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Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

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Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#21

Post by paldepind2 »

cjensen wrote: post #10

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles. It's obvious major regulation was neede…

Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing. It looks a bit chaotic but honestly not _that_ unsafe to me as everything is going quite slow. It reminds me a bit of the idea of "shared space" which is a recent concept that is actually claimed to make streets safer.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#22

Post by drunner »

Fricken wrote: post #13
akira2501 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rephrasing the headline for honesty: "Automakers accept the responsibility for the thing they've created and attempt to improve safety outcomes in a patchwork regulatory environment dominated by gridlock and disagreement."

Quite the opposite. Automakers passed the responsibility on to people who don't even drive.

Same with the oil industry and `reduce, reuse, recycle` nonsense. Like I wouldn't need to be concerned with that if your product didn't individually wrap every item I can purchase in a store.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#23

Post by retrac »

Worth pointing out that "jaywalking" is not a universal crime. There are jurisdictions in the USA where it's legal. And it's legal here in Canada. Even the term stands out -- I'm familiar with "jaywalking" but you only use a term for it if it's illegal. We just call it "crossing the street", or "impeding the flow of traffic", depending how you do it. (It's not exactly a free for all: in Ontario there is still a requirement for pedestrians to use pedestrian crossings, and to follow stop lights, where those are installed.)

There are too many cases where it's perfectly safe and reasonable to do that I see any sense in making it illegal. But it is, to be fair, very dangerous in some cases. It's hard to judge how fast a car is moving, sometimes you simply don't see one coming at you. Toronto Police call this a "mid-block crossing", and in the city, they account for a significant % of all pedestrian fatalities, particularly at night, and in busy traffic.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#24

Post by mlazos »

cjensen wrote: post #10

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles. It's obvious major regulation was neede…

Characterizing that as terrifying is a bit hyperbolic. It looks like Europe in the present day. If cars were moving slower it would be much easier to be a pedestrian safely

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#25

Post by macleginn »

jcynix wrote: post #11

If you cross the street "near" a red traffic light, that costs you 5€ in Germany. If you admit that you did it intentionally, the ticket price doubles. Happened to my wife some years ago when walking to a bus stop on the other side of the street. How did the cop know that it was intentional? She remarked that there was no car in sight, neither left nor right, on a straight road in town. Oh, and what's the definition…

As many other aspects of the German ethos, this seems to be dying away. I live near Stuttgart, jaywalking is rampant, and nobody cares; in two years, I haven’t seen a traffic cop anywhere except for accident sites.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#26

Post by tim333 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #2

How quickly we forget history. Horses were also lethal. Look at the number of people killed by horses, either being thrown from them, trampled by them, or run over by carts pulled by horses. Streets were not some utopic garden of pedestrian safety prior to cars. There were no jaywalking rules because society had evolved over thousands of years being rather acceptive of horse-related dangers. When the new device came…

The UK has no jaywalking laws (apart from full motorways) and about 1/3 the pedestrian deaths of the US (https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-s...). There are other ways to do things.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#27

Post by moritzwarhier »

sandworm101 wrote: post #2

How quickly we forget history. Horses were also lethal. Look at the number of people killed by horses, either being thrown from them, trampled by them, or run over by carts pulled by horses. Streets were not some utopic garden of pedestrian safety prior to cars. There were no jaywalking rules because society had evolved over thousands of years being rather acceptive of horse-related dangers. When the new device came…

I immediately thought of this as well (horse sleigh scene in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment comes to mind, I mean, neither of us has experience with horse-first transportation, I assume).

I just arrived at a different conclusion. To compare the number of people killed by automobiles and their infrastructure, compared to the numbers for people killed by horses (I can't give precise numbers for either, I'll admit that) - that comparison seems absurd to me.

In other words, relative to the population in urban areas, I'd be very surprised if horses causes as many deaths as cars+roads.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#28

Post by ilaksh »

paldepind2 wrote: post #21
cjensen wrote: post #10

The Library of Congress has a great film taken from the front of a cable car in pre-fire San Francisco [1]. It's absolutely terrifying to see how unsafe the streets were. It wasn't just cars either: horse-drawn carts dart in and out of traffic just as cars did, pedestrians cross at-will in front of all vehicles, and at one points kids mess about jumping on the back of vehicles. It's obvious major regulation was neede…

Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing. It looks a bit chaotic but honestly not _that_ unsafe to me as everything is going quite slow. It reminds me a bit of the idea of "shared space" which is a recent concept that is actually claimed to make streets safer.

I think it comes down to things like speed. If we accept that the road is a place to be able to quickly move a lot of vehicles, then that just isn't a safe place for pedestrians.

If we go back to lower speeds then maybe it could be manageable in a same way.

But as it is actually used now for 3000 pound vehicles to zoom about in, it makes no sense for pedestrians to be intersecting and sharing the space at all. Just due to the physics of collisions between a person and a vehicle. I don't think slow vehicles is a good solution because we do need to get places.

I think an actual good (but very expensive) solution is for new cities to be designed differently in several ways. One of which is for roads to be only for small autonomous vehicles and entirely separate from pedestrian paths. To make that reasonably practical you need some other core assumptions to be changed. And also a totally new development probably.

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#29

Post by flockonus »

retrac wrote: post #23

Worth pointing out that "jaywalking" is not a universal crime. There are jurisdictions in the USA where it's legal. And it's legal here in Canada. Even the term stands out -- I'm familiar with "jaywalking" but you only use a term for it if it's illegal. We just call it "crossing the street", or "impeding the flow of traffic", depending how you do it. (It's not exactly a free for all: in Ontario there is still a requi…

Definitely not true for Canada as a whole, i know of several people who got jaywalking tickets in BC. Example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jaywalkers-c...

Re: Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)

#30

Post by _aavaa_ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #17
Fricken wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite. Automakers passed the responsibility on to people who don't even drive.

Except for the speeding laws. And the red light/intersection/right-of-way laws. And the drunk driving laws. Those laws placed plenty of the responsibility on drivers.

But they did not make the cars inherently safer. A red light does not stop a driver from driving through a pedestrian crossing when people are there.

Speeding laws do little for the bikers in unsegregated bike lanes, mere inches away from an inattentive driver.

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