Why weren't a series of speed bumps suitable?
Where I live they sometimes put a series of raised "vibrating" white strips before a crossing. In some places it's even only painted lines.
3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
51–60 of 164 posts
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#52Am I the only one who thinks that humans might be pretty good at adjusting speed for risk?
Not to sound cruel, but having everyone slow down might not be worth the cost of all these precautions.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#53There is an analogy here to the slippery-slope of attention-getting ads on the Internet. Once upon a time an ad was just a static (not even animated) banner of a certain size and shape. 468x60 was one of the earliest, IIRC. Advertisers invented new formats ("skyscrapers", "xl-leaderboards", "300x250", and so on), and also they got animated, and then they started expanding outside their areas, and so on; each new ad t…
> if every crosswalk in the world is replaced with this 3D version, we'll see a temporary boost in safety, but in the long run it may return to normal and in my opinion, our world will be uglier.
Although the illusionary crosswalks shown in the article aren’t really ugly, and even advertisements, like the cute mascots and dazzling neons of Tokyo, can have a certain beauty to them, I agree that most garish attention-seeking traffic guides, even just roads themselves [1], generally make the world uglier.
The solution may be to take humans out of driving altogether and just use signs and aids etc. that can only be seen by self-driving autoautomobiles.
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[1] For a little creative exercise, try to imagine an advanced city without any roads at all. I don‘t mean just flying or even teleporting anywhere, but without the need to go anywhere (in a hurry): Robots do all the work that humans cannot do from their homes. 3D printing/molecular fabrication lets you manufacture whatever you need from home, including food. “Beds” are now sleep pods that perform medical repairs. For emergencies you call self-flying taxis. Why even have roads by then? Factories and their mines would still need to be connected cheaply, so they can keep using the asphalt, but a sufficiently advanced city would/should eliminate the need of roads for human driving.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new LED car headlights (especially seen on luxury cars) are universally awful: distracting, blinding, and wreck your eyes’ adaptation. When they show up on a tall vehicle like an SUV it’s even worse. Headlight brightness is somewhat of a balance, between blinding oncoming traffic and not being able to see far enough ahead. Dark adaptation has its limits. (AFAIK it's actually HID lights which make up most of the r…
Having bright blue headlamps makes it harder to see into the shadows even for the car’s driver, because it causes the eyes to be less dark-adapted. Older halogen lamps work better in practice. The newer LED lamps only sound better in marketing materials, and based on junk metrics created by the industry itself.
Yeah man, LEDs are just a scam created by the government. Candlesticks made from all natural paraffin wax are what you want!
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The speed limit is 18mph. No neck breaking can happen at that speed.
That's faster than you are moving when you are executed by hanging (about 17 mph for long drop, 13 mph for standard drop), so I would not dismiss the possibility out of hand.
Ah... but it's your whole body weight on your neck at that speed that breaks it. Unless you've managed to seriously misplace your seatbelt, I don't think you can achieve the same result.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The speed limit is 18mph. No neck breaking can happen at that speed.
That's faster than you are moving when you are executed by hanging (about 17 mph for long drop, 13 mph for standard drop), so I would not dismiss the possibility out of hand.
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Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#57In Santa Clara, California, there are several crosswalks at intersections not controlled by a traffic light. There is an ongoing problem with cars not properly yielding to crossing pedestrians (I mean, like, ever). I almost got killed in one twice in one week. As a driver, I get rude treatment (and some near-collisions) when I stop for pedestrians. A pedestrian was killed in the one near Halford a couple of months ago.
The city solution: enforcement? Ha! No, they put in a new fancy overhead signal of a style completely unique (and, to my reading, non-compliant with the actual vehicle code) at one of these crosswalks (just west of Kiely).
The problem: when a crosser presses the call button, a pair of overhead red lights flash for a fixed cycle of time. But (in CA, anyway), a flashing red light means "stop, and proceed when safe" by law, but the signage simply says "Stop on Red".
So, people are confused as to how long to stay (the full cycle? or only as long as it occupied? or only as long as the near half is occupied? or, ?)... and almost half continue to blow through the intersection regardless.
Ambiguity in such contexts is inherently unsafe.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
This illustrates that if drivers feel less safe then they drive more safely and pay attention more. It is one of motivations for removing all signage so drivers feel less safe permamently. http://thecityfix.com/blog/naked-streets-without-traffic-lig... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
One only has to look at huge crowded Asian cities, where signage is present but effectively ignored, to see that removing signage doesn't really help. The accident rates are just as high if not more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
It can't just be poor, it must be deliberately misleading signage, "smart", dynamically adaptive, evolving. And more than just signs: a large system of automated aerial observation drones, satellites, the whole sky. All networked together. The branding is simple though, just call it NetSky, or SkyNet.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A year or two after a new, more intrusive format became ubiquitous, its performance would fall back to the old format's When Sweden changed driving side, that is exactly what happened. "The relatively smooth changeover saw a reduction in the number of accidents. On the day of the change, only 157 minor accidents were reported, of which only 32 involved personal injuries, with only a handful serious. On the Monday f…
This illustrates that if drivers feel less safe then they drive more safely and pay attention more. It is one of motivations for removing all signage so drivers feel less safe permamently. http://thecityfix.com/blog/naked-streets-without-traffic-lig... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
This actually holds for roads. Large wide roads are driven at higher speeds and more fatal for pedestrians. The technique now is to make the road narrow enough to cause traffic to slow down.
Re: 3D crosswalk in Iceland helps slow down speeding motorists
#60There is an analogy here to the slippery-slope of attention-getting ads on the Internet. Once upon a time an ad was just a static (not even animated) banner of a certain size and shape. 468x60 was one of the earliest, IIRC. Advertisers invented new formats ("skyscrapers", "xl-leaderboards", "300x250", and so on), and also they got animated, and then they started expanding outside their areas, and so on; each new ad t…
> if every crosswalk in the world is replaced with this 3D version, we'll see a temporary boost in safety, but in the long run it may return to normal and in my opinion, our world will be uglier. Although the illusionary crosswalks shown in the article aren’t really ugly , and even advertisements, like the cute mascots and dazzling neons of Tokyo, can have a certain beauty to them, I agree that most garish attention-…
> Why even have roads by then?
Emergency response vehicles? I imagine a flying fire engine could be quite difficult to use to fight a skyscraper fire.
Also you need wide spaces between buildings to have light at ground level.