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Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
121–130 of 268 posts
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#122Wonder if it may have something to do with longer commute times, which is not discussed in the article, i.e. a trip that used to take n minutes a few years ago may now take double due to congestion, leading to more impatient drivers. At least in my city (Miami) all people talk about is how untenable the commute times have become.
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#123Where I live they will randomly build a bike path for a mile on the side of the road. But then it just ends. There's not a sense of how it could be built to connect people to the places they need to go. It's random and ad-hoc. Then people say "its pointless to build bike / ped infrastructure, nobody uses it!"
This is a huge problem where I live too. The thing is, technically, everyone is equally connected, because people have a legal right of way on all roads using any means of transport (apart from motorways, but these are always redundant links). But practically, most routes are unsafe and just downright unpleasant to use in anything but a motorvehicle.
I don't know what metrics they are using to assess walking or cycling infrastructure, but it seems like it's just raw miles of pavement/tarmac. This is a useless metric. You can have 10 miles of pristine cycle path but if it goes nowhere it's not useful and nobody will use it.
The metrics need to be based on graph completeness. Important places are the nodes. You get to draw an edge if there's a reasonable route that is less than, say, 150% of the crow flies distance (or some more clever formula taking into account gradients etc., ie. it's allowed to be longer if it means not including a 25% gradient). Then your score is simply number of edges divided by number of edges in the complete graph (or 2E/(N^2*N) where E is number of edges and N number of places).
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#124The tendency to compare the US to Europe in the comments here baffles me: Not only are there major differences with regards to roads and road safety between the countries of Europe, but there are also major differences within Europe when it comes to driving style, aggression, risk-taking, etc. If I, as a Dane, go to e.g. southern France, I'll see a completely different style of driving than in Denmark.
In the comments here you'll see people saying that European roads are much better suited for pedestrians. If you ask me that is definitely not the case in e.g. Spain.
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should ask yourself whether smartphones are a US-only phenomenon. From the article: > Other countries haven’t seen this increase in pedestrian deaths: in every other high-income country, rates are flat or declining. Whatever’s causing the problem seems to be limited to the US.
Smartphones + US culture is limited to the US.
That's a deeply silly assertion.
Culture is one of our major and most successful exports. Afghan tribesmen have seen The Simpsons. Osama Bin Laden played Half-Life and showed his kids Pixar films. https://www.history.com/articles/bin-laden-compound-abbottab...
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#126This morning while jogging in the US I came to an intersection. Green lights and walk on in my direction. A car approaching from my left had a red light, the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path. I expected this of course, so avoided being run over. If I wasn't watching for this, it likely would be a different outcome. So why do so many pedestrians ge…
Yes one of the hardest things is to train a toddler for the hostile road conditions when she's biking, walking or scootering to school from the train station. Obviously I'm with her, but it's hard to explain the art of making eye contact to make sure the motorists acknowledge us at a crosswalk or stop sign
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
As compared to the European roads that are half the width of US roads?
Yes, european roads are not as wide, since they make place for proper sidewalks and bike lanes. Another advantage is that narrower roads make drivers drive more carefully and slowly, reducing accidents even further.
Not in my experience. The road widths were set hundreds of years ago and the buildings have not changed. Walking around European and UK towns I find myself much closer to cars than walking around in the US. This is a factor in keeping car speed low, which likely affects how often and severe pedestrian collisions are.
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#128This morning while jogging in the US I came to an intersection. Green lights and walk on in my direction. A car approaching from my left had a red light, the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path. I expected this of course, so avoided being run over. If I wasn't watching for this, it likely would be a different outcome. So why do so many pedestrians ge…
This comment makes it seem like people are built differently in the US than they are in the rest of the world, but that obviously isn't true. The roads (particularly intersections, where crashes tend to happen) are in fact built differently though. Urbanist resources like NotJustBikes and Oh The Urbanity! YouTube channels do a great job of highlighting the differences, and how they force drivers to pay attention thro…
Some amount is likely cultural too.
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#129Because cars there are fucking landships with a radiator so tall it will likely hit any vital organ between the neck and the pelvis.
Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right turns are really dangerous for pedestrians. A lot of localities started banning right-on-red because cars look left only.
The problem is that even if they look back and fourth and know you're there the "go" condition (no incoming cross traffic) is the same for both parties so it's a ready made "two idiots trying to pass each other in the hallway" situation. I think it speaks volumes that the discussion is anchored around whether cars look or not despite the fact that the underlying algorithm will produce conflicts even if they do.
The algorithm (if followed) does not produce collisions. Pedestrians have the priority, and in many countries (inlcuding Poland where I live) cars have to stop even if nobody's on the pedestrian crossing yet - it's enough that pedestrians are approaching the crossing.
This has changed in the last 10 years in Poland, and there have been numerous angry debates. It was introduced anyway, and the safety improved.
It's only a problem if we let drivers get away with making it a problem. The inherent asymmetry in the driver-pedestrian relationship must be taken into account by the law and road design.