups, because there are antisocial selfish people everywhere.
And so this manifests in people being rude to servers, blowing traffic lights, etc.
I think it's the same reason people buy SUVs that aren't specifically work vehicles for rugged terrain. It's a conspicuous and continuous self-aggrandizing affirmation of one's individual greatness and strength.
Not to be too dramatic, but it seems a bit like we are regressing as a society to animal kingdom behavior. Politeness is dead!
Maybe aggressive driving is part of that elevated adrenaline addiction: as you go about your day you need little doses from other places like the gas pedal.
Hey, on behalf of my animal brethren, I resent that! ;-)
Seriously, while nature can seem cruel --- red in tooth and claw --- there also exists in nature a definite "politeness", i.e. the context for aggression is well defined (for example, predator-prey, maintenance and challenge of group hierarchy, defense of territory) and outside of that context violence is generally avoided. Humans, both primitive and civilized, are among the more aggressive of animals and in particular display aggressive behavior with less reason or provocation than most species. To some extend civilization actually makes this worse; it's easier to act aggressively when the aggression is less likely (because of existence of laws and police) to turn into deadly violence, and violence is less likely to be deadly because of hospitals and antibiotics.
Otherwise I agree completely with you. In particular, I also suspect that Trumpism has done more harm to polite civilization than Covid.
https://archive.ph/5wWDC
So it's a cycle that makes cities ever more built around cars. We need more trains, light rail, subways. As those become more entrenched, the city reshapes itself around them. Train stops become areas of development, which brings more things closer to people without needing cars.
I'd argue we simply need more walkability, and to place shops and destinations closer to people. Public transit is great, but is not an effective way to fix our auto-centric land use.
In Strong Towns this is discussed. Transit should come to enhance and solve the transportation needs of already great, walkable places. Transit should not be created to try to induce great places.
Train stations are generally planned for places where people are already going. The development that happens around them is a natural result of them being there. Unlike bus stops, train stops are not easily moved and generally have more people passing through on foot. That makes it a good bet developing around there.
If your business relies on foot traffic, a bus stop is a risky place to set up next to. The service could move or shut down the bus stop without much effort. Not so with a train station. Buses also use roads, which take up much more land per traveler than trains do.
If you want a walkable city, you still need to get people in and out of it. Simply blocking off roads will give you a wide moat of parking lots around the city. Trains are necessary for walkable cities.
Record pricing for used cars suggests that there's a car shortage.
Ironically, less cars and less driving could lead to
1. Faster driving because of clearer roads, and
2. More walking.
Combine those and it wouldn't be surprising to get more auto-pedestrian accidents.
One test would be to compare changes to car accidents with changes to pedestrian accidents. Reckless driving should bring both up. More pedestrians should only bring the latter up.
The book,Confessions of a Recovering Engineer(1), talks about this.
(1) https://www.confessions.engineer
The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. I see people, often enough, walking in the road with traffic. Experienced walkers tend to know this.
Please do not recommend this reckless and often illegal behavior.
If walking in the street, one should walk with traffic when possible.
Drivers and other forms of traffic merging into traffic do not expect pedestrian traffic coming from the wrong direction.
Salmoning causes other dangers, too, for example, by making it difficult to impossible for traffic to avoid collisions by stopping.
Either guidance and some laws have changed since I last was educated on this topic or my memory is faulty.
Perhaps it’s about observing inattentive drivers before they present immediate danger or establishing eye contact?
In any case, I stand corrected on the legality of pedestrian salmoning, though I’m not convinced of its advisability.
If you work the field at an AutoX course, you'll know that it is quite possible to dodge them. The chances of dodging a car when paying attention are substantially higher than if one is not.
It wouldn’t necessarily increase the number of people walking or fewer cars on the road. The net effect is a shift to newer and more expensive cars among drivers.
It’s going to be interesting to see how it effects accident numbers, I’m worry it may actually make accident numbers go up.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-highway-code-8-change...
A contradiction leads to uncertainity, which leads to accidents
"Crossing the road anywhere" is quite dumb, I think, and I guarantee you'll see a spike of pedestrians getting hit for a while. Just because you can legally do it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Wrong. It's the very opposite. Research shows that drivers increase their attention when they know that there can be obstacles and/or the road is not wide and straight.
The changes in Highway Code really just say that cars should give way to pedestrians that are crossing minor roads, while walking down a major road.
I.e. the general rule is that all traffic going down a major should wait and give way to continuing traffic, regardless of if it’s a car, bike or pedestrian, when they enter or leave the major road to/from a minor road.
There’s is still an expectation that all road uses take care and respect other road users. You don’t ever have a “right of way” only the obligation to “give way”.
That was always the case, see Rule 182 from the 2006 version for example
https://web.archive.org/web/20060418012127/http://www.highwa...
"turning at road junctions; give way to pedestrians who are already crossing the road into which you are turning"
The change was you now had to give way to those about to cross the road too
Obviously cars should always give way to pedestrians in the roadway, the alternative is running them down. I don’t think we need a Highway Code rule to make it clear why that’s a bad idea.
The police nor council do anything about it.
> I don’t think we need a Highway Code rule to make it clear why that’s a bad idea.
While the UK is far better than the wild west of the US (pedestrians killed per million people per year. UK=5, New Jersey=22, New Mexico=47), there's still about 1 pedestrian a day killed by drivers, and 10 per day seriously injured.
20 children are killed or seriously injured every week for the "crime" of walking, almost all in towns where there is no need to be traveling more than 15mph (2 miles to get out of town or onto a major artery road, at 30mph that takes 4 minutes with no traffic lights, at 15mph that's 8 minutes)
> and I guarantee you'll see a spike of pedestrians getting hit for a while.
I guarantee the UK has a lower incidence of traffic collisions than the US, per capita or per miles driven.
Can't imagine getting a ticket for jaywalking in New York although the city has cracked down on cyclists running lights from time to time.
Yeah, nice one. Blaming the pedestrians, not the drivers. If the drivers can't see the pedestrians at a crosswalk, they simply need to drive slower.
The former will almost always lead to more issues, no matter what the change is.
It's worse for bicycles: almost nowhere in the USA are drivers punished for killing cyclists, despite what's written in the vehicle code.
The cars are still obligated to stop to avoid hitting someone. It just allows a pedestrian to be ticketed for impeding a vehicle's travel (which is dangerous) while not being in an established crossings (which I believe includes implicit ones at intersections, but unsure about that part).
I'm not sure what an implicit crossing is. In California every street intersection is explicitly a pedestrian crossing per CVC unless otherwise marked.
Frankly, almost no law is enforced as it's written. Law enforcement discretion and judges legislating from the bench are extremely common in all areas. That said, if you hit someone, you will be investigated (how thoroughly depends on the circumstances).
As an avid jaywalker, in what situation do you think you should be legally prioritized over a car on the road? If the car can stop in time sure but otherwise you're the one causing a problem.
Everywhere else...I don't believe cars should be allowed to drive as if they have the right of way. Sure, it's bogus to leap out from being hidden between parked cars, but that's a corner case akin to sticking a fork in a power outlet.
A hard example is the unprotected rail lines that run through residential neighborhoods with no fencing or other separation between the rail road and kids. These aren't just in the Central Valley -- you can see this right in Redwood City. Even at a glacial pace a train full of cars can't be expected to stop on a dime.
What style of street are you thinking of? Stop sign streets? Main streets with stoplights? Are just wanting to literally walk across any road without looking and force all traffic to stop?
Is walking down to the nearest stop sign/traffic light really that inconvenient?
Essentially, yes. Roads are for people, and of course drivers and passengers are people using the street too, but they don't deserve top priority over other uses, especially as the effort for them to get around is low (they are using external power to move themselves; the other users are not).
> Is walking down to the nearest stop sign/traffic light really that inconvenient?
Depends on how far and if it's safe to walk there. I live in a town with walkable footpaths on every street, and even between some streets, but neighboring towns are not so accommodating. There are plenty of places where the footpath simply ends in the middle of the block.
Anyway it's less convenient than being pulled to the intersection by a motor.
So, yes, I think you're right, casualties are more likely to increase since few drivers are going to be changing their behaviour any time soon.
I think we need to get much more proactive about revoking licenses. I am also heavily considering getting a dashcam to start recording and reporting violators.
Taking away licenses is not a clean and easy thing in the US, because you basically make someone the ward of someone else, or an outlaw. People can't get by without vehicles, and much of the time they just have to risk it. Best case scenario someone else has to babysit them.
I definitely agree we need to make it easier for people to get by without their cars. I just can't stomach making people second class citizens, which is what these laws do. I'm only in favor of them in really egregious, repeat violation situations. Like people that refuse to stop drinking and driving; the ones that just keep doing it over and over. Even then, I'm willing to talk about options in the grand scheme of things like ignition interlock systems (actually not even available to many repeat offenders in my state)
It varies by city/state, as some other comments noted. In any case, in a few smaller towns I've been to in the UK, there are numerous crossings that seem incredibly unsafe to me from both a US and western European perspective. In much of the latter regions, marked crossings that aren't full-on zebra crossings with pedestrian-priority are incredibly rare, while these crossings (in which pedestrians yield to vehicles in a marked path) seem the norm here. With neither a pedestrian signal nor a priority marking, I find them rather alarming and pointlessly confusing given that vehicles sometimes have a signal for these same intersection, leaving pedestrians to just... guess?
I've slowly grown accustomed to accepting the priority of vehicles over pedestrians here compared to in the US and continental European cities I lived in, but London seemed far more pedestrian-friendly and there are certainly US cities that are even worse than the above.
Unfortunately, the opposite often happens due to political pressure. People know that a blind curve is dangerous for pedestrians and demand a crosswalk and signs/ signals, which only encourages more people to cross at the unsafe location. (Even if it now has lots of paint on the pavement and flashing lights.)
Yes, the big picture solution should be to minimize places where it's dangerous to cross via road design, but that isn't always possible or practical for various political or engineering reasons.
The typical US laws are mostly misunderstood: Even where vehicles have the right of way, they have an obligation to yield to avoid hitting a pedestrian, just as having right of way doesn't permit you to intentionally cause a wreck.
And unfortunately, there isn't a uniform set of rules between states to make row for pedestrians clear, but there has been a trend to at least give pedestrians right of way at all marked crossings, and in places that don't have a marked crossing within ~a block.
Worth repeating.
BTW I'm not saying whether those laws are right or wrong either way. Just clarifying what the status quo actually is.
Speaking as a UK driver (and pedestrian) - no, that's not really the case. At least not that pedestrians have right of way. I mean cars will hit the brakes to avoid killing you but I wouldn't recommend relying on that. The only place they changed the right of way recently is at turnings with 'give way' markings as shown in your link.
A little searching suggests that in the latter quarters of 2021, traffic fatalities fell (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-fatalities-esti....)
Before we jump to the explanation of angrier drivers (harder to verify or disprove), can we explore the simpler possibility?
Though, the "salience saturation" concept sounds like one of the reasons for which people in the MIL world take up smoking.
1. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
It's an uptick despite reduced driving.
A 45% increase in deaths per mile driven is no joke.
Further, you're also ignoring advancements in medicine, emergency services, healthcare systems, rules (e.g., cities in the US have drastically reduced max speeds), safety focused street design changes, etc. that mean that the odds of a pedestrian dying have reduced in general.
Comparing broadly to 50 years ago is not very useful.
Also cellphones. 5g = better connectivity on the move = more distracted people driving/walking = more accidents?
It does feel like the one-two punch of [Trump + pandemic] has led to people feeling more entitled to let their rage and impatience out in public. I don't know how we recover from this as a society?
For a time, I might have been inclined to put it down to people just weren't driving and had "forgotten" how. But I think that's hard to argue for at this point. I've nearly got run off the road on a merge or had a horn blown at me followed by a pass on the shoulder because I was apparently only going at the speed limit multiple times in just the past month or two.
Boston area driving has been quite aggressive forever. But I don't think I've seen it this actively bad/dangerous as it has been the past year or two. (And a number of people I know have said likewise.)
This doesn't sound very square to me.
I'm totally amazed at how some cities do not have protected left turn signals. During high traffic times, this means you can litterally never have a gap. Which leads to the situation where once the light turns red, 3-4 cars wanting to turn left run the red light. LA was the worst of the places I've experienced this.
Left turn arrows tend to be eventually installed at the worst of the unprotected lefts. (Or left turns are just prohibited.) Locals just learn to expect a couple cars to do a left on red--and for another 2 or 3 to turn as soon as the light turns green.
It is legal to enter an intersection (i.e. cross the white line) when your light is not red. Therefore at least one car can turn left legally per light cycle. Agree completely that this isn't good enough.
These people have little reason to got Lowell/Leominster/Worcester/Fall River (one ring outward) or Providence/Hartford/New Haven/Springfield (one ring further still) so Boston is just what they complain about.
If Lexington or Sudbury is your frame of reference then Boston is a f-ing zoo. If Lawrence is your frame of your reference Davis Square (or Kelly Square) is same shit different day.
I don't know what its going to take for half the country to finally wake up and realize it can't continue along this course and the philosophy of selfishness has failed.
In podcast form: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/driving-went-down-fataliti... In article form: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/1/10/driving-went-d...
Based on my recent experiences, I sort of agree - but more so as a negative control. My area does not have much bumper to bumper traffic, and never has. I have not noticed additional increase in speeding.
The thing I have noticed is bad decision making or inattentive behavior. People pulling out when they shouldn't (possibly due to misjudged speed), or looking at their phone and drifting from their lane.
Possibly the result of the other drivers being able to drive faster, thus giving less space to pull out?
> or looking at their phone and drifting from their lane.
This one is much easier to connect to lower traffic levels. As the complexity of the environment decreases with the drop in traffic, drivers feel safer to do things like be on their phones. Being on your phone is very similar to higher speed in that it is a higher-risk response that many drivers would rather engage in if there is no apparent downside.
I find this explanation to be consistent with the way people respond to weather by slowing down (and do so differently in different locales depending on their familiarity with that weather), or how , when I used to drive up to the SFO airport for Friday night red-eyes, it was rare to encounter cars driving less than 100mph on the pristine, nearly-empty freeway.
Not that I have seen. I have had numerous people pull out in front of me and my habits haven't changed. I'm even one to go 5 under when approaching two intersections that ate notorious for people pulling out at. Also, at the one intersection, people sit back instead of pulling up further, meaning the have to traverse an additional 15 feet, which they don't seem to amount for when pulling out.
"This one is much easier to connect to lower traffic levels. As the complexity of the environment decreases with the drop in traffic, drivers feel safer to do things like be on their phones."
True, i think this could account for some of the more urban areas. The traffic in this area hasn't changed and I've still noticed an uptick. Maybe carryover from habits developed on those urban roads, but maybe something else.
Magical thinking is pervasive. Is it ironic that the subject himself seemed to engage in the same?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking
https://www.npr.org/2017/01/22/510655254/trump-crowd-size-es...
The rules of the road were put in place as a system to protect people. Things like signaling a turn can be very important to pedestrians crossing a side street. I get that people want to remove pretextual stops to stop bias. But perhaps we should move towards uniform/consistent enforcement rather than simply ignoring the laws.
The use of law enforcement discretion to charge some people but not others leads to the bias. This is on more than just driving laws. Then you end up with a minority population being negatively affected while the majority remain in ignorant bliss. If it affected all equally, then the population would be mobilized to remove bad laws from the books (on the basis that they or someone they know were affected by it).
Well the fact that you're seeing what you're seeing in a very expensive Boston suburb seems to point in the other direction. Shouldn't that be the place in the country that sees the most pro-social behavior as a result of the pandemic and has the fewest people seeing Trump as something that should be emulated?
From my perspective, Trump acted as the human incarnation of rage and impatience for a substantial fraction of the US population, and he fed on and encouraged public displays of bad behavior. Setting that type of example from the White House can't be inconsequential.
Pandemic fatigue is a real thing here too. Just because we have an above-average level of mask-wearing compliance doesn't mean people aren't heartily sick of the whole thing.
All bad things I don’t like are caused by X group is a poor way to look at the world.
Letting your biases creep so far into how you make simple evaluations like that is a red flag and it might be time for some deep introspection.
So less about Trump and more about Trump's effects on liberals.
The high rate of pedestrian deaths is a result of policy regarding road design, pedestrian infrastructure and lenient criminal charges. The driving culture is also to blame. Driving is a god given right. Cars equal freedom, and the bigger the better. Pedestrians are a nuisance and cyclists are the enemy.
Vehicles sold now are too fast for their intended purpose. You can buy a Toyota Camry with 300 HP and a 0-60 time of 5.1 seconds. Twenty years ago that was Porsche 911 territory. The upcoming Hummer EV touts a 3.0 second 0-60 and weighs in at 9000 lbs. Insane
If he were driving a legal registered pickup truck, and didn't flee (and wasn't impaired at the time) it would probably be a moving violation.
It also seems to me really rare that a hit-and-run driver is ever caught. It pains me to say it but it almost seems rational to flee the scene if you were drunk.
Good acceleration makes driving safer, because taking over other cars takes less time (although 40-60 acceleration time matters more here).
Also, "sports" cars, designed for high speeds usually have better suspension, braking, tires, all of which make them safer again.
Cars are just tools, you cannot blame them for recklessness of some drivers.
I do wish more emphasis were placed on teaching drivers the situations where hard acceleration is actively harmful, though. We are seeing some EV accidents already from people not realizing the differences between expected behavior and their behavior.
It's amazing we don't have more deaths. And disgusting we don't do better at designing safe roadway for all people.
For example, I have no problem with 55 mph roads along farm fields, even with bikes or buggies sharing them. The idea is that drivers should be slowing and waiting patiently to pass. Many drivers don't even know that the law requires a minimum of 4 feet separation when passing a bicycle. Just like many bicyclist either don't know or don't care to stop at stop signs or walk their bike across a crosswalk when using one (at least slow to walking speed).
Yea, but almost none of those things have changed in the last two year - so does nothing to explain the spike in the last two years.
What has changed in the last two years? Police being told not to police, not to pull people over for minor infractions, police departments being defunded or having their budget's cut - or being threatened with being defunded or having their budgets cut. Can't have to both way folks - like it not, the threat of being ticketed, towed or arrested has an effect on many peoples driving habits.
My state has targets for acceptable rates of annual pedestrian deaths when designing intersections. I find the fact that we elect to sacrifice lives in order to bump up vehicles-per-hour stats rather disturbing. Again nothing new but helps explain why the US is an outlier.
Do you have any data showing this causal link at all? Maybe broken down by place so we can see links like the pedestrian death increases match the places that did those things. Since you actually list several causal things, it can be broken down by places that limited enforcement for covid reasons vs those that defunded vs those that didn't do those things? Bonus points if you bother to break out the overly broad "defunded" category into actual policy change groupings, there were a lot of reforms that got lumped into that term, many of them having nothing to do with money to enforce laws.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cities-vowed-2020-cut-po...
There has also been a push to do away with pretextual stops, which includes a lot of traffic law. Not sure that has been wide spread enough, and may also be too recent, to impact these numbers.
It won't shock you to know that people are aware of all of this, and drive accordingly.
[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/02/10/city-hall-condemns-de...
In any case, anecdotally, the hit & runs tend to happen a night, late at night. I often wonder if the pedestrian and/or driver were under the influence.* Or, at the very least the car's headlights were off (as I was nearly hit a few months ago because of lack of headlights on).
* afaik, drug and alcohol usage has increased in the last two yrs "due to Covid."
So, some cars are too fast, but that efficiency and power also has a lot of practical purpose in many vehicles. Anyhow, I agree with the thrust your statement, but most people are responsible enough to not drive a powerful car recklessly.
Are car manufacturers, knowingly or not, selling a reckless lifestyle?
Most car guys love their cars and are well aware of the power and dynamics that can destroy it (or have it seized). But that's just my experience.
"Are car manufacturers, knowingly or not, selling a reckless lifestyle?"
If they are, it's across the board. Any vehicle can be dangerous - civics, F150s, mustangs, minivans, etc. Many people don't understand vehicle limits, dynamics, and their own limitations. A lot of this is because people have rarely experienced situations that would require, for lack of a better word, extreme actions. Things like autocross can give people some understanding of these, provided they aren't the personality that would use it to create false confidence.
If drivers were to face high consequences no matter what, would a possible result be that more pedestrians and cyclists die because more motorists would fail to stop and render aid/call 911?
"face no criminal charges or loss of driving privileges as long as they stop and dial 911."
I don't think this is necessarily true. Criminal charges generally require some form of intent. That could be recklessness. Most driving doesn't constitute reckless driving (per case law and customary enforcement). The police do investigate. I would imagine that many of the fatalities include drivers following the law and exercising reasonable care (as based on society's expectations), as well as pedestrians and cyclists not following the law. I would love to see the data to show the breakdown one way or the other.
We've got extremely low expectations.
We actually have a very high tolerance for vehicles breaking the law (but then whine endlessly about that bike we saw blowing a red light).
I'd argue that if you wind up killing anyone that you were necessarily negligent in your driving and someone killing someone else when they were actually taking due care is extraordinarily unlikely. Pedestrian deaths should really be automatic negligent homicide charges unless it can be proven that the pedestrian just ran out in the road and got hit or something through their own negligence.
This I why I'd like to see the stats/breakdown. There are more laws that apply to pedestrians than many realize. Like walking on the left side of the road, jay walking, not obeying traffic signals. This could be seen as negligence or recklessness.
There are a ton of irresponsible or unknowledgeable drivers, and those same people are also likely to be pedestrians at some point and exhibit similar actions.
Since vehicles are moving so much faster, with more limited reaction speed and with massively higher kinetic energy they should be held to a higher standard.
And I've been driving for near 35 years and never once come close to hitting a pedestrian, no matter what kinds of mistakes the pedestrians have made.
Walking is a necessity, driving is a privilege.
And the laws show that (cars are obligated to try to avoid it even if they have the right of way). The question is what qualifies as negligence or recklessness. In civil law there is the idea of contributory negligence. Meaning if the pedestrian breaking the law by being there then they contributed to the situation through their negligence. This may be enough to prove that the driver wasn't at fault through negligent or reckless behavior if they were following the law.
"Walking is a necessity, driving is a privilege."
Driving is a privilege. Walking may be a necessity. However, performing illegal acts is not a necessity. This is crucial in the discussion of negligence and recklessness. Especially if the activity is reckless, as they know the risks of their illegal activity and accept them by doing it anyways.
"Pedestrians inherently move a lot slower and are more predictable"
Slower, yes. More predictable, no. People can change direction more quickly and erratically (no turning radius, etc). Cars can be very predictable because of the constraints their mechanical nature provide. You also have to see them to be able to predict, which could be difficult if they throw open a car door from a heavily tinted (illegal in my state) car parked on the side.
So, to get back to the original topic... we could assume that the act of hitting a pedestrian is de facto negligent unless proven otherwise. But what would 'proving otherwise' mean? Here I'm saying that if the pedestrian was negligent or reckless, then that could provide evidence that the accident was the fault of the pedestrian. This could absolve the driver if they were following the law.
And let's not forget that there are people who will throw themselves on cars for the payout. Upsetting the current balance could exacerbate this issue.
And if you're worried about someone throwing themselves on your car, have a dashcam and/or get security cam footage. And I live in Seattle where we get a lot of people jaywalking indiscriminately who one way or another don't seem to care about their own safety and I've never come close to hitting any of them either.
There's a real simple tactic to avoiding issues like that which is that if you see someone do anything erratic that you slow down and don't assume that just because you've got a legal right of way that you don't need to react at all. I've seen some videos of truly unavoidable accidents involving vehicles, but I don't think I've seen any unavoidable accidents involving pedestrians, other than the people who hurl themselves on the hood of stopped car to try to insurance scam. Those people aren't dead though.
And I don't see where you've offered any evidence that we have an issue with pedestrians being irrational and you seem to be very transparently trying to flip the blame without any evidence. Find that evidence if it exists. I doubt any traffic safety experts will agree with you though. Most will cite speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving and size of vehicles as the predominant factors behind pedestrian deaths. Everything else is pretty much whataboutisms unless you have evidence and not argument. You don't have the default position here, the default position needs to be that car drivers need to change.
Depends on your definition. They don't need to be treated equally, but if the system isn't "fair" then what's the point of anything? Nobody will follow a system they don't believe in and that doesn't make sense. Cars aren't treated equally, and are held to a higher standard.
"And I live in Seattle where we get a lot of people jaywalking indiscriminately who one way or another don't seem to care about their own safety and I've never come close to hitting any of them either."
If the police enforced the law, then perhaps we could protect those people from themselves. That's the way the system is designed - to have all parties be alert and responsible so as to reduce the probability of two irresponsible parties meeting, resulting in an accident.
"And I don't see where you've offered any evidence that we have an issue with pedestrians being irrational and you seem to be very transparently trying to flip the blame without any evidence."
Do you have any evidence of me flipping blame, or are you just attacking me now? I'm not trying to "flip" blame. You can look up contributory negligence if you'd like. You can look up just about any city you want and you will see a significant number of accidents show at least partial fault on the part of the pedestrian. Now, we could look at redesigning infrastructure to be safer, but as it stands pedestrians not following the law account for a large part of the problem under the current system. Simply changing the system to shift the blame around, as you propose, is not going to result in a safer system (you've shown no proof). Link at bottom
"You don't have the default position here, the default position needs to be that car drivers need to change."
There is no "default position" here, and to assume one is uncharitable and detracts from the discussion.
My position is that we need stricter testing for drivers. It's also in opposition to assuming a driver is guilty of manslaughter - I believe in innocent until proven guilty.
In an effort to explore your position, I've repeatedly asked for what proof would absolve a driver under your proposed system of guilty until proven innocent, yet you haven't provided any. We need criteria.
I've given examples of when pedestrians could be at fault by breaking the law. It appears you are the one engaging in whataboutism since my statements are backed up by law and fact, yet you have provided neither.
https://www.treehugger.com/why-are-percent-fatal-accidents-f...
This question baffles me because where I'm from, hitting a pedestrian or biker with your car, the car driver is almost always 100% liable. And it works. Cars don't want to hit cyclists or pedestrians because they don't want to pay, and cyclists/pedestrians don't want to hit cars because they want to stay alive.
Do they? Where I live, at night, no one ever wears reflectors, save a few cyclists. It seems like people don’t think about this at all. You’re walking around at night and someone driving a car doesn’t see you until it’s too late. I think there is some merit to asking the question about how pedestrians can be safer. I’m happy to practice what I preach and wear reflectors at night but it seems that pedestrians are ignorant about their visibility. You can only be so safe driving a car, it’s not feasible to drive 5mph everywhere you go.
Infrastructure needs to be build around pedestrians and cyclists. The youtube channel "Not Just Bikes" shows how it can be done.
See also: all of these bright yellow illuminated retroreflective bollards that should have made themselves more visible:
https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/new-road-s...
They can get around just fine, they just don't want to walk further to get to the crosswalks, which is fine, but I think it's reasonable to ask people to wear reflectors as a trade off. I also can't exactly expect drivers new to the area to intuitively know where someone might decide to cross at night. Thus reflectors. When I see someone walking on the sidewalk, I slow down (even though it's not necessary given the amount of space between the road and the sidewalk). If I can't see that anyone is on the sidewalk at night, how am I going to know to do that? I want people to wear reflectors so I can give them a lot of space to feel safe not because I think it's their fault if they get hit.
>If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices.
Yes, but saying this doesn't just magically make the problem go away. I also think people should wear reflectors at night regardless. When I'm walking around at night, in low-visibility areas, people seem to appear out of nowhere and I'd prefer to keep my distance.
Exactly. So it seems to me the pedestrian would want to avoid the 4 ton vehicular machines and the law here differs from common sense in my opinion.
Seems to me... by virtue of being a 4 ton death machine...the auto should have the right of way in almost every case against a small fleshy pedestrian.
Extremely valuable places have lots of people interacting. Low value-per-acre places accommodate cars well. When there is a conflict between the two, the higher value-per-acre use should be expected to win because, by the mechanism that we use to allocate the space (money), the higher value use is, by definition, better.
Also, from a perspective of what was there first (another principle of ownership): unarmored, walking people are the default state of humans. Armored 4-ton 65mph people are a recent change and a very expensive change, at that. So it stands to reason that we prefer the pre-existing state (though not by the US American traffic engineering system.)
There is also an ethical principle deriving from Judaism, and expanded by Christianity, which says that all people have intrinsic value and by extension should not be killed. This intrinsic value is accepted in western culture and is taken to apply to all people, whether they are too disabled to drive a car, too young to drive, too old to drive, or too poor to drive.
I know this is just a small sampling of the answer to your question, but I don't want to get too tedious here.
So the pedestrian should really be the one avoiding the auto.
I really don't know a solution aside from moving to a country that's better designed. The US seems too far gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98
The researchers found that motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths in the United States, comprising about 20% of all deaths among children in 2016. The chief reason for the crashes was cell phone use by drivers and pedestrians, the researchers found.
Firearms were the second leading cause of deaths among children and adolescents in 2016, according to the researchers. Overall, there was a 28% relative increase in the rate of firearm deaths among U.S. children, likely driven by a 32% increase in firearm homicides and a 26% increase in firearm suicides, the researchers said. They found that the odds of a child being killed by a firearm are 36 times higher in the United States than in other high-income countries.
About 16 children per 100k die each year in the US
https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/22-child-deaths...
In the UK for comparision it's about 10 per 100k
https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/mortality/ch...
I'm not convinced the US focuses on either gun violence or deaths from cars
Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes also pointed out that in NL they at least had an entire generation or two of people who remembered a different way of living, without being car dependent. All those people have died out in the US now, and even people in their mid-80's came of age when the US was going whole hog on car dependency.
I want better for the US but I'm not optimistic. A new city built of whole cloth (maybe culdesac.com can do it?) might have a chance.
Anecdata, and all that, but it's interesting that so many people are noticing this.
People buying old cars and putting money in them is yet another recent trend everywhere that even I've participated in. It's fun to pass time trying to fix older cars.
They don't respect traffic laws, including red lights. And the pandemic has really increased their numbers.
An the companies sending them will have no repercussions if the police will stop the delivery guys - making the companies care less and even encouraging this behavior.
Cousin was a city cop. If he told them to move, they'd seriously just ignore him. Now ask yourself if you're going to ticket this guy and possibly suspend his livelihood when everyone else is doing it with virtual impunity?
It's a messed up system.
And anecdotally, I've met plenty of bonkers female drivers, too. Including two who tried to run my bicycle off the road because they felt that cyclists should not be on the road (in both cases, I was in the cycle lane).
Here in Dublin, Ireland the few weeks immediately after the lockdowns where horrendous for driver behaviour and aggression. It took a while till behaviours were back to the norm. It was almost as if people needed to get reacquainted with it.
I too was thinking this was caused by the lockdown but now I'm not so sure. My state never locked down too hard in the first place and we've been largely "fully open" since last Spring - yet the driving has gotten worse. I was talking to my insurance agent about it and they said the number of accidents is skyrocketing. Great - so we have increased insurance premiums to look forward to which of course will be blamed on "inflation."