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Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

construction-physics.com

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Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#71

Post by shusaku »

ceejayoz wrote: post #44
al_borland wrote: post #37

I don’t buy the distraction numbers. I see people on their phones constantly while driving, despite laws against it. It’s also impossible to really prove anything after the fact, as the article touches on. The graph shows a massive increase in “distraction not reported,” which to me just sounds like the driver didn’t choose to incriminate themself. The spike started in 2010, which is when 4G was rolling out, Instagra…

Any attempt to blame it primarily on phones has to wrangle with the fact that those phones are available and in use everywhere on the planet, not just the USA.

My only critique of this is that maybe the countries they compared started to invested in safer urban driving infrastructure during the Lehman shock, and its counteracting the universal growth in distractedness

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#72

Post by physicsguy »

I was amazed when I travelled to the US at just how pedestrian hostile it is. I was travelling to a conference in San Diego and it was just impossible to walk safely between where I was staying and where I was going to because this was the road: https://maps.app.goo.gl/G2PeVbEzQyqbgDTN9

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#73

Post by tomasphan »

hackingonempty wrote: post #4

It is literally 20 times as many people killed every year as are killed in mass shootings but you can't get anyone to care at all about it. Blame the victim, did you see what they were wearing?

We care about control. Mass shootings are random and scary and totally out of victim’s control. People say “that car crash wouldn’t have happened to me I’m a better driver and I pay attention”. Which is true to some degree. Same reason why flying is scary because you can’t even see what’s coming.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#74

Post by ToucanLoucan »

willis936 wrote: post #33
potato3732842 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone didn't read the article. Someone doesn't understand that any article that's drawing conclusions based on a workflow that involves putting a Chevy Suburban (functionally a chevy pickup from the B pillar forward) and a Honda HRV into the same category is sus at best and anyone uncritically accepting said conclusions is also sus at best. If one wanted to be honest they'd look at GVW or some other metric that tr…

Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.

As an adamant enthusiast of both cars and infrastructure design, if someone puts a crossover in the trucks and SUVs category, I am dubious of anything that follows. Crossovers are basically just cars with higher rollover risk. They're lighter, they have smaller engines, they can stop more quickly, and overall have much, much better safety characteristics.

Like I'm sorry but if you put crossovers and SUVs in the same bucket for a discussion anywhere, but especially in the realm of safety, I'm not taking your opinions seriously.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#75

Post by alterom »

softwaredoug wrote: post #20

Where 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!"

My favorite feature of bicycle lanes in San Jose is that cars cross them diagonally to get onto highway access ramps.

Nothing screams "safety" like an SUV coming at you from behind and left while accelerating to highway speeds.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#76

Post by physicsguy »

Toorkit wrote: post #5
websiteapi wrote: post #2

I had a suspicion that there were more idiots on the road after and during covid. good to see this reflected in the data, but sad to know that it's actually true. no matter where I go in the USA I see people speeding easily 50% over the limit, running red lights, blowing through stop signs. it's ridiculous. given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyot…

Not just the US, my village in Germany has a limit of 30 kph, people drive through with 60.

We're 30mph through my village but because it is a 'cut through' the local government deem it to be important and the speed cannot be reduced. Even though we had two cars go round a sharp bend into a tree within a month of each other, in dry conditions.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#77

Post by myrmidon »

websiteapi wrote: post #2

I had a suspicion that there were more idiots on the road after and during covid. good to see this reflected in the data, but sad to know that it's actually true. no matter where I go in the USA I see people speeding easily 50% over the limit, running red lights, blowing through stop signs. it's ridiculous. given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyot…

> there were more idiots on the road after and during covid

I don't think the data really supports this, because pedestrian deaths have been rising continuously since 2008 instead of abruptly after 2019; there is at least a bunch of other factors at play.

Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.

Personally, I think that "more distracted pedestrians" (from smartphones) is also an interesting theory which could possibly explain the huge increase in Sedan-lethality.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#78

Post by thunderfork »

pluc wrote: post #64
Frieren wrote: post #53

Road and street design is the main difference with Europe. A lot of work has been put to make streets safer for everybody. That fact alone acts as a multiplier for everything else. The cars are bigger in the USA? The bad streets make it way worse. People are distracted at the phone? The bad street design makes it more deathly. Fix USA's streets and towns and all kinds of deaths will be decreased. It is the most impor…

This blows my mind considering most North American streets were designed for cars, whereas the same cannot be said for Europe. Maybe it's the reason: streets can be so narrow and winding in Europe that you have to pay attention?

[dead]

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#79

Post by potato3732842 »

bombcar wrote: post #41
websiteapi wrote: post #2

I had a suspicion that there were more idiots on the road after and during covid. good to see this reflected in the data, but sad to know that it's actually true. no matter where I go in the USA I see people speeding easily 50% over the limit, running red lights, blowing through stop signs. it's ridiculous. given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyot…

I’d like someone to do a deep dive in the data; I suspect that almost all of the fatalities involve some variation of “not following the laws” simply because nobody does. We need crosswalks enforced by spikes that pop up from the ground or something similarly draconian to get people to wake up. The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exce…

>The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.

They also changed bus routing best practice to alter the sorts of stops that were causing the bulk of the passing. Like for example right side stops on roads divided by any sort of median are avoided where possible these days.

Re: Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

#80

Post by karma_fountain »

softwaredoug wrote: post #42
banga wrote: post #30

This 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…

Right turns are really dangerous for pedestrians. A lot of localities started banning right-on-red because cars look left only.

Cars don't look at all.
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