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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

#341

Post by xur17 »

rimunroe wrote: post #255
winternett wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Washington DC, ridesharing has taken over. I think if someone truly correlated this, they'd find that having a bunch of untrained and self regulated rideshare drivers contributes greatly to these troubling statistics. Cities are also flooding roads with inexperienced bike and scooter riders on faulty equipment in favor of the revenue it provides, cities also have not updated traffic light infrastructure since the…

I'm surprised you wouldn't always be required to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Vehicles going fast speeding in dense areas are a huge driver of pedestrian fatalities so reducing speed limits sounds great to me. I've heard that lowering the speed limit from 35 to 25 mph can actually increase average throughput in cities by calming traffic. Here in Massachusetts we're trying to make it legal to use automatic sp…

> Bicycle traffic does far less to wear down roads and other infrastructure than vehicle traffic. They simply aren't comparable. They also have a number of ancillary benefits for the city, like increasing income from local businesses (even accounting for decreased curbside parking!).

This [0] is useful context. Bikes are rounding errors compared to everything else.

[0] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

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

#342

Post by abduhl »

nayuki wrote: post #316
kneebonian wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with laws passed that allow drivers to kill pedestrians if they feel threatened by them. Can you cite a source on this I've never heard anything like this.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/legislation-protects-drive... , https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/oklahoma-law-drivers-prote...

It appears that none of the laws in your first article were ever passed?

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

#343

Post by ragebol »

notatoad wrote: post #329
ragebol wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if that window is looking straight into your bedroom or bathroom? I'd want to at least voice some concern over that. It's then up to officials to ignore that complaint or not. Having no way to express such concerns is faster of course, but there's downsides too

Move out of the city, or put a blind over your window Being able to see other people's windows from your windows is an inescapable consequence of living in a city. If that's not acceptable to you, then you buy an acreage in the woods somewhere. It's not a reasonable thing to be protesting a development approval over.

Of course, in this case. It's up to the official to dismiss such constraints if unreasonable.

But we got such laws and processes for a reason.

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

#344

Post by faefox »

Americans are slaves to cars. We treat the ability to drive a monster truck to the grocery store as a sacred right and anyone who would dare impede our progress for a handful of seconds (pedestrians, yes, but ESPECIALLY those rotten tree-hugging cyclists) are to be scorned and intimidated at best, summarily executed at worst. We've hollowed out our cities for parking lots and leveled neighborhoods and green spaces to make room for ever-expanding freeways, but god forbid we invest in public transportation - the domain of socialists and poor people. And so many of us have effectively brainwashed ourselves into believing that all of this is right and good and not, in fact, utterly insane.

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

#345

Post by VohuMana »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #266
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…

The reason why drivers are increasingly angry where I live is because there is no enforcement of traffic laws at all. Red lights are run nonstop, drivers use bicycle lanes as travel lanes, etc. I watched someone just reverse down a road opposite the direction of travel yesterday. Like it was no big deal.

This has been my experience, in my area people have even found ways around the newly installed red light cameras, they just remove their license plate. Usually you would get hit with a pretty big ticket for that but the police are not enforcing any sort of traffic laws and relying on cameras to do the enforcing.

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

#346

Post by malfist »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #308
CaptainMarvel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget there have been massive loopholes in vehicle emission regulations which favour larger SUVs and pick-up trucks. If regulations actually focused on MPG, these vehicles would not be the size and weight that they are. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/cafe-lo... Right target. Bad implementation. Going forwards, with widespread electric vehicles, focusing directly on size and weight makes a…

Hang on! I was there in 2008 during carpocalypse. I’ve typed this before in detail, but this is NOT A LOOPHOLE! In 2008 Obama came in and made changes to CAFE and CARB with Californias very willing help. The news headline you might have seen, and just saw again this year with Biden Admin pushing it was “All vehicles to be XX MPG by 20YY” . To which people who know absolutely nothing about vehicles clap for. People wh…

That's right, thanks obama for big trucks.

Seriously though, this law wasn't passed in 2008. It was passed in 2012, after democrats lost control of the house. This "gift" as you call it, was an appeasement to republicans to get them to vote increase MPG in general.

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

#347

Post by inferiorhuman »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #308
CaptainMarvel wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget there have been massive loopholes in vehicle emission regulations which favour larger SUVs and pick-up trucks. If regulations actually focused on MPG, these vehicles would not be the size and weight that they are. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/cafe-lo... Right target. Bad implementation. Going forwards, with widespread electric vehicles, focusing directly on size and weight makes a…

Hang on! I was there in 2008 during carpocalypse. I’ve typed this before in detail, but this is NOT A LOOPHOLE! In 2008 Obama came in and made changes to CAFE and CARB with Californias very willing help. The news headline you might have seen, and just saw again this year with Biden Admin pushing it was “All vehicles to be XX MPG by 20YY” . To which people who know absolutely nothing about vehicles clap for. People wh…

  I’ve typed this before in detail, but this is NOT A LOOPHOLE!
Sure it is. Going back to whenever, heavier vehicles classed as light trucks (or worse) have been subject to less stringent emissions and safety requirements. That's generally what folks are referring to when they mention regulations favoring trucks.

  Look at vehicle bodies from 2008 on. Larger every single revision.
That's been generally true since the fuel crisis subsided in the 70s.

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

#348

Post by giraffe_lady »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #235
westpfelia wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have an answer for why. Just it has. I live in a major city in the midwest and its wild how often I see people drive with zero regard for anyone else. Running red lights and almost hitting someone, cutting people off, swerving in traffic erratically to be faster. Its honestly scary some days.

I can't believe we are blaming this ENTIRELY on drivers... with people in the comments even claiming that the quality of drivers has gone done because work from home has put more poor people on the road. Just look at the pedestrians you pass on your next drive. Count how many of them are looking at their phone while walking. I just did this and it was 4/10. I think Pedestrian behavior and awareness *might be a little…

We're blaming drivers because it's a core responsibility of driving to not injure or kill people with your vehicle.

There's no corresponding responsibility inherent in walking. In fact many people who walk also have other statuses or impairments that prevent them from fully perceiving the world they are walking through, such as blindness or being a child.

It is the driver's obligation to ensure the safety of the people around which they choose to operate their vehicle, regardless of their awareness or behavior.

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

#349

Post by tm-guimaraes »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #270
LarryDarrell wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been regulating the wrong things when it comes to vehicles. Instead of being obsessed with MPG, we should have been obsessed with weight and size. There's no reason for a sedan to be heavier than 3000 lbs. There's no reason 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150. Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo 240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it need…

From what I understand if you outlaw anything heavier than 3000 lbs you've basically banned most EVs other than the tiny ones resembling a city car.

which should be fine, because heavy EVs aren't exactly more environmentally friendly, they just make very different trade offs. Yet, they are more deadly, destroy roads faster, and devalue quicker (half its value come from the battery).

Small City EVs are great though, better for environment, better for not killing more pedestrians, better for urban planning, and cheaper!

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

#350

Post by crisnoble »

themodelplumber wrote: post #173
ahoy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop signs basically dont work anywhere. If you want people to drive slowly, you have to build streets that make them do so. If anyone is interested in this stuff, the youtube channel NotJustBikes talks a lot about this and related topics. Here's a short video on how "traffic calming" infrastructure gets drivers to slow down, and we all know that stop signs just dont. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGOBOw9s-QM

> we all know that stop signs just dont Are there some numbers on this? Even if your own? I mean, _some_ people don't stop, sure that's valid on its face. But they "just don't work anywhere", is that what, half of drivers refusing to stop at a four way stop? One in four? I get that it's a fraught topic, but still...

If you were to bike around my city, you will notice that between zero and one percent of vehicles will come to a full stop at any stop signs or while doing right turns on red lights. For pedestrian safety, I think rolling right on red lights is worse because the cars will often only be looking left, and never check to their right for someone in the crosswalk or a cyclist approaching on their right.
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