I don't know enough about this particular situation, but I wonder if they considered raised pedestrian curb level roundabouts. They can be much better for things like this.
Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
91–100 of 464 posts
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#92Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#93> I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated. ---- Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they're visible on the video. You can get a better picture of wha…
I had to look this up. In California in particular, this is true, which surprised me. Per a random law firm: California’s yellow light law permits drivers to enter an intersection during a yellow light. No violation exists unless any part of the car is over the stopping line when the light turns red. However, the law encourages drivers to slow down before reaching the intersection. Whereas in, for example, Massachuse…
If this surprises you, consider the alternative: Driving through a yellow being illegal or unexpected doesn't make sense, given the finite stopping distance of cars, and reaction time of humans. This is because the yellow light is the first explicit indicator you must stop.
If this doesn't make sense still, picture this scenario: You are driving at the speed limit. You are 500ms from crossing the stop line threshold. The light turns yellow.
Your interpretation would make sense only if there were a (paler yellow?) light warning of the yellow light!
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to look this up. In California in particular, this is true, which surprised me. Per a random law firm: California’s yellow light law permits drivers to enter an intersection during a yellow light. No violation exists unless any part of the car is over the stopping line when the light turns red. However, the law encourages drivers to slow down before reaching the intersection. Whereas in, for example, Massachuse…
I'm wondering how you would know when the yellow light was going to come on. Do you have some sort of countdown, or innate knowledge? Because, otherwise do you just randomly stop at green lights guessing that a yellow light might come on? Or do you drive so slowly that you can stop in the width of the white line before a pedestrian crossing? Really, I'm trying to figure out how you don't ever enter just as a light tu…
> For me yellow lights are a warning that a red light is coming
Correct, yellow means "start slowing and stop before the intersection if you can do so safely, otherwise proceed". Red means "do not proceed if you aren't already in the intersection".
This is why the opposing traffic signal and walk signal will wait for a second or two after red: to allow people who entered on yellow to finish their transit across the intersection.
Indeed, in the author's own video where they incorrectly claim someone ran a red light, the author had no legal right to cross anyways, so there was no chance of the author getting injured unless they ran a red light at the crosswalk.
In short, the author seems most frustrated that the situation changed from everyone waiting on him, to him waiting a few seconds for others.
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#95> 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.
Usually a crossing will instantly switch when the pedestrian button is pressed, if enough time has passed since the last "walk" cycle.
Having a stage where walk is enabled when there's no pedestrians around wouldn't much help pedestrians, and would introduce inefficiency in throughput. And obviously, drivers can't press a button, so it makes more sense for controls to be accessible to the pedestrians.
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#96> 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.
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Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
OT, but it fired me up a bit - people that enter the intersection on green or orange awaiting a break to turn left. And then don’t clear the intersection on red. Now they’re in everyone’s way. How do you get them to understand they’ve already “run the light” and just need to move?
Would you rather they floor it and beat the straight through traffic when the light turns green? 1-2 cars entering the intersection and then getting through when traffic clears on the red is less worse than the alternative.
One of us has misunderstood the other. Maybe I’m misreading you. Let me clarify my position.
If you’ve entered the intersection on green or orange, and must await oncoming traffic before you can safely turn left, then the light turns red before oncoming traffic clears, once that traffic has indeed stopped for the red, you need to complete your left turn to clear the intersection, even on red.
This situation is clearly spelled out in the driving manuals for my state.
If you are not willing to continue on if the light turns red while you are in the intersection, then don’t enter the intersection until it’s clear - wait behind the line.
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are stuck in the middle when turning crossing traffic needs to wait until you clear the intersection.
I find it's better for me to just miss the turn while I wait behind the line. I've seen too many instances where that doesn't work out the way it's intended to want to make it a habit for me anymore.
This is really odd and would be extremely frustrating for people behind you. You are supposed to enter the intersection. Keep your wheels straight and then turn whenever there is a gap in the oncoming traffic or when the light turns red and the oncoming traffic stops.
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#99As 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 4-way stop there is never a time when all traffic is stopped and the drivers are always paying attention to what other drivers are doing. 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. That's... not true? With light t…
>That's... not true? With light traffic a 4 way stop should have no cars at all at it most of the time, leaving pedestrians with the right of way, whereas with a traffic light there will always be a road with priority until a pedestrian hits the button. Requiring cars to pay attention to the condition of the intersection is the explicit design goal.
>This was laid out very clearly in the article we just read.
This is what I mean about theory vs reality.
4-way stops don't look like the animation they show you in driver's ed. In practice what happens is that non conflicting traffic tends to parallelize so someone taking a left might start their left while the person across from them is finishing theirs (or one of any other bunch of combinations) so there's a car in motion basically all the time the situational awareness of every driver who's about to get their turn is mostly absorbed in monitoring who's turn it is and who's going where.
So when you're a pedestrian and you don't time it right you could find yourself starting to cross right before someone wants to drive where you're crossing. Usually this is because you started walking before it was their turn and they didn't notice you until it was their turn and they started moving (because they were accounting for the other traffic) until it was their turn at which point they started looking where they were going as well. Normally this results in absolutely nothing, you speed up a little, they don't gas it as hard, everyone goes on their merry way. But the potential for things to go badly if the conflicting driver is inattentive or further distracted is very much there.
Sure, theoretically the rules say they shouldn't do that but that's not how reality works.
There's just so much less potential for conflict if there is a scheduled time when all the cars stop and then the walking happens. Even without a dedicated walk time it's just so much easier to time it when there's a light because you can start walking when all the cars have red and only have to look out for right on red or potential red light runners, it's a much easier problem than the degree of swiveling your head around you need to do to at a busy 4-way.
Re: Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
#100Earlier 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…
Again, please be aware that the video does not show the entire intersection.
It seems like you're stuck on whether someone broke a red light law, but this isn't an article about the legality of dangerous behaviors. It's an article about making intersections more dangerous.
The first car isn't even through the crosswalk when the light turns red. Racing through a crosswalk to beat a light is the definition of dangerous driving.