The article links to another article by freep.com that really boils the problem down to high-profile, "blunt-nosed" SUVs and trucks (picture: https://www.gannett-cdn.com/labs/death-on-foot/graphics/NU_0...). This is something I've taken note of in my city. When I park my short sedan next to some of these pickups, the pickups' hoods are taller than my entire vehicle. So imagine your entire body being slammed by that. If you were instead struck by a sedan, your body would more likely roll over the hood and dissipate some of the impact.
At the end of the day, the failure is with how our vehicles in America are tested and rated. Safety ratings for vehicles are only in "their class", meaning for instance that they don't smash a sedan into an SUV; they only smash sedans into other sedans, and SUVs into other SUVs. This presents a major asymmetry, leading buyers to think SUVs are safer, when that safety comes at the expense of other users of the road, including people on foot and bike.
A major step toward reducing fatality rates in a vehicle-person collision is to factor in pedestrian safety when evaluating vehicle safety rates.
As a cyclist in Austin, one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Texas was how many vehicles have grille guards. The vast majority don't buy these because they need them. They buy them because they like the look or because they think it'll make their vehicle survive a collision better. I've often thought about what the grille guard would do to me or a pedestrian.
Pretty sure they banned these in the UK decades ago. From what I remember the argument was was they are particularly bad if the pedestrian is not fully grown adult.
I worked at a dealership that sold 4X4 and trucks in Houston, Texas several years back. Big giant grille guards were sold all the time. Most of the buyers never drove off road or even in the country. So, I agree that those guards are more dangerous for non-vehicle impacts with little gain but image is everything when selling someone something.
>The vast majority don't buy these because they need them. They buy them because they like the look or because they think it'll make their vehicle survive a collision better.
Im not sure what planet you live on. They absolutely will. Cattle and deer are dumb. As a cyclist, I doubt you ever leave the city and actually think a significant amount of people buy them for looks.
To be clear: I'm talking about people who seem to live in Austin, the vast majority of which don't have any connection to farms. I'm not saying that grille guards have no legitimate purpose or that they won't protect your vehicle. I'm saying that they make the roads more dangerous for others and aren't necessary for the majority of people who buy them. Note the difference between necessary and helpful. Grille guards might help protect your vehicle but I don't think most would say they are necessary.
Anyway, I grew up in a rural area (outside of Texas) where grille guards could be useful. Didn't see many grille guards back there. I even (briefly) worked at a farm before, literally shoveling manure.
I saw more deer when I lived in the DC suburbs and far less people had grille guards. If any. I actually can't remember a single example. In both Austin and the DC suburbs pedestrians far outnumber large wild animals, so I think grille guards are frivolous and dangerous in those places.
I've lived here long enough to observe that grille guards are far more prevalent here than they are in other places, even other places where grille guards seem appropriate.
Well they’re in the hills. The deer, i mean. As to grille guards: I do agree they’re frivolous and dangerous, but you’ve been living here long enough to know those are very Texan qualities.
The answer to your question is obvious and not relevant. I don't ride on roads where anyone goes near 80 mph, so I do think that the grille guards will contribute to lethality in my case.
Given that I live in central Austin, I find it hard to believe that most drivers I encounter with grille guards need them because they have a ranch. That would imply that many more people have ranches than I believe is true. Plus, I grew up in a rural area outside of Texas and rarely saw grille guards, even on farms.
Also worth mentioning is the effect of these walls of steel on visibility, both for other drivers and for non-drivers. Lower visibility means shorter reaction windows means more collisions.
> leading buyers to think SUVs are safer, when that safety comes at the expense of other users of the road, including people on foot and bike.
Oh, I don't think that's misunderstood at all. Safety is generally measured with respect to the occupants of the vehicle only, everyone else be damned.
Heck, there used to be a myth that in an impending head-on collision you would speed up because that would put most of the force onto the other car and reduce your own damage. (That's not really how that works, of course)
>Heck, there used to be a myth that in an impending head-on collision you would speed up because that would put most of the force onto the other car and reduce your own damage. (That's not really how that works, of course)
That's the advice for when you're gonna hit a large animal. Getting off the brake raises the nose lessening the chance the animal will wind up sharing the passenger cabin with you. It's not totally invalid but pretty dated. With the low hoods of modern cars Bambi is gonna wind up in the passenger seat damn near every time. If you're driving some 50s-70s brick then it holds more water.
Except it's the opposite, higher hoodlines (and thus more blunt noses) are actually because of pedestrian safety requirements involving contact area and crumble zones; a lot of that facade is hollow.
It’s worth noting that even though walking is far more common in Europe, and streets are generally narrower, and in older cities, there aren’t sidewalks, but pedestrians share the roadway with cars. Despite these factors, Europe now has a lower pedestrian death toll per capita than the US.
We walk less, but we die more.
I think it's because of these factors, not despite them. We die more because pedestrian traffic has dropped so low that drivers no longer look for foot traffic.
I have lived without a car more than a decade. Driver's frequently are shocked to notice me. I do all I can to catch their eye and make sure they see me. Otherwise, they just make their turn/ go through the crosswalk like I don't exist.
I was young once, had a car, lived in the burbs and drove like a maniac—listening to your music in your private space/auto-cocoon. Couldn’t get where I was going fast enough.
Then I bought a motorcycle. Took the CHP approved two-day driving class. It made me a better driver. But I was still in a rush.
Now I live outside of NYC. No car. No motorcycle. I walk or take taxis. In the burbs, people drive just as you describe. No awareness of pedestrians. Most people don’t obey right of way. And 9 out of ten drivers drive in excess of the speed limit—even in residential.
It’s interesting to note. On the South Shore of Long Island there are more pedestrian deaths than where I live in the North Shore. The roads are much wider and laid out more on the grid on the South Shore. I guess it gives the careless driver the illusion of safer conditions for their recklessness.
I think the primary reason for Europe being safer for pedestrians is that the speed limits are much lower. On roads with sidewalks, the speed limit is typically 30kph to 50kph, which is 18mph to 31mph. So pedestrians have more time to hear cars, and drivers have more time to see pedestrians and stop if needed.
Other factors... there is no right turn on red, most cars are manual transmission, drivers have to be more alert in order to not hit oncoming traffic, etc.
I've lived in Europe. There are plenty of differences, so of course you can't blame any one thing.
But I also grew up in America and walking was far more common here when I was growing up. When an activity starts to go extinct, myriad forms of seemingly invisible support for it also stop happening, including changes in mental models and assumptions for people whose thought processes impact outcomes.
Europe has always been more pedestrian friendly, in part because a lot of it was built before cars existed. There are countless towns where you cannot drive in some sections because it was built hundreds of years ago. You park and walk in.
The US has much less of that. You see it on some major college campuses. You mostly don't see it as some historic part of town built before the car even existed.
The existence of intractable, highly valued old parts of town like that will inevitably influence life experience, mental models and ongoing design policies, among other things. We just don't have that same psychological anchor for our landscapes and policies.
I've had the same experience. I never cross in a crosswalk with a turning car without the driver first acknowledging me. People turning right on red without stopping has almost struck me before as well. You have to be super vigilant in the US when walking or you're going to get killed.
What about distracted pedestrians? I've had to swerve into car lanes from the bike lane almost every day this last week because some pedestrian with his face buried in a phone absent-mindedly steps off the curb against the light. What fraction of the increase is attributable to that?
When I drove a car I used to sympathize with both cyclists and pedestrians. Now that I've been commuting and frequently running errands by bicycle for a couple of years my sympathy has waned significantly due the behavior I observe in my fellow cyclists and pedestrians.
Does this adequately control for smart-phone-distraction? Maybe not if Europeans have social or legal elements ruling out smartphone use in the streets.
The fact is that I just don't know. But it is plausible that local jurisdictions could create and enforce restrictions on pedestrians being distracted while crossing roads. Here in the US we have cities with bans on phone use while driving or cycling, so why couldn't similar restrictions be placed on pedestrians while crossing roads?
I walk and drive as part of my commute. When I'm walking I swear I'm the only person who doesn't wear headphones, and this is a very busy urban area with lots of cars, people, and narrow streets. I would imagine it's the same in Europe though, what do I know?
I was in Europe recently. Didn't observe too many with headphones in while crossing streets or on the metro.
Another uniquely American thing I've witnessed is people not even bothering to look when crossing the street because of whatever video they're watching on their phone.
Covering both ears in a car or on a bike is prohibited in most states, but rarely enforced. However getting such noted on the accident report can establish negligence in a civil action.
Do these tend to refer to audio players in particular, or to any ear covering? I'm curious (1) whether that applies to balaclavas for warmth in the winter and (2) whether an earplug in my left ear would be allowed. As a daily biker, it's astounding how deafening trucks/motorcycles can be.
It isn't clear that headphones make pedestrians/cyclists less safe.Traffic noise in busy urban areas would make it unlikely that headphones would mask any useful auditory information.
I even heard of one study that concluded that the music actually increased awareness and focus.
Higher traffic noise makes it more likely that the one engine or horn that you need to hear will be masked by all the others. Any kind of noise, including the music people play through their headphones, will have that effect. Headphones reduce the amount of ambient sound one hears, they interfere with interpretation (e.g. localization of sound), and they even interfere with response to even non-auditory stimuli. People wear headphones all day in open offices precisely because they decrease awareness of the environment. Please follow some of the references in the introduction of this document to learn more.
I don't think that I am the one that has to do the work to disprove my own contention... :) You have to make your own point and provide either actual arguments or actual references. You can't just point to a semi-random list of references.
It's a normal occurrence in the cities I've lived in that people who are not distracted just walk in front of moving traffic, despite there being a green light, expecting cars to stop, which they do. Frequently they are partially or completely turned away from the oncoming traffic. They may be crossing at a crosswalk or not.
I don't know if this is becoming more common, but it's been on my mind more in recent years and I think it has influenced me a little bit as a pedestrian to step in front of cars like I don't care when I do have the right of way. Whether or not I am entitled to, I imagine it increases my risk.
So I think people should definitely consider that pedestrians are changing and not just drivers.
Thank you for pointing this out. Head phones are a huge problem with this, as well. I have seen a stupid number of stupid pedestrians walking or running with earbuds in, or hunched over on phones, or some such.
No, and please don't straw-man my argument. I contend that those who can avoid such risk ought to, because each pedestrian who does so has an increased risk of getting hit.
To analogize, I believe you ought to avoid unnecessary medical treatments, because each presents some kind of risk. If, however, you need treatment, I suggest you receive it (though it will carry a risk). By the same token, if you can walk carefully and observe the world around you, you ought to. If you need to walk and cannot see, it's fine to just accept that certain things carry risk.
Hearing is arguably more useful in many situations, as it is omnidirectional. I can hear a car coming from behind me; I likely cannot see it.
How much chance do you think you'd have of getting out of the way of an out-of-control car coming from behind that you couldn't see but you say that you'd hear?
There's a near-exact correlation with the rise of smartphone use in the US. Anecdotally, I've almost been hit more often in recent years here in NYC and it's almost always due to absolute morons staring at their cell phone while behind the wheel.
Anecdotally, and I'm sure other people can share similar experiences: I've also had a couple of instances of people jay walking, popping out from behind a parked car right into the road - staring at their cell phone and not at the street around them - and have had to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting the person. I'm glad to have been paying attention but things could have easily gone badly.
A pedestrian staring at their phone is mostly risking injury to themselves, but also risking others for a poor driver that swerves to miss them and into others. A driver staring at their phone is mostly risking injury to others, especially pedestrians and bikers who they will severely injure or kill. They both suck, but one is making a far more selfish/basically evil choice.
Your story of the time you encountered a drunk/stoned/distracted pedestrian is not really helpful to this discussion. No one is claiming that pedestrians are someone perfect. The fact is that most collisions are caused by an error on the part of the driver. Knowing who to blame still doesn't help but false claims that the pedestrians are to blame tend to cause people to forget about the problem.
What I was pointing out is that distraction is the problem. Walking on a street and operating a vehicle are both potentially dangerous tasks, and people need to be vigilant looking out for others and themselves. If you're going to cross the road -jaywalking or not-, you should look both ways. You can't assume that a driver is going to see you, just as a driver can't assume that you aren't going to hop out in front of them, right or wrong as you feel that may be.
There are other circumstances that can account for the same relationship not being as prevalent in Europe. Here, for example, cars intermingle with bicycles all the time, at pedestrian crossings pedestrians always have the right of way and there are shared roads that are open both to vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The circumstances aren't great for getting into the habit of looking down at your phone while driving in the first place. It was still perceived to be a problem here, so now it's illegal.
Anecdotally, cars in Europe on average also seem smaller than those in the US, and maybe a similar correlation for vehicle-pedestrian accidents exists but simply don't result as often in fatalities.
I'd be curious to know if there's any link the use of automatic vs manual transmission cars. In Europe 80% of cars sold are manual, and in the US 3.9% are manual.[1]
That alone probably doesn't mean much because that was still the trend 10 years ago. But the use of smartphones may have increased. Long story short, does a manual transmission reduce distracted driving because it's harder to use your free hand for other activities?
Those stats on automatic vs manual are out of date. Automatics are approaching half of new vehicle sales in Western European countries now. Of course, that's a leading indicator for all cars on the road, so manuals still dominate .. for now.
I don't think this is particularly relevant to pedestrian deaths though. You can still find ways to distract yourself in a manual.
> You can still find ways to distract yourself in a manual.
True, but it's harder to text and drive when you really do need both hands (and both feet) to drive successfully.
Anecdotally, I find driving a manual transmission keeps me much more in tune with all of the variables involved in driving (inside and outside the car) than driving an automatic does.
One of my daily drivers has a manual. If I wanted to be distracted in it would not be appreciably harder. In fact it would probably be easier because the cup holder location in that vehicle is more convenient for my cell phone. If I drove something with modern performance characteristics (enough torque to start in 2nd, hill assist, etc, etc) the fact that it has a manual would be even more of a non-issue.
That was my experience with it as well. Once I got "fluent" in driving manual, I wasn't even consciously thinking about it, so it wasn't any harder to get distracted than when driving an automatic. And your hand isn't even on the shifter most of the time anyway.
You're overestimating how important shifting is once you're already in motion. Sure, you won't be in the optimal gear, but I've seen people drive for surprisingly long amounts of time in the wrong gear because their hand was occupied doing something else (phone, eating, drinking, what have you). Additionally, you can keep your phone in your hand while moving the shifter.
Pedestrians were in cities hundreds of years before, vehicles should never have been promoted to first place.
How to fix this in the cities? Remove almost all instances of cars getting near pedestrians by:
1: Removing one way streets. Having to drive all the way around to go somewhere nearby keeps the car on the road that much longer and doubles the number of crosswalks to pass through.
2: Removing left turns. Cars invading the pedestrians' right of way from the other side of the street is dangerous.
3: Reducing city speed limits from 30mph to 15. 30mph is ridiculous.
4. Enforcing carpooling. One person driving a huge SUV is such a waste of gas, space, and contributes to highways doubling as parking lots at rush hour.
5. Promoting city housing as much as possible for all new growth. For every honest baby-boomer suburb created with proper planning, there were two white-flight suburbs hastily created without.
6. Demanding companies in the city limits revise the need for employees to commute. Employees who can do their job at home deserve that privilege.
I'm somewhat of an expert on this, since I've been walking to work since 1995 (except for 1 year) and I've logged more than 20,000 miles on sidewalks through 2 cities.
What really, really concerns me, in the last few years, are tints on driver side windows. My rule is, I never walk in front of a car unless I made eye contact with the driver. I will even, if I approach from the passenger side, knock on the hood if they are looking left. With the new tints, there are many cars in my city where I cannot see the driver. At all. This confuses me, since I thought opaque tints were illegal.
Anecdotal... Who put you in charge of experts in walking? Lol. Flames aside, your point about tinted windows is interesting but I'm pretty sure it's not uncommon in other countries outside of the US.
I hate to say the "R" word, but, I think we need more regulation. It's clear that manufacturers and consumers aren't trending in the right direction here in protecting all members of society on the streets (not just those in vehicles), so the government needs to step in and mandate it. The increasing prevalence of large pedestrian-unfriendly vehicles is a terrifying trend.
Another change in concert that might help is much higher gasoline taxes. Gasoline can cost upwards of $8 per gallon in many parts of Europe. When fuel is that expensive, you really don't want to get a vehicle any larger than necessary. By contrast, fuel here in the US is way too cheap, and way too many people get large vehicles who have no real need for them, and aren't charged nearly enough extra for the privilege.
People buy large vehicles more than they otherwise would because these are the least regulated so they have less compliance costs baked into their price and there are less compliance based trade-offs in their design so dollar for dollar you're getting more car than you do with something small (which has to meet more stringent fuel economy and emissions requirements and has a larger proportion of it's cost made up of mandatory safety equipment).
When it comes to safety manufacturers are optimizing for tests. Change the tests and you'll change what they optimize for.
One possible fix would be to increase the requirements for car insurance. Currently, minimum car insurance requirements are nowhere near enough to cover a catastrophic accident. If car owners had to buy enough insurance to cover $1 million in injury damages, that could incentivize them to buy cars which are safer for pedestrians.
We have those big vehicles due to regulation. The CAFE regulations for fuel economy take into account the vehicle's weight and the area on the pavement contained within the tires.
Without that regulation, station wagons would still be viable in the US market, and Ford wouldn't have discontinued nearly all cars.
That's a small part of it, but realistically most of it is that people legitimately do want big vehicles. It's a cultural thing; big is popular. Hell, a lot of pickup trucks aren't big enough for people, and they go ahead and lift them (which coincidentally makes them even more dangerous for pedestrians).
But yes, of course it's important to have the right regulations. CAFE regulations are pretty shitty as far as that goes. A much more sensible regulation would be to add a sales tax and annual registration tax inversely proportional to the fuel mileage of the vehicle, which plenty of European countries have done: https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/transport/vehicles-taxation...
But the fact that some shitty regulations were passed with huge loopholes because of lobbyist efforts doesn't mean that better regulations can't (and don't) work.
Gas taxes disproportionately affect the poor though. I agree with your premise that we have too many large vehicles and there's no good incentive to pick a vehicle that's "just" large enough for your uses (so of course everyone picks these enormous trucks and SUVs), but I just think there has to be a better way of regulating than a gas tax.
Is a gas tax really regressive? (asking not because I don't believe it, but because I've never seen this idea stated before). I can see how it's more likely to be regressive among car-owning lower income people (who devote a larger portion of their income to gas, and would therefore be disproportionately affected).
But lower-income people are also less likely to own a car. Even among those who do, they're more likely to moderate their gas usage, more likely to find ways to carpool, and more likely to find the fuel savings of a smaller car to be compelling.
Outside of large cities with functional mass transit, most low income people do own (or finance) cars. Otherwise they would be no-income. You can find a lot of low end job listings that say “reliable transportation” and they don’t mean a bus ride sandwiched between two several-mile hikes. Their cars will be perhaps 10-15 years old, depending on whether their state has winters or emissions laws. They can’t afford the latest fuel efficient vehicles and might be getting 18-25 miles per gallon. Fuel will be a significant fraction of their transportation expense compared to anyone with a higher income, so a fuel tax will necessarily be regressive.
Well even ignoring all that, flat tax rates are regressive. This sounds counterintuitive, but 5% of someones income is a very different thing for someone who makes 30k and someone who makes 300k. Everyone has some amount of fixed costs in common.
Sure. I'd also be interested in any kind of incentives for poor people to get in fuel efficient small newer cars. A carrot rather than a stick, if you will.
I keep harping on that. Raising the gas tax punishes poor and working class people for decisions they (or other people made for them) back when there wasn't any rational choice.
Consider a working stiff driving a 10 year old car. Living in a place with no good public transportation. Raising the gas tax assumes he has/had options he doesn't not in fact have. And policy changes that would give him an alternative have time lines a 100 times longer than next months rent.
Opinion: Gas taxes are based on wishful ideologically driven thinking that free markets can solve public policy failures.
OK, I'll consider that working stiff. Let's say he lives in Saskatchewan, family of 4, rural area. That means he gets a carbon tax rebate of $670 in 2019, which would cover the carbon tax for 4408 gallons of gas. The average family in Saskatchewan pays $403 in carbon taxes over the year. That working stiff may drive more than average, but his carbon footprint is unlikely to be more than average because he probably is heating a smaller house, flying less than normal and buying less stuff than rich people.
Of course this working stiff can't afford to buy a new Tesla, but in my experience poor people turn over their cars faster than the middle class. Their junker breaks down and it'll cost more to fix it than it's worth so they sell the old one to a wrecker and buy another 10 year old car. Maybe the next 10 year old car is a used Leaf? Awful range, but it gets him to work and back, and it saves a good bit of money...
If you make gas taxes revenue neutral, by redistributing the proceeds evenly, to every resident man, woman, and child, as a cheque that arrives on November 15, this would solve your objection, and have broad public support for it.
Nobody gets cheques in the mail for it. When BC introduced its RNCT, the BC Liberals[1] sent exactly one set of cheques out, once - while burying the revenue-neutral revenues in an abstract, unmeasurable corporate and income tax cut. Rob the poor to pay the rich sort of stuff.
On the bright side, it also reduced gas usage by ~20% in 10 years[2], compared to the rest of the country, which is about ~20% more of a reduction then all the useless self-congratulatory hand-wringing about the plight of the poor has ever accomplished. [3]
[1] For foreign readers - the BC Liberals are liberal-in-name only. They are the mainstream conservative party of British Columbia, and have close ties to the Federal Conservative Party of Canada.
[3] If we're going to put the brakes on any climate-disaster-related initiative, because someone, somewhere is going to be worse off for it, you may as well shoot me now. Someone, somewhere is always going to be worse off with every policy decision. We'll all be worse off if we keep wasting time, instead of acting.
Then it's a bit too early to say whether or not it's actually an unpopular, unworking policy, no?
There's a couple of confounding factors at work, here, the most important one of which is the smoke from the tyre pyre of the Federal Liberal administration.
You take the extra money and redistribute it. Either as a refund on your registration based on miles driven (meaning more efficient cars get more back than they spent) or as a straight up income tax credit for the poor.
If the excuse to raise the gas tax is to reduce driving, then using the money collected to reduce the pain of the gas tax is in direct conflict with the excuse in the first place and it turns into straight redistribution of wealth. Nice bit of smoke and mirrors.
If you did it as an income tax credit it would reduce driving because a lot of the poor people who would get money don't drive, and more importantly, people are much more psychologically motivated by a $100 fill-up than a year-end tax credit.
yes, a gas tax can be regressive but what's the actual effect on the less affluent, especially over time? it would likely be a short-term hit (which you could mitigate with a one-time credit) until those SUVs and trucks were traded in for safer vehicles.
the more relevant criticism, in my view, is that a gas tax would be too indirect and wouldn't induce larger vehicles to become safer (not to mention it's confusing, thus making people mad).
so then, could we construct an incentive that was proportional to a vehicle's safety record (along with a progressive punishment for the inverse)? as another commenter added, insurance may be the right avenue for this.
There's also a trend in the US where people are moving out of suburbs and into big cities. And there are far more people walking and biking to work than ever. So there's definitely more pedestrians than 10 years ago. I can't speak for Europe's trends.
I hit a pedestrian a few years ago. I was heading to an intersection to make a right hand turn while at the same time a guy on his phone was walking to cross.
Unfortunately he happened to somehow be walking at a constant bearing with decreasing range to my line of sight, hiding right behind my A pillar. Luckily, because I was decelerating to turn at the last minute I didn’t strike him hard enough to do much harm, but he was visibly shaken.
That's surely one of the biggest negative consequences, for cyclists and pedestrians, of increasing car safety the last couple of decades. The pillars, and blind spots, have got so huge.
You see a typical car from the 80s now, and the A and B pillars seem to have nothing to them, rather than the great chunky things current cars have.
You subtly try to blame the guy for using his phone, but you're the one making the turn. Everywhere I've lived, unless there was an applicable controlling signal, he would have had the right of way.
If I had a right of way while driving but I was on my phone and someone hits me or I hit them I can be at fault for not paying attention.
Being a pedestrian doesn’t mean you’re absolved of all responsibilities, anyone actively interacting with traffic needs to put the phone down and pay attention.
This happened to me too. I hit a woman on a bike, because she unfortunately kept behind a pillar. Now when turning I always rock my torso sideways to and fro to increase the view angle. I feel stupid doing this but I think I avoided one or two more accidents this way.
Part of the fault lies with the absolutely awful biking infrastructure in the US.
Bikers are told to share the road with vehicles even in places where it makes absolutely no sense and drivers are going at 2x-3x speed of the bike and there are no bike lane demarcations whatsoever.
Newsflash for you (if any politicians are reading this) - painting a small icon of a bike on the side of the road without any physical separation IS NOT a sufficient safety feature for a "bike lane".
I live in a walkable neighborhood but there are a lot of people that commute through my neighborhood to downtown DC. There are crosswalks where cars are supposed to stop for pedestrians, but many don't. I feel like the rise of these laws that require cars to stop at these crosswalks has to be part of the problem. Cars are supposed to stop but they are either driving too fast or they just don't stop. Or if you have a few lanes to cross the first car stops and the next car doesn't see you. I feel like these crosswalks give people a false sense of security that they can cross without vigilance at any time. Without these laws you simply need to wait until the coast is clear. That seems much safer to me. Is there a study to support my instincts on this?
It sounds like you are blaming pedestrians for not being "vigilant" enough, when in reality it is the cars that are not stopping and giving way to pedestrians on a crosswalk like they're supposed to.
>these crosswalks give people a false sense of security that they can cross without vigilance at any time
I'm Australian so I'm not sure if a crosswalk is exactly the same, but the whole point of what we call a "pedestrian crossing" is that a pedestrian can cross at any time with as much or as little vigilance as they want.
It is illegal to not give way and it is illegal to drive across the pedestrian crossing if there is a pedestrian already on it.
I very much doubt you'll be able to locate a study showing that jaywalking is safer than crossing at a pedestrian crossing.
Not jaywalking. It used to be that you had to cross at a crosswalk AND wait for traffic to be clear. The crosswalk was the place to cross to make sure people weren't crossing at any place they choose. But now that there are laws that require you to stop at any crosswalk with a pedestrian in it, people are crossing and they expect the cars to stop, but not every driver is in tune with this, especially those from outside the city, and it creates a dangerous situation.
Basically you are saying that because the drivers are not obeying the laws, we should throw our hands up and admit it's impossible and change the laws so they have right of way.
That's a fair position to take, but I would be questioning why it is that the drivers are unaware or unwilling to obey those laws?
>I feel like these crosswalks give people a false sense of security that they can cross without vigilance at any time.
Yes, if the walking-person symbol is on the thing, I expect to be able to walk without dodging these megaton deathtraps who want to be one minute earlier to the job they hate. I especially despise that cars are even allowed to turn into a street while pedestrians are crossing. What's the point of the walking-person symbol light if you're gonna allow cars to go through anyway during it? Dumb.
We have crosswalks without intersections, or without signals, as well as traditional crosswalks at lights with signals and walk signs. I am talking about the ones in the middle of a road with no signals at all. I am not blaming the pedestrians, I am the pedestrian a lot of the time. But blaming half the people for not stopping means that something is wrong. If there are laws that most people do not follow or have trouble following then you need to re-examine the law, no matter who is to blame. I just don’t want my kids to get run over, that is my goal.
Wonder what Europe is doing differently than us. Are we seeing an increase of pedestrians on our streets and roads?
Hopefully assistive technologies help curb some of these trends as they filter down to base models and older vehicles get replaced with newer one which have these features.
As for the current cause, although they contrast with Europe and play it down, I have to think it’s primarily caused by driver distraction (and pedestrian as well but on the defensive side) rather than either rise of SUVs and or “entitlement” as well as perhaps a rise in “pedestrians” (people walking of running of jogging, etc.)
"Wonder what Europe is doing differently than us. Are we having more pedestrians on our streets and roads?"
It's definitely about being used to it. In Munich there were pedestrians and bikers everywhere so you quickly learn to always watch. In California now I see a bike maybe once a week so I often don't look anymore.
At the end of the day, the failure is with how our vehicles in America are tested and rated. Safety ratings for vehicles are only in "their class", meaning for instance that they don't smash a sedan into an SUV; they only smash sedans into other sedans, and SUVs into other SUVs. This presents a major asymmetry, leading buyers to think SUVs are safer, when that safety comes at the expense of other users of the road, including people on foot and bike.
A major step toward reducing fatality rates in a vehicle-person collision is to factor in pedestrian safety when evaluating vehicle safety rates.