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Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

nytimes.com

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Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#191

Post by QuarterReptile »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #102

Why is this a reckless driving question and not a reckless pedestrian question?

At the risk of taking seriously a sarcastic comment (and doing it by responding instead of downvoting): it's a combination of higher value land use and the magnitude of outcomes. Drivers kill people, make noise, pollution, smells, are expensive to accommodate, and take up a lot of space. People may dent cars while they are being killed, do not have loud engines, have negligible emissions, and generally improve places around them by being present and engaging in commerce. People are also much smaller.

Extremely valuable places have lots of people interacting. Low value-per-acre places accommodate cars well. When there is a conflict between the two, the higher value-per-acre use should be expected to win because, by the mechanism that we use to allocate the space (money), the higher value use is, by definition, better.

Also, from a perspective of what was there first (another principle of ownership): unarmored, walking people are the default state of humans. Armored 4-ton 65mph people are a recent change and a very expensive change, at that. So it stands to reason that we prefer the pre-existing state (though not by the US American traffic engineering system.)

There is also an ethical principle deriving from Judaism, and expanded by Christianity, which says that all people have intrinsic value and by extension should not be killed. This intrinsic value is accepted in western culture and is taken to apply to all people, whether they are too disabled to drive a car, too young to drive, too old to drive, or too poor to drive.

I know this is just a small sampling of the answer to your question, but I don't want to get too tedious here.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#192

Post by ortusdux »

jpm_sd wrote: post #83

I live in a dense, walkable Boston suburb that is served by the MBTA commuter rail. But it's also full of "Masshole" drivers and adjacent to a couple of high-traffic major highways. I've observed a sharp increase in impatience and road rage, both on our 25 mph city streets, and on and off Rtes 1 and 93, in the last 2 years. Not to mention ever-more inattentive driving with eyes on phones. It's pretty alarming. I don'…

I have seen many blame reduced police enforcement caused by low staffing and apathy. Does this seem like a factor in your experience?

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#193

Post by Broken_Hippo »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #159
dhbradshaw wrote: post #31

Here's kind of a weird hypothesis worth at least considering: Record pricing for used cars suggests that there's a car shortage. Ironically, less cars and less driving could lead to 1. Faster driving because of clearer roads, and 2. More walking. Combine those and it wouldn't be surprising to get more auto-pedestrian accidents. One test would be to compare changes to car accidents with changes to pedestrian accidents…

2. More people walking who rarely walked before. The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. I see people, often enough, walking in the road with traffic. Experienced walkers tend to know this.

Realistically, this should never happen on a halfway busy city road - and by the time you get to neighborhoods, it shouldn't be an issue because of (hopefully) low speeds. We should have sidewalks and other barriers to keep pedestrians safe: Making sure they have the right of way only increases this. The only time someone really would need to walk on the other side is on country roads, and honestly, there is only so much walking on the other side will do.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#194

Post by rocgf »

avs733 wrote: post #96
rocgf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing sidewalks called financially unsustainable made my day.

Sidewalks are an optional extra on road building so...in his defense...you can't build a sidewalk without a road, which makes it significantly more expensive.

I guess you'd have to be European to understand just how ridiculous this sounds.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#195

Post by iso1631 »

was_a_dev wrote: post #38
samwillis wrote: post #34

Here in the UK they have just changed the Highway Code (the rules that given all road users, including pedestrians) so that pedestrians have ultimate right of way in almost all cases. It’s the opposite of the situation in the US, a pedestrian in the UK can cross the road anywhere and I believe cars have to stop and make way. It’s going to be interesting to see how it effects accident numbers, I’m worry it may actuall…

I agree, it's ok to change the Highway Code but the infrastructure also needs to change to reflect it. A contradiction leads to uncertainity, which leads to accidents

The ruels haven't changed, the guidance has just been updated to better reflect the rules

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#196

Post by giantg2 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #159
dhbradshaw wrote: post #31

Here's kind of a weird hypothesis worth at least considering: Record pricing for used cars suggests that there's a car shortage. Ironically, less cars and less driving could lead to 1. Faster driving because of clearer roads, and 2. More walking. Combine those and it wouldn't be surprising to get more auto-pedestrian accidents. One test would be to compare changes to car accidents with changes to pedestrian accidents…

2. More people walking who rarely walked before. The point being, when possible, you should walk facing into traffic. I see people, often enough, walking in the road with traffic. Experienced walkers tend to know this.

In many places walking on the right side of the road is illegal (if on the actual road and not a sidewalk). But you'll almost never see it enforced.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#197

Post by hervature »

ghaff wrote: post #138
jpm_sd wrote: post #83

I live in a dense, walkable Boston suburb that is served by the MBTA commuter rail. But it's also full of "Masshole" drivers and adjacent to a couple of high-traffic major highways. I've observed a sharp increase in impatience and road rage, both on our 25 mph city streets, and on and off Rtes 1 and 93, in the last 2 years. Not to mention ever-more inattentive driving with eyes on phones. It's pretty alarming. I don'…

I somewhat hesitate to anecdata this in the same general area. But... For a time, I might have been inclined to put it down to people just weren't driving and had "forgotten" how. But I think that's hard to argue for at this point. I've nearly got run off the road on a merge or had a horn blown at me followed by a pass on the shoulder because I was apparently only going at the speed limit multiple times in just the p…

As someone who has driven quite extensively in SF, LA, NYC, and Boston, I don't know why Bostonians are adamant that their traffic and drivers are as bad as these other cities. My #1 frustration with Boston traffic is how "polite" drivers are. Multiple times, I've had the last car in a string of cars stop at a green light to let me turn left which is probably the most infuriating/stupid thing you can do. What I will say is that Boston has a unique set of infrastructure that involves many lights and convoluted intersections (Davis Square - where 7 streets meet) where you are absolutely punished in terms of time and so I think people definitely push it around these intersections. That being said, I biked 2 miles as my commute this entire fall from Somerville to Cambridge and never encountered anything noteworthy.

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#198

Post by ghaff »

efitz wrote: post #21
gameswithgo wrote: post #2

In Austin Texas we have an absurdly well marked crosswalk on the way to the elementary school, to a close approximation nobody has ever stopped to let us cross. Our daughter was nearly killed once, so far. It seems so many people in America are so fat now they don’t imagine people would ever walk, so they drive without regard for pedestrians and active hostility towards cyclists and park in the way of sidewalks, maki…

How exactly did you get to “the cause of reckless driving is fat people who don’t walk everywhere?” Show your work. In most places in America walking is not a practical mode of transportation because of distance; it’s miles from your house to the grocery store, for instance. If you live in a city this might not be obvious to you but half the country lives in the burbs or rural areas. Separately, it would be nice if w…

It's not so much that sidewalks are financially unsustainable--at least if they're built at the same time as the road. But, for example in the semi-rural area where I live, literally no one would use a sidewalk if there were one. There's nowhere to walk other than to a neighbor and you don't need a sidewalk to do that. And it's going to be unusable for a few months a year unless it's maintained because of snow. (And I sure wouldn't want to be on the hook for maintaining/shoveling a sidewalk on my long frontage for something no one used.)

Re: Pedestrian deaths spike in U.S. as reckless driving surges

#199

Post by sethammons »

_dain_ wrote: post #187
sethammons wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I and colleagues used to have to cross a moderately busy street in Orange County, CA. A marked crossing section a block from the train station. I was routinely honked at and vehicles would swerve around. I started carrying a strobe flashlight and would glance it towards fast moving cars. This usually slowed them down but pissed them off more. Not blinding them mind you, just a flash. Sooooo put out that they will hav…

Can you show me this crosswalk on Streetview? I'm trying to get an idea of the kinds of environments people are talking about in this thread (I'm non-American).

Here is the exact intersection. It looks safer than it is (or was, I've since moved far away).

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7878268,-117.8588114,3a,75y,...

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