Too many articles with a kid getting hurt or dying. As a new parent these are so much harder to read now: I feel like I can just start to understand the pain the parents went thru. In a blink your world is turned upside down and your joy is gone.
If you're in a state that isn't regressive, teach your kids to jaywalk. It changes your view from focusing on the traffic signals to what the cars are actually doing. I don't think I go a single day without seeing a car flagrantly run a red light. There are no more rules and kids need to understand that.
Seconded. On bicycle, I learned the Idaho stop techniques - treating stop signs as yield signs, and treating red lights as stop signs.
The most important thing I got out of this experience is that traffic signs and lights are suggestions. A red light usually means stop, but sometimes it is safe to go. A green light usually means go, but sometimes I must stop to avoid getting T-boned or cut off.
The only absolute rules of traffic are observation and physics. I predict other road users' behaviors and avert dangers, regardless of what the traffic signs/signals say or even if they're absent. For example, I slow down or stop near blind corners, even if there is no stop sign - and there have been times when vehicles popped out. I always look left and right even when I have the right of way, even when crossing a green light, because time and time again this trust has been broken.
At my university, the drivers are very used to stopping to let students cross, but a lot of people don't seem to look around or even lift their eyes from their phones. If I tried doing that, I'd be really nervous that I would be the one where a driver unfortunately doesn't stop in time. I really don't get those people.
I don't think GP is suggesting that you step out in front of cars and hope for the best, but rather that you cross in places other than those which have been deemed for crossing. In theory, walking a half mile to a crosswalk, waiting 30 seconds, crossing when okayed by the light, and walking a half mile back should be "safer". But just walking across the road when safe requires an understanding of how traffic works and how to judge safety.
It might be Baader-Meinhoff phenomonon, but In the past two days I've seen multiple pickup trucks hopping the curb in places that I find shocking, so I'm becoming more inclined toward taking safety into ones own hands. The system clearly isn't working.
Just keep in mind that the world, including and especially car and pedestrian safety are much better now than in the past. Still hurts to read about these accidents when they happen though!
I agree that there are too many articles about relatively few incidents, but that's what people want to read about apparently, so that's what the news people give us.
Occupant safety improved, but pedestrian safety peaked in 2009 and is now back to the level of 1982, with death numbers continuing to climb.
15 years ago most cars had good visibility, and pedestrians getting hit rolled over the vehicle's hood. Now people prefer vehicles with much worse visibility and hoods that hit pedestrians like a freight train instead of like a scoop.
Pedestrian safety has gotten significantly worse in the past few years in the USA as people keep buying larger vehicles. The USA is much less safe for pedestrians than most developed countries.
There should be much stricter regulations on drivers ability to see to the front and sides of their vehicles. I'm not quite sure what other regulations would force better engineering for pedestrian/cyclist safety. Policymakers should put more effort into discouraging people from buying vehicles that are significantly larger than they really need, and making large vehicles safe for everyone on the road, even at the expense of possibly making them more expensive, less convenient, less cool looking, or slower. After-market modifications which compromise pedestrian safety should be strictly banned from city streets.
Personally I think manufacturers should be partly liable for damage caused by their vehicles.
The natural way would be to price this into insurance premiums, using a high value for human life. It would require that the premium depend on the vehicle model and the expected damage it will do. An SUV model with bad visibility that crushes toddlers, would have a high premium. E($100M * number of crushed toddlers).
Some people need vehicles with significant size or hauling capacity: delivery trucks/vans, long-haul trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, buses, tow trucks, vehicles used by tradespeople and farmers, etc. At least some of these vehicles are inevitably going to be on streets with shops and residences. But the vehicles needed could be re-engineered to be at least several times safer for pedestrians/cyclists if it were mandated, and many of the large vehicles on the road could be made smaller and lighter without compromising their drivers' needs.
Vans have good visibility as well as more cargo capacity than the shiny $100K pickup trucks mostly driven in cities by non-tradespeople. The engine bays on modern pickups are unnecessarily large. It boggles the mind that there is no regulatory pressure in the US to make pickup trucks safer for pedestrians.
We're inevitably going to have delivery trucks, buses, fire engines, some number of pickup trucks (or comparable), etc. on city streets, so under the circumstances we should try to make them as safe as possible (whether by forcing them to be lower to the ground and have more windows in front, requiring them to add cameras, limiting their weight, giving them a slower speed limit, limiting where they can park, ...). The owners of such vehicles should also be required to pay for the external costs their choices impose on everyone else.
Instead we effectively subsidize these vehicles by giving them special tax breaks.
