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U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

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Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#111

Post by jeffbee »

ethanbond wrote: post #34
WillPostForFood wrote: post #13

Article ignores it, but looking at the source data you can see pedestrian deaths were flat, then a large spike in 2020 during Covid, and now we are at a new higher plateau. Cause is not a change in roads, or cars, or more SUVs. Covid/lockdowns changed the way people drive. Less civility, less police enforcement, more chaos. Driving is noticeably worse and more stressful than pre-Covid.

Why would COVID/lockdowns have “changed the way people drive?” Any proposed mechanism? Seems more likely you had a lot of shifting around of people’s driving (e.g. city dwellers moving to suburbs)

It has changed the population of drivers on the road. Wealthy, highly educated professionals are driving less because they work at home more. "Essential workers" are driving as much or more. They are biased toward poorer and less educated people, who are also as a population worse drivers with worse vehicles compared to the population staying at home. These shifts in driver population are more than enough to account for the change.

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#112

Post by tristor »

Just one more evidence point for why crossovers, SUVs, and trucks are stupid passenger vehicles. There are way too many of these behemoths on our roadways, many lifted, making it worse for pedestrians, anyone driving a normal decent car, and the environment.

We have an arms race of stupidity with everyone trying to get a bigger vehicle than everybody else so they can drive more aggressively, see past the other stupidly large boxes, and feed their false egotistical ideas about safety in size.

When will we get regulations that get us back to actual cars on the road instead of a sea of “bimbo boxes” as predicted in Snow Crash?

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#113

Post by mbauman »

kibwen wrote: post #50
rcme wrote: post #37

A large issue in the US is that local communities have very little control over many of the roads in their communities. In addition to locally controlled roads, there are county roads, state roads, and interstates. As a result, even if a community wants to make their road safer, they have no power to do so. There is a county road in my town. The crosswalks make no sense and the road needs to be narrowed to force traf…

> As a result, even if a community wants to make their road safer, they have no power to do so. Visions of black-clad infrastructure guerillas working at night to install speed bumps on residential roads.

E.g., The People's CDOT (Chicago Dept of Transportation): https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/the-peoples-cdot-road-p...

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#114

Post by glimshe »

luxurytent wrote: post #11

I guess pickup trucks fall under the category of SUVs? It's wild how we've lost access to our streets and neighbourhoods for the convenience of mostly suburban vehicle users. Actually not wild, but disgraceful. The majority of roads are too wide and with little options for alternative modes of transport, drivers are growingly frustrated and angry on the road. We continue to make the mistake of thinking the solution i…

My suburb does as much as it can to make itself walkable. There are crossings and sidewalks everywhere, but it's still a low density suburb so it doesn't make much sense to walk almost anywhere (my kid does walk to school as it happens to be close, but that's it). So while they are trying to address this problem, very few people actually walk.

But all of this said, I want low density. Having lived many years in a high density ant colony (aka "walkable city"), I want nothing to do with that. Keep your high rises to yourself. I think that high density living is inhuman. I respect your opinion, but we don't think alike. And I promise to not mess with your lifestyle if you don't mess with mine, we can all live together many miles apart.

I want the convenience of a drivable suburb with wide roads where everything I care about is just a 5-10min drive away and I'm willing to pay for these roads and the electricity/gas to take me where I want to go. I exercise every morning by walking around for 45 min in my cookie cutter neighborhood; the air is pure and it's a joy to walk around trees, ducks and birds instead of buses, cabs, people sneezing etc.

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#115

Post by ahoy »

johnea wrote: post #83
luxurytent wrote: post #11

I guess pickup trucks fall under the category of SUVs? It's wild how we've lost access to our streets and neighbourhoods for the convenience of mostly suburban vehicle users. Actually not wild, but disgraceful. The majority of roads are too wide and with little options for alternative modes of transport, drivers are growingly frustrated and angry on the road. We continue to make the mistake of thinking the solution i…

In this analysis, pickup trucks and SUVs are identical, in that they have high vertical grills that obstruct the driver's view of the area immediately in front of the vehicle. This vehicle configuration is the major cause of the increase in pedistrian accidents. However I was surprised the article didn't mention pedestrian behavior at all, which is clearly increasing the risk of pedistrian accidents in recent years.…

I don't think analyzing this issue from the perspective of individual interactions is useful. Even in safe, walkable cities, some pedestrians will be reckless. Even in Phoenix AZ, some drivers will be courteous toward walkers.

All that disappears in the aggregate though, and we're left with the fact that the built environment is the main factor dictating how we interact on our streets. We build wide roads and build huge dangerous vehicles to go very fast on them. That's the issue.

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#116

Post by jeffbee »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #38
WillPostForFood wrote: post #13

Article ignores it, but looking at the source data you can see pedestrian deaths were flat, then a large spike in 2020 during Covid, and now we are at a new higher plateau. Cause is not a change in roads, or cars, or more SUVs. Covid/lockdowns changed the way people drive. Less civility, less police enforcement, more chaos. Driving is noticeably worse and more stressful than pre-Covid.

I promise you that this is not a result of "less police enforcement".

Why? In San Francisco the number of traffic citations issued has fallen to essentially zero. The cops are on strike and no longer perceive any marginal benefit from doing their jobs. They get paid either way.

https://transpomaps.org/san-francisco/ca/sfpd-traffic-enforc...

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#117

Post by AlexandrB »

carimura wrote: post #60
jdalgetty wrote: post #33

I live in a subdivision full of young families with kids. I'm also a runner, an avid dog walker and someone who walks his kids to and from school every day. As someone out on foot on a daily basis I am constantly blown away by the amount of people speeding on residential streets and not stopping at stop signs. I don't get it! These are clearly people who live in these neighbourhoods yet they don't care enough about t…

same re: runner+kids. It's insane. I watch people blatantly blow through red lights on a daily basis. Someone once grabbed my mother-in-law and pulled her back because she walked when the signal said walk and she would have been hit. Until now I didn't really have any data, just my eyes, and my brain, and I knew things weren't trending well. Sad.

There's also a social media element. There are many accounts who post close calls along with questions like "who was in the wrong?"

The answers you see are sometimes jaw-dropping[1] and I suspect there's an element of "the blind leading the blind" as people assume some of this is correct.

[1] For example someone posted a close call where a truck turning left nearly hit a pedestrian crossing in the crosswalk and the top comments claimed that it was the pedestrian's fault because the red hand was flashing and she should not be in the crosswalk.

Edit: There are also sooo many incidents of psychotic road rage posted on social media that it makes you lose faith in humanity. But it's hard to tell if this is an uptick in incidents or an uptick in visibility.

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#118

Post by brightstep »

wussboy wrote: post #101
apsec112 wrote: post #23

I'm not even slightly surprised by this, sadly. Cops need to start ticketing people who drive like maniacs. I drive in DC, and every week I almost get hit by some loon going 30+ over the limit who doesn't care that I'm in the lane they're merging into. I've never seen anyone get ticketed. The roads have become something out of Mad Max , just pure developing-world anarchy.

Enforcement is not the solution because it requires constant vigilance. Road design is because you can build the road in a way that brings about the speed/safety envelope you desire, and then it always works correctly whether anyone is monitoring it or not.

It's always amazing to me how on this engineering-heavy forum, so many users fail to recognize the benefit some simple engineering can deliver.

Re: U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high

#119

Post by some_random »

Everyone seems to really want to blame cars being too big or whatever, but since cops stopped enforcing traffic violations in many places over covid some drivers have gone absolutely crazy. I'm the last person to ask for _more_ policing but something has to be done here. I also suspect that more and more people are walking in general, although I don't have any evidence for that.
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