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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

#541

Post by fargle »

kpennell wrote: post #332
fargle wrote: post #254

We've definitely seen a lot more pedestrian deaths in our area in the last couple years. But it's not the prevalence or size of the cars, SUVs, trucks. What's happening here is that there's an explosion of homeless living and walking in and around the very fast two-lane roads and one highway in particular. They are drugged out of their mind and oblivious. Just about every couple weeks there's a fatality where someone…

Yep, it must be the massive increase in jaywalking causing this.

in our area there has been a massive increase in jaywalking. Not jaywalking-per-se like just crossing out of the crosswalk.

Like, passed out lying in the road, sitting in the road, stumbling around on-and-off the sideway or shoulder dazed and oblivious, staring at the sky mumbling, wading into traffic against the lights without any care. bicycling in the traffic lanes going across or the wrong way or across flipping off and daring people to hit them. They are either completely oblivious or don't give a f@ck.

There's also been a massive increase in people driving like utter maniacs. Those would be the meth-heads that have a car.

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

#542

Post by downrightmike »

glimshe wrote: post #114
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 hig…

>I'm willing to pay for these roads and the electricity/gas to take me where I want to go. Except you aren't, nearly all infrastructure that your using will need to be bailed out and paid for by the Federal Government because otherwise your taxes would need to at least double.

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

#543

Post by evandale »

marcosdumay wrote: post #259
evandale wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few more buses and trains are not going to cut it. So add more buses and trains. > You need to outcompete the convenience of a personal car. More buses and trains will make this happen. More bike lanes will make this happen. With the proper infrastructure people can go longer distances without a car. All these things can be done incrementally and you're trying to claim they can't be. > The bus or train has to run…

> your groceries are fine being out in the heat for 20 minutes It's not 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes more than the normal trip duration. That 2 hours rule seems to be health related. But a lot of food gets bad much before it becomes unsafe to eat. Anyway, city traffic is not caused by people getting to a grocery store. That's all a red herring.

> That 2 hours rule seems to be health related. But a lot of food gets bad much before it becomes unsafe to eat.

Name one that does that in a 6 hour time period.

> It's not 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes more than the normal trip duration.

Tomato tomato. It's a negligible time period. Food out for 3 hours and 20 minutes is not going to be worse off than food out for 3 hours.

> Anyway, city traffic is not caused by people getting to a grocery store. That's all a red herring.

City traffic is caused by people driving cars. People drive cars to grocery stores.

City traffic isn't caused by bike lanes, buses, or trains either. That's all a red herring.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...

[0]> But fluid and traffic are not the same thing, as shown by 60 years of governments trying and failing to road-build their way out of congestion. The idea of induced demand – more road space brings more cars – has been known for decades, and it also works in reverse. This is especially so with bike lanes, which are such an efficient use of the same space that they can often mean the same amount of space carrying more people overall.

[1]> Yes, traffic jams have worsened in some cities where bike lanes have been built, but studies show this is largely down to other factors, for example the growth in the number of Uber-type private hire vehicles and Amazon delivery vans.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de...

[1] https://content.tfl.gov.uk/understanding-and-managing-conges...

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

#544

Post by Symbiote »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #377
tm-guimaraes wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not only that, but the height of the vehicle front also matters A LOT. A SUV is perfect for killing pedestrians, it has the perfect triple combo: * Weight * raised front to perfectly shatter a chest * low visibility for the perfect "i didn't saw him" excuse.

The couple drivers I'd have to avoid as a pedestrian explained to me that they were not looking in the direction of travel. So I can't see what height or visibility would matter.

It's in the comment you're replying to

> raised front to perfectly shatter a chest

An SUV, pickup truck etc will hit an adult in the chest, and a child in the head, flinging them into the ground. That's often fatal.

A sedan, station wagon, sports car etc will hit the person in the legs, scooping/rolling them over/around the car. This is less often fatal.

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

#545

Post by Symbiote »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #276
apexalpha wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 needing a tune up. Doesn't this work both ways? If you focus on MPG then lighter, smaller variants of the same model will win out over bigger, heavier ones.

What does weight matter on a road trip? Unless you are exclusively driving at 30 mph uphill I don't see it mattering much. Wind resistance is the dominant force. This is the same reason why most railroads put limitations on the maximum grade they have to climb. They are mainly working against wind resistance, not gravity.

Railways have very low gradients due to the limits of friction of steel wheels on steel rails.

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

#546

Post by roflyear »

fargle wrote: post #482
roflyear wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are making claims you have to back them up somewhat.

doesn't that go for the "experts" (especially Martin) in this article, too? while unsatisfying, the evidence that i put out is from first-hand experience and is at least better than the hand-waving correlation/causation. especially when it's easy to point to at least one obvious factor that isn't mentioned. I found this which does goes into it partially: http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/media...

Well, sort of. If a professor of finance writes an article about how options work I'll trust it, but if he starts saying "historically options were used to xyz abc political thing whatever" then sure he should back up his argument.

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

#547

Post by Symbiote »

oezi wrote: post #499
saiya-jin wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the best design, you can still go full speed through it. Much better ones actually force you to slow down, ie sub 30kmh otherwise your suspension, tires etc will get hammered a bit (or more). There are numerous ways how to do it, ie central island is wide, island's walls are high and steep, you can have speed bumps before it etc. Its has been done elsewhere and it works.

The European solution is the right-before-left rule which means you always have to yield to cars coming from your right. In residential areas you never would have any signs because of this rule. You can speed through it if visibility is good but it is very hard to argue you weren't at fault in case of a crash.

There's no single European solution. Only some countries have the right-before-left rule.

Britain can shrink the roundabout to just paint, or sometimes paint and a slight hump: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4722603,-0.0655446,3a,75y,32...

Denmark prefers tight corners and narrower roads. Just one parked car and you have to slow: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754101,12.4699621,3a,75y,28...

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

#548

Post by barbariangrunge »

pastage wrote: post #405
barbariangrunge wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a small town with... not enough sidewalks. I try to walk my dog, but half the streets where I live, I have to walk on the street or else on people's lawns. I definitely walk a lot less because of it Not really a systemic issue in this case, just a pet peeve

If anything designing a neighborhood with no sidewalks must be a systemic issue?

It's just one town. Doesn't necessarily apply to the other towns or cities nearby

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

#549

Post by Symbiote »

sokoloff wrote: post #124
hermannj314 wrote: post #46

In many states you are required to stop if a pedestrian is crossing the street. What has happened a lot is I will stop to let a pedestrian cross the street at a legal cross walk and the person behind me will assume I am an idiot, honk, and speed around me. My intuition is this is the cause of a significant amount of pedestrian deaths: impatient drivers that assume every stopped car is just an obstacle to zip around.…

The problem with making this jailable (which I do not support in the absence of a collision) is that you stopping to let a pedestrian legally cross is difficult to distinguish from you stopping in a travel lane or bike lane to pick up an Uber fare or stopping to double park near someone waiting for their own Uber. The latter two cases are actually obstacles created by anti-social behavior and are probably more common…

It's very easy to distinguish. People indicating to the right and slowing down are probably picking up or dropping off a pedestrian. If they aren't indicating, you must assume there's a hazard in front of them, slow down, and proceed with caution.

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

#550

Post by 1Y3 »

some_random wrote: post #119

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.

In a functioning built environment more walking should result in exactly 0 more pedestrian deaths, but alas it's the people who are to blame for killing each other.
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