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Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

nytimes.com

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Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#241

Post by ghaff »

mistersquid wrote: post #235
chiefalchemist wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. More people walking who rarely walked before. 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.

> The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. 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…

Governments disagree. e.g. https://trafficsafety.ny.gov/tips-pedestrian-safety

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#242

Post by avianlyric »

iso1631 wrote: post #204
avianlyric wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pedestr…

> 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. 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…

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.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#243

Post by thaway2839 »

nverno wrote: post #44

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 th…

The uptick is real.

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.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#244

Post by chiefalchemist »

mistersquid wrote: post #235
chiefalchemist wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. More people walking who rarely walked before. 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.

> The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. 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…

Given the number off people who text while driving, I'd say you're far more likely to get hit from behind than you woukd while walking into traffic.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#245

Post by beerandt »

vinay427 wrote: post #155
samwillis wrote: post #34

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 actuall…

> It’s the opposite of the situation in the US 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 cros…

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.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#246

Post by thaway2839 »

Ottolay wrote: post #46
dhbradshaw wrote: post #31

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…

It's a known hypothesis. Additionally when there is less traffic, drivers feel safer and are more likely to tune out by checking their phones, etc. The book,Confessions of a Recovering Engineer(1), talks about this. (1) https://www.confessions.engineer

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.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#247

Post by thaway2839 »

bitexploder wrote: post #180
ruddct wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please no speed cameras though. I would like to not escalate surveillance in society.

Public space in NYC is covered by actual real video cameras. Speed cameras are not gonna affect surveillance.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#248

Post by thaway2839 »

gilbetron wrote: post #49
samwillis wrote: post #34

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 actuall…

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. I…

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.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#249

Post by giantg2 »

ortusdux wrote: post #192
jpm_sd wrote: post #83

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'…

I have seen many blame reduced police enforcement caused by low staffing and apathy. Does this seem like a factor in your experience?

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).

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#250

Post by ghaff »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
gbtw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transport cost are too high forcing people to use alternatives like walking.

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.

And for that matter, people texting while they're walking across the street with earphones in.

I honestly don't even feel comfortable wearing earphones when I'm walking in the woods much less on a city street.

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