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Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

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Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#361

Post by danenania »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #337
simiones wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage in California seems to be $16 an hour. I doubt this intersection took 37 500 man-hours to finish, so I don't think the cost is explained by wages. Also, $200K would still seem like a gigantic amount of money for adding stop lights to a single intersection.

You probably need an engineer. A couple. They might have to run traffic studies beforehand to estimate the design requirements and light timing. They might have to consider other network nodes beyond this in their modeling. They might have to also run studies afterward to retime the lights to meet realized demand. I’m surprised its not a $6m project honestly.

There's a proposal to redo a playground in San Mateo's central park—bids have come in around $16M.

https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/4142/Central-Park-Playground-...

It's a nice playground design for sure, but it's kind of amazing to consider what could be built privately for the same amount. You could literally build a palace on a giant estate with fancy landscaping, a swimming pool, tennis courts, movie theater, etc.

Of course there are reasons why public projects are more expensive, but it does seem pretty crazy on the surface.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#362

Post by chasd00 »

throwway120385 wrote: post #74
potato3732842 wrote: post #25

As a pedestrian I will take a busy light controlled intersection with a pedestrian scramble type walk signal over a busy 4-way stop where every single time. With the 4-way stop there is never a time in the cycle when all traffic is stopped. The drivers who are present are continuously paying attention to what other drivers are doing which robs them of situational awareness to note pedestrians. You can try and time it…

> With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you and are all stopped so you as a pedestrian can account for them in preparation just before you get your signal and make your move. Having almost been hit a few times by drivers making a right turn on red, I can tell you the drivers never wait even if you have the right of way. You'll be lucky if they even loo…

>> Legally having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead when the driver who's got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn't see you.

>Also, and I know this is unpopular, but maybe you shouldn't dress like that if you don't want the attention.

in driver's ed you're taught to "drive defensively" i think the same applies to pedestrians. Don't just step into the road when the walk sign comes on, have some situational awareness and protect yourself.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#363

Post by scotty79 »

Interesting thing here is blinking red for pedestrians before it turns solid red, indicating that you should finish crossing.

In Poland blinking green has the same meaning.

In Berlin and Sydney green for pedestrians is very short and basically lets you enter the crossing. But red doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the crossing. You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing. It feels way better from pedestrian perspective when compared to Polish system where green means you are safe, blinking green means you need to run for your life and red means that drivers can legally run you over and you are about die (they can't but that's how it feels).

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#364

Post by lolinder »

Ensorceled wrote: post #115
potato3732842 wrote: post #25

As a pedestrian I will take a busy light controlled intersection with a pedestrian scramble type walk signal over a busy 4-way stop where every single time. With the 4-way stop there is never a time in the cycle when all traffic is stopped. The drivers who are present are continuously paying attention to what other drivers are doing which robs them of situational awareness to note pedestrians. You can try and time it…

This is just not true. In Toronto for instance, the majority of pedestrian deaths are caused by impaired/distracted drivers with a significant portion of failure to yield by left turning drivers at major, light controlled intersections. There isn't even a category for "four way stop" pedestrian fatalities.

What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points. Yes, they're invariably controlled by a signal, but that's because a four-way stop is totally out of the question. The signal didn't cause the fatalities, it was necessary to install it because of the same factors that lead to fatalities.

Using that data doesn't remotely begin to predict what happens when you take a small four-way stop and add a signal to control it. Adding a signal does not create new conflict points, it does not increase the speed limit on the road, all it does is control the intersection in a more aggressive way.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#365

Post by scotty79 »

gowld wrote: post #286
tanewishly wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that a right-turn can be green simultaneous with the pedestrian's crossing light being green? Because where I'm from, traffic lights are not allowed to be set up like that. No simultaneous green for crossing traffic flows, unless otherwise indicated (eg, an extra warning light+sign under the turn's traffic light flashing when it's green and off otherwise).

Yes: https://ibb.co/86tqnBM Direct link: https://i.ibb.co/Hn36L27/Green-crossing.png solid green (right turn allowed) + pedestrian green (for crossing). car and ped both have access to ped crossing. (Car should yield to any ped in crossing.) Also, I drew a picture before I realized that this wasn't what you were asking about. But I like the picture. C A R 2 | v --------- -------- CAR1 -> ---------|ped -> ------- | |…

There is a way to mitigate the danger somewhat by giving pedestrians green light first, so when the car turns they are already in the middle of the road.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#366

Post by pnutjam »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #188
SoftTalker wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I handle right on red: When I have the walk signal, I look to my left for cars that might be turning right. If there are any, I look at whether the driver sees me. Try to make eye contact. If they are moving and apparently don't see me or are going to turn anyway, I wait. I may have the right of way, but I'm not going to win that battle.

I make it clear with body language and eye contact that yes I see them and no I'm not meekly yielding my right of way. However, I leave just enough space to avoid being hit, for those situations when the True Assholes knowingly cut me off anyway. Or maybe they're not assholes by intent, but instead in the 90th percentile for inattentiveness and bad driving habits, which may even be the same thing. I don't know, I'm n…

If they get that close to me, the car is getting kicked or slapped to elicit a reaction from the driver.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#367

Post by cptskippy »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #106
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both may be legal, but the first one is unclear and is definitely unsafe. Safety requirements dictate a slightly different understanding of yellow light than is commonly used by drivers. For safety, yellow must mean "begin controlled deceleration immediately". The first driver had plenty of time on yellow to not be just barely entering the intersection on red. They clearly were not decelerating and had very likely sp…

Why is it dangerous? (Unless they're breaking the speed limit to make the light, obviously.) Just the risk that they might misjudge the timing and enter the intersection after the light turns red? But lights have a built in delay before turning green to account for that.

Because vehicles are often already traveling at or above the speed limit.

Just as the yellow light is intended as a "start slowing down" but is interpreted as "speed up to beat the light", the speed limit sign is intended as a "do not exceed this speed" but is interpreted as "you must be traveling this speed".

If we assumed that most vehicles are traveling the speed limit or faster, which is the case in my experience, then accelerating further is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#368

Post by tantalor »

danenania wrote: post #351
tantalor wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on red is (or should be) never allowed during a pedestrian scramble. That's just asking for trouble. The box must be entirely clear of cars during the walk signal.

Left turns on green (with no green arrow) are also pretty bad imo, as are right turns on green with no arrow. In both cases pedestrians are supposed to have right-of-way, but cars often don't respect it.

That's part of what pedestrian scrambles so great: you always wait for the pedestrian phase before crossing. There is no pedestrian crossing in the car phase.

The other great benefit is you can cross the diagonal (kitty corner).

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#369

Post by rascul »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #313
Spivak wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic engineers aren't blind to the fact that it's NA custom to (roughly) +5 on residential, +8 on state highways, and +5-15 depending on on the lane on interstates. People get up in arms about it on the internet for some reason while IRL the roads are just designed with this in mind.

I have more of an issue with the idea that you can make a previously dangerously fast street/road safer by mere virtue of reducing the speed limit, but leaving it physically designed as before. You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint. I wish North American traffic engineers (and municipal politicians) were better educated on the idea that t…

> You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint.

A couple weeks ago, a 55mph limit near me was lowered to 50mph. A cop watched during the busy times for a few days. Now everyone is generally going 5mph slower than they were. Seems successful so far.

Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

#370

Post by Spunkie »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #63

So he is saying that people are running the red lights but were not running the stop signs. I would bet good money that the people willing to run the red lights would be more likely to run the stop signs than not, especially if they know there are stop signs on the other road.

I don't understand how anyone that actually walks and/or drives in north america can come to that conclusion.

When a driver is speeding up to "make" a yellow light their attention turns to nothing but the yellow light or even worse the state of the next intersection/light beyond the one they are speeding through. The existence of the green/yellow light gives drivers carte blanche to not need to think about the current state of the crossing because "the light tells me there should be nothing there anyways".

Where as a driver slowing down to "roll" a stop sign has their attention set to basically the opposite. They are generally focused on things like, is there a car I'm going to hit? is there a pedestrian crossing? is there a cop down the street waiting to give me a ticket?

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