Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

collegetowns.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 464 posts

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

#421

Post by HDThoreaun »

roguecoder wrote: post #416
dleslie wrote: post #13

> Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait? The author knows the answer as well as most readers do: because the intersection is being designed with cars in mind, not human beings.

Drivers are on average richer than pedestrians. In America, with our current wealth disparity, that leaves their interests wildly over-represented in policy and infrastructure.

More like voters are on average more likely to be drivers than pedestrians, so politicians favor drivers. In my experience this is even more true for poor voters as they generally can’t afford to live in walkable areas.

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

#422

Post by HDThoreaun »

unethical_ban wrote: post #401
philwelch wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing people into a 19th century standard of living is not good for their well being.

"Walking" is not some outdated concept. Lordy.

To the vast majority of Americans it unfortunately is.

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

#423

Post by HDThoreaun »

cogman10 wrote: post #238

Could someone explain why we always put pedestrian crossings at intersections? I've always felt like that is the most unsafe place for a crossing. In my city, there are a few pedestrian crossings with lights recessed from intersections. The lights turn on only when someone bumps the crossing button (which isn't super common) and only 2 ways of traffic need to stop/watch out.

That’s where the stop lights are.

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

#424

Post by ars »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #395
ars wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The location of the traffic light has no legal meaning, there's a white painted line on the ground, which is the stop line.

But if we were to modify signal positioning to make it impractical to stop past the white line, fewer people would overshoot and wait. We do this kind of thing in many other places in life. Imagine if we didn’t use barriers anywhere and only used painted lines to tell people where to be - don’t walk to this side of the line, that’s where the valuables are “stored” (no walls, just markings.) We use ‘guardrails’ all ov…

When I stop past the while line, it's almost always because I thought the way was clear, but then something happened, and I had to stop, and then the light changed, and I was stuck past the white line.

If you implement your plan I would never even see the light become red!

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

#425

Post by HDThoreaun »

mig39 wrote: post #263

I hate the idea of crosswalks at intersections. I know it's tradition, and why they exist. But wouldn't it make more sense to have crosswalks in between the intersections? ie: a few hundred feet away from where vehicles are intersecting with each other?

Drivers would have to stop more and they have far more political power than pedestrians so this won’t happen. Many large cities have crosswalks away from intersections and drivers tend to ignore them

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

#426

Post by toast0 »

jonpurdy wrote: post #173
Ensorceled wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Speed is nearly everything and controlling (ie. reducing) speed should be the primary way to influence fatality rates. Having lived in both Toronto and SF, both cities with 4-way stop and controlled lights intersections. I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower. Much better to get hit by a car at near zero speed than a right or left turning car at higher speed. Which is probably why Toronto doesn't have a…

> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

If you think that's bad, Seattle has 0-way stops at intersections in residential. AFAIK, the rule is if you have a stop sign, you must stop; if you don't have a stop sign and other directions do, you have right of way and should proceed if safe; if you don't have a stop sign and neither does anyone else, treat it as an all-way stop. But from my observations, common behavior is to make it through the intersection about half way before realizing there are no stop signs and then just continue through because what else can you do at that point?

Here's a particularly challenging example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gmuFk8jbo4GMJ1Ru7 where five roads come together with no signage.

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

#427

Post by david-gpu »

roguecoder wrote: post #415
david-gpu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drivers paying attention to their surroundings is the goal. In the real world, drivers don't pay attention to their surroundings; instead, they look for other cars to avoid being hit. Further down the list is avoiding static obstacles like street lights or bollards. Lastly, they may think of looking for pedestrians. In other words, they care about their safety, not their neighbor's. Cyclists, if even noticed in the…

If you treat that as a given, rather a thing for us to change with environmental design, the only ethical solution is banning private drivers entirely. Encouraging anti-social people's deadly hobbies is terrible for the community.

Motornormativity makes most of the population accept that endangering their neighbors while operating heavy machinery is acceptable, as long as the heavy machinery is a car. We call it "speeding", and it's treated like a very minor offense. It is a complete disaster.

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

#428

Post by devilbunny »

mindslight wrote: post #343
estebank wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less visual obstructions so that oncoming traffic can be seen sooner? This is called daylighting and California passed a law for it https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/walk/daylighting > Advance the crosswalk even more, with two separate lights? Pedestrians already have a "leading signal" in intersections with lots of people, which makes the wall signal change before the green for cars. Right on red defeats their…

I don't know why it feels like you're jumping on me here. Is it just CivE attracting people who overly focus on nouns? What you're calling an "at grade crossing" is indeed a good one I missed. I would call them something like crosswalk on a speed bump, which might be "car centric" or whatever, but at least isn't overloading a term that generally refers to using different levels for actual traffic separation. Everythi…

> drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections

There's a red light I run - frequently - in the mornings going to work. I stop. If the cross traffic has a green light, I stay stopped. When the light provides a protected green arrow for left turns for traffic going the opposite way, I'll run it if no cars are visible coming toward me. It would be better as a simple four-way stop, but our city traffic engineer is a self-important idiot who refuses to take even a suggestion from people who drive the area daily. I discovered this during a prolonged power outage that took down a route that I pretty much had to use to leave my neighborhood at the time. Outside of rush hour, the intersection functioned much better as a four-way stop than as a signalled intersection. But that was inappropriate for two arterials (one of them really is, but the other is only one at commuting times, and at off-hours neither is especially busy).

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

#429

Post by pta2002 »

philwelch wrote: post #381
pta2002 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I always find it weird that in the US (and a lot of other countries) the stoplights are on the end of the intersection, instead of at the entrance. If they're at the entrance, there's no dillema - you can't cross the light if it's red. If it's yellow, you brake if you have time, but if not, it's fine to keep going - the opposing light is going to wait a few seconds before turning green specifically to avo…

If the stoplight was suspended above the stop line it would be harder if not impossible for the driver to see it.

There's usually two - one suspended above the stop line, and one lower, on a pole on the side of the road, usually around eye level. This way both the driver in the front and drivers in the back get a clear view.

This is not a hypothetical "if", pretty much every country in Europe has traffic lights set up like this. Just take a look at Lisbon or Amsterdam in street view to see what I mean.

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

#430

Post by pta2002 »

ars wrote: post #424
jagged-chisel wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if we were to modify signal positioning to make it impractical to stop past the white line, fewer people would overshoot and wait. We do this kind of thing in many other places in life. Imagine if we didn’t use barriers anywhere and only used painted lines to tell people where to be - don’t walk to this side of the line, that’s where the valuables are “stored” (no walls, just markings.) We use ‘guardrails’ all ov…

When I stop past the while line, it's almost always because I thought the way was clear, but then something happened, and I had to stop, and then the light changed, and I was stuck past the white line. If you implement your plan I would never even see the light become red!

And that's fine, because you've _already crossed the line_ and therefore you can (and should) go through. You're no longer running a red light at this point, since it's behind you, you're just crossing the intersection like normal.
Post reply on HN