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And until states make texting while driving a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties, it's not going to get better. There's no excuse for it. And this superficial, useless article doesn't discuss it at all. Instead, it regurgitates pablum about the same regressive do-nothing "solution" known as "traffic calming." That's just ruining our streets instead of attacking the real problem.
Offtop: Cars are pretty sad topic It is sad how many good safety and driving easiness features modern cars have, yet majority of people do not have access to them due to price It is also crazy how unreliable cars actually are. 20 years old car means some surprise every 3rd or 4th drive
Not so sure about that, petrol engines and cars matured a lot in the last decades. I'm driving a 2004 Ford Focus and it is still going strong, with no "surprises", which, granted, I remember having every drive in 1996 with a 1981 Renault 14.
I would considering changing this old car for environmental impact, in-car entertainment or driving safety measures, but not for the reliability of it.
Every country has its own flavor of bad driving. I live in the Czech republic and people here are very aggressive and inconsiderate drivers. However they are not sloppy or inattentive. The roads here are far too complex and busy to even look at a phone for more than a second or two. By contrast, driving in the us is super duper low stress. Roads are super wide and designed to be ultra comfortable for cars and drivers…
And until states make texting while driving a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties, it's not going to get better. There's no excuse for it. And this superficial, useless article doesn't discuss it at all. Instead, it regurgitates pablum about the same regressive do-nothing "solution" known as "traffic calming." That's just ruining our streets instead of attacking the real problem.
Every country has its own flavor of bad driving. I live in the Czech republic and people here are very aggressive and inconsiderate drivers. However they are not sloppy or inattentive. The roads here are far too complex and busy to even look at a phone for more than a second or two. By contrast, driving in the us is super duper low stress. Roads are super wide and designed to be ultra comfortable for cars and drivers…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How would an increase in SUVs (which is a national trend) cause this result? It's going to depend a lot on local pedestrian habits and on the available infrastructures: as a thought experiment say in State A people are never walking in the street, while in State B they are walking a lot, then the national increase in SUV will have no impact on pedestrian death in State A but will have on State B .
Only if this is true. If the increase at night then it's unlikely to be because of SUVs, unless there's correlating evidence that shows it's states where SUVs are driven at night more. If there were evidence found that is linked to nighttime, e.g. because more people are crossing roads at night than before, or wearing less night-visible clothing than before, then that would be the place to start.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When the pandemic arrived, there was an even greater surge as empty roads gave way to speeding and distracted driving. Wait, so more cars is actually the answer. Fewer cars == more deaths. > The pandemic has waned, but cases of reckless driving — and subsequently the number of Americans killed while walking — has not. Ah crap, maybe everyone has long COVID then?
More cars => fewer pedestrians Sometimes the easiest solutions hide in plain sight.
And until states make texting while driving a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties, it's not going to get better. There's no excuse for it. And this superficial, useless article doesn't discuss it at all. Instead, it regurgitates pablum about the same regressive do-nothing "solution" known as "traffic calming." That's just ruining our streets instead of attacking the real problem.
Traffic calming is just an admission that state and local police are utterly useless to enforce laws against distracted driving and texting. On almost every drive I see people speeding >15 mph over the limit, recklessly weaving in and out of traffic and making dangerous passes to get slightly ahead. The police are doing nothing against this dangerous and illegal behavior and won’t do anything about texting either reg…
Traffic calming measures would be by some entity the cops can’t control, so they hate them too.
Here in Germany, my son has to sit through 14 theory lessons and then pass a theoretical test (with questions out of a pool of 1400 questions). Then he needs 12 mandatory driving lessons (night, highway, country road) and probably 8 more lessons to get him to the rquired level to pass the driving test. This will set me back approx 3000€ ($3000).
IMO the requirements for a drivers license in Germany are a bit too strikt, but what I heard from my brother, who got his drivers license in Minnesota during a high school exchange year, the requirements in the US are really, really low. Maybe we can agree on an international standard somewhere in the middle?
"Pedestrian deaths have been climbing since 2010 because of unsafe infrastructure and the prevalence of SUVs, which tend to be more deadly for pedestrians than smaller cars, according to Martin" The report itself shows there's an increase in pedestrian fatalities in slightly fewer than half of states and the increase comes from deaths at night and not in the daytime. How would an increase in SUVs (which is a national…