How Automakers Invented the Crime of “Jaywalking”
vox.com
vox.com
I don't think that will ever happen. It may even be the opposite: AI will drive in a way it will always be able to stop if there's a possibility that there's someone behind some obstacle that may jump to the road at any moment.
Worst case scenario, beacons become mandatory. Cheap and anonymous beacons you have to carry when you're near a road. Smart phones may include such functionality.
"Install this app on your phone to make traffic lights recognize you when you approach them, for a timely shift to green light"
"Install this app to collect pedestrian-points, exchange points for prices and discounts!"
"Get a better insurance tier for installing this app which tracks your fitness. Do your daily 10.000 steps for a free <whatever>!"
Once enough people jump on board, and it's generally accepted as being "normal because everybody uses it", then you can mandate it and the few people left who resist can easily be branded as "paranoid tinfoil-hat people" to marginalize their opposition.
Smartphones are radio transceivers, I would imagine any anonymous beacon technology wouldn't be noticeably louder than what smartphones are already emitting.
No location tracking = new policy price
Location tracking = new policy price - 10K.
New policy price = old policy price + 10k
And that's assuming they can get away with the rate increases in the first place. States like CA have insurance commissioners empowered to review and reject rate increases.
After all, these beacons are not mandatory - they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. If you don't, you can drive your car like any real (read: non-poor) American, or use a taxi or bus. Pedestrians already aren't permitted on highways, what's so different about restricting pedestrians on surface streets?
And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation?
> This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice.
Sure, that's a very reasonable counter-point, however not everyone does.
> where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes
Plenty of folks find asking a wiretap for pancake recipes fine, and there are plenty that balk at the thought. This Christmas my sister bought everyone Amazon's cute little NSA Listening Post™ - was fun how quickly the look of disgust crossed their face when I explained that every conversation would be recorded and store in Amazon's data centers... and probably a few three-letter agencies.
> and where everyone believes you need ID to fly. This is the same United States where a common political argument is that of course ID should be required to vote because ID is required for everything else, and citizens should just carry ID. This is the same US where a special police force arrests and detains citizens and forces them to prove that they're actually citizens. It's been a long while since we actually objected to the "papers, please" world.
There is an insanely large leap between having an ID for a few specific purposes and being mandated to carry a homing beacon.
> they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist.
The post I replied to did not state "to use the roads" - it stated general use of mandatory beacons. You're moving the goalposts.
> And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation?
If the AppleMobile hits me because I don't carry an iPhone, you can best believe they will be sued into oblivion. Remember, this is litigious America!
The Evangelical community would surely denounce a mandatory tracking device as the work of the Antichrist, and I would love to watch politicians shit on that high-turnout demographic.
I agree with everything else you wrote (I think?), but I thought that the Echo only transmitted things it recognized directly following the activation phrase?
Why would it be harder to pwn than anything else?
I don't think they meant to imply that it would be hard to to cause such behavior via malicious action by 3rd parties.
Sorry - my reading was that it was in reply to "Worst case scenario, beacons become mandatory. Cheap and anonymous beacons you have to carry when you're near a road," and so I thought you meant "beacons that are mandatory if you're near a road and don't want to be hit." If you mean "beacons that are mandatory just to be a human in America at all," then sure, I think that's going to be a much harder sell, but I'd also argue that the post you were responding to doesn't require such beacons.
To me, that includes pedestrians walking on a city sidewalk who might jaywalk as the TFA that started this whole conversation is talking about. Now the only way you can ensure folks have that device is to mandate for everyone. Of course in the US it isn't nearly as common, but I know plenty of city-dwellers without cars. IANAL but I'm having a hard time believing a mandatory beacon would pass Constitutional muster, let alone public support.
That reads so snarkily. You announce that what the other guy wrote sounds like a lot of BS, or you strongly suspect it is (why mention that otherwise) but you will very generously act as though it's not. It's good to assume good faith, not so good to announce it like that.
I think you'll find "land of the free, home of the brave" is more or less a cheap slogan once the chips are down and people are afraid.
Exceedingly few people in the US actually care about individual freedom or privacy. 9/11 drove that point severely home to me - those born in the 90's and later will never know the America I once knew, and I'm sure those born before Pearl Harbor and the like would say similar.
The erosion of personal freedom and the expectation of privacy just in my lifetime has been absolutely astounding. Watching basically everyone trade their freedom for temporary security.
Hyperbolic? A bit. But I think if you spend some moments of reflection you'll realize almost none of your fellow citizens actually care. They will play lip service at best until an event happens that scares them, and at that point you're the crazy privacy freak with obviously something to hide.
You just wrote two things:
1) Pedestrians and bike riders should wear beacons or aren't "real Americans".
2) Poor Americans aren't "real Americans".
Are those what you meant to write?
- "Is someone behind that parked van?"
- "Yes"
- "Who?"
- "Mind your own business, just slow down in case I decide to jump to the road, ok?"
the whole "car detects obstacle in an untrafficed area, stops, door is opened, passenger gets out, passenger gets back in, changes destination to a place not proximate to anywhere they've ever been before" process also sounds like the sort of thing that would justifiably raise a bit of a red flag. maybe not an automated call to 911, but it should probably dump all records to the cloud and trigger a call from an onstar operator or similar.
Besides, if we're talking about this happening in the "bad" parts of town, the car can call 911 and broadcast is position all it likes. There won't be any immediate response.
Finally, people who do this long enough will eventually figure out what to disconnect to allow themselves enough time to do what they want with the car- like today's car thieves do with modern car alarms.
9-60-060 Pedestrian crossing. [...] (b) No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.
https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cdot/supp_info/o...
So you get get punished if it hits you? Or how does this work...
Ever since self-driving cars started being a thing I keep being reminded of this book, and am half-waiting for at lease that part of it to come true.
I've been searching for a bit now, and I still haven't find it. I think it was from the 70s or 80s.
A situation with pedestrians only doesn't require those traffic controls.
A situation with motor vehicles only does require them, otherwise there will be an increase in the number of accidents and unacceptable congestion.
The mixture of the two requires them only because of the presence of motor vehicles.
It's very simple, really.
i always bring up the examples of thak thak gangs in delhi to show actual threats which become worse with autonomous cars.
i suspect people in the first world who believe in autonomous cars are exposed to a very limited set of uses for roads and cars.
India is the place where the autonomous car dream goes to die.
after that every downgrades the idea to lower than level 5 driving.
Honestly, the 21st century is basically clickbait: You won't believe what happens next!
If carjacking becomes a problem the cars will figure it out and start locking all the doors. Or if the car is unoccupied, let the carjaker in, then notify the nearest police station it is coming in with a criminal.
I'll just say that it is an option with some merit. Depending on the technology and the local situation I might or might not be in favor of it.
Of course that won't stop the behavior completely but it won't be a free for all either.
just because the lights for cars are gone doesn't necessitate that the pedestrian crosswalks and buttons be removed. they might even work more effectively, if they can communicate with all the vehicles in the vicinity.
All other road users have to stop and the light cycles normally. (and during this specially triggered light cycle, even self-driving cars need to stop)
I, too, am a fan of roundabouts.
I doubt that attitude will ever catch on. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that there's a healthy suspicion about AI drivers.
So far at least, the attitude taken by, well, everyone, is that AI drivers are untrustworthy until proven trustworthy. If AI drivers can't cope with the various challenges of real driving, then the AI drivers are to blame, not the external factors.
If they work well, AI drivers will be permitted to drive. If they do not, they will not be permitted to drive. At no point will they get to dictate what other road-users may do. Our Ludditism will see to that.
It is not particularly difficult to imagine the general public swaying even to some opposite extreme, supported by some reasoning like "he probably did something wrong to get killed, the AI cars make very few mistakes."
But I agree that if autonomous cars come to pass, there will be a lot of pressure to go down the route you discuss.
.
It needs a catchy name though. Back-alley is too harsh. Something that represents our aspirations for the cities of the future. I'm thinking "Metro."
But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.
Sounds an awful lot like a subway or lite rail system to me. I've never understood the fascination with self-driving cars and what they imply for PT--how is such a system superior to a well designed and maintained train system?
Cars can go anywhere.
We could really hide the rails underground and at last free the roads again for people to use, like the article says it was in the 1920's. We could reduce automotive accidents to a bare minimum, which btw is the main selling point of self-driving cars, far as I can tell. We could reduce pollution by a factor of 10, probably, which is the much bigger problem that the industry isn't try to sell a solution for - because more cars are not exactly what you'd call a solution to it. We could make our cities places for humans, rather than noisy, dirty, polluting, often deadly machines. But, no. We gotta have more cars. Because you can't stop the march of progress.
We tried that, it's called the Interstate Highway System, and it was a half-trillion-dollar disaster.
When we were building the Heathrow Pod[1] -- which is effectively an autonomous taxi system -- this was an objection that people raised all the time. In practice, it took approximately zero instances of bad passenger behaviour for people to catch onto the fact that the interior of an autonomous vehicle that can deliver you non-stop to airport security is really the last place on Earth that you'd want to engage in anti-social behaviour.
1: https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-p...
1: This does not reflect the views of any previous, current, or future employers, or indeed of myself when I'm being serious.
Literally just stand in front of them and there will be nothing they can do. Once people get used to zero social repercussions (driverless cars will be empty probably 50% of the time en-route to pick someone up or go park themselves by my estimation) I imagine you will see things like certain folks simply crossing streets blindly comfortable in the fact that the cars will stop for them regardless of right of way.
Many will disagree that this will happen, but I think many underestimate the antisocialness of folks when there are no consequences.
> Motion sickness comes from the conflict between your eyes and the part of your ear which tells you which way is up and lets you stay in balance.
If there's no windows, then your eyes will say "We're not moving", but your inner motion sensor in your ear will say "We're definitely moving", and you'll create motion sickness.
It's for the same reason some people feel motion sickness in some VR apps that involve movement in the virtual world that doesn't match your real world movement, such as driving a car in VR. Your eyes say "We're moving", but your ear says "No we aren't!", and the discrepancy triggers motion sickness.
This is actually happening. Portland has recently fallen in line with other cities, like Seattle, and lowered thousands of miles of streets from 25 MPH to 20 MPH.
http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2018/01/portla...
25mph is much better than 35mph.
The $64k question is: what will states and counties do without police citation revenue?
The only thing these auto-scammers would get are human drivers not driving precisely and accurately.
I live in Edinburgh, which has been gradually introducing 20mph limits over the last couple of years, and I've actually taken to them much better than I'd expected to: they don't reduce my average speed all that much, especially as the arterial roads are still 30mph, and they're much more pleasant when I'm out of the car.
http://www.kgw.com/news/local/red-light-cameras-can-catch-yo...
Turn the sidewalks into elevated walkways. Or use pedestrian tunnels underneath the road surface. Pedestrian crosswalks are a money-saving measure, ignoring one of the many externalities involved in automobile manufacture. Cars simply should not be driving on pedestrian walkways, and pedestrians should not be walking anywhere that does not have a significant physical barrier between them and the massive objects moving at high speed.
Elevated walkways would be vastly cheaper, but still infeasible on any current budget. You would end up having to rebuild the lobby of most buildings to be on the second floor, and probably turn the first floor into parking. It feels like one of those utopian ideals from the 50s or 60s that came out before people started thinking about the money.
Seattle was raised in the 1880s.
A portion of Atlanta was raised in the 1920s. They actually did rebuild new lobbies on the upper floors, and a lot of the old storefronts are still intact down below.
but yes, underground infrastructure is expensive (maybe the boring company will help drive equipment costs down), but we're a rich nation and we want nice things. i think we can do it if we want to. plus, it creates working class jobs and that makes the economy go 'round.
Around my area, people don't walk for pleasure, mostly, they walk because they're too poor for a car and the public transit system is terrible. Forcing them to climb stairs (assuming they're even physically able; a fair number of pedestrians near here are in wheelchairs) to get out of the way of cars is a non-starter.
(Though I can't imagine people being happy about going up and down stairs, escalators, or elevators every time they want to cross a street.)
The necessity arises from the car-drivers, so you charge them for the pedestrian safety measures, just like you charge them for the creation and maintenance of limited-access highways.
Without crosswalks, there is no pedestrian-crossing phase needed in the traffic signals, so separating the two types of traffic simultaneously makes cars faster and pedestrians safer. The question really is how much drivers would be willing to pay to shave that last minute off their commute.
If you look at projects like Boston's "Big Dig", the answer is that they are willing to spend quite a lot [of other people's money].
The results are... mixed. Some people love the place, but the grade separated cycle paths are not popular. Well worth looking at, if this is an area you're interested in.
1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/controlled-chaos...
the best solution isn't to try to slow down the cars but rather to make mixed-use urban areas the default so that walking and biking become the norm. you also get all kinds of other benefits with that (less traffic, healthier air, more fit people, etc)
i agree that driving qualifications should be more strict, but probably in a different dimension than you: test drivers on situational awareness and predictive decision making. fail people for both distracted driving and indecision (and lack of follow-through), as well as not communicating intent (e.g, signaling) to other drivers.
I'd wager that you can reduce the top speed cars are allowed to travel significantly before the effective speed goes down by much, especially if you can improve traffic flow by e.g. vehicle-vehicle communication.
But my post was not about the relative merits of cycling versus driving. I simply wanted to rebut clairity's point that making cycling and walking safer necessarily makes driving slower.
Also, I think I would frequently (perhaps not every time, but at least 25% of the time) beat a driver to the door of my workplace from my apartment because of a combination of cars not actually being much faster than me due to traffic, stop lights, etc. and parking. My parking is so small that it's a lot closer to my building. This obviously depends on where you work, but here it seems to be a major factor. (On second thought this would also depend on which lot the driver would park in. Most would have a long enough walk to make cycling faster or at least about the same. I also haven't done this race, for what it's worth. Anyway, the point stands: travel times for cyclists are not necessarily worse than drivers.)
A $60k retrofitted transporter van isn't exactly the definition of "independence".
Slower roads (max 20MPH/30KMPH) should be bicycle and pedestrian-first. Cars there should be "guests" catering to the slower non-motorized traffic.
This way we have the best of both worlds: nice & livable urban roads and faster driving in connecting roads.
my one pet peeve around that is that most californians don't respect the rule that any intersection of two city streets is a crosswalk, whether marked as such or not, and pedestrians crossing at a corner have the right of way. as soon as they start walking, cars must stop for them, even on larger streets (most drivers don't know/rememeber this and zoom dangerously close by).
Slower roads (max 20MPH/30KMPH) should be bicycle and pedestrian-first.
all roads, but even residential streets, in car-centric cities like LA seem to be built wide enough to accommodate 747's with ease.
my proposal: rather than 12-15 foot widths, make urban residential street lanes 9 feet wide (cars are typically 6-7 feet wide, delivery trucks, 8 feet wide). replace parking lanes with slightly grade-separated (3-4 inches) bike lanes, leaving existing walkways for pedestrians only.
and make sure these narrow lanes have shoulder lane markings.
In one street of my city the parking was replaced with two way bicycle lanes, and there are plastic bollards to separate it from the road (which is probably around 9 feet now as you suggest). Compared to a grade separation that isn’t going to do much if you go over it, if you hit a bollard it’s going to leave a nice permanent mark on your car, so you are going to drive more carefully.
The only issue I’ve seen with this is if vehicles need to deliver to the shops and bars on this street, they have to park in the cycle lane (there is no rear access or parking).
hopefully you're not suggesting that cars should be travelling 50km/hr in mixed-use urban areas? Because "slowing down the cars" is a synonym for mixed-use area. That's the same thing, if you continue with car-only roads there's no need to slow down the cars.
a) during transition, human-driven cars must be instrumented. Automatic moving violation for speeding.
b) automatic moving violation for driving a non-instrumented vehicle in a zone where they are mandatory.
Aside, you might find this short-fiction story from Vice interesting: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygzvz/one-star
Your freedom comes at a high price, direct and indirect. Countries with functioning public transportation are providing a lot of this freedom, to a broader population and at a fraction of the cost compared to personal cars.
I already see this with public transit. Public transport is a method of population control. You can keep classes of people confined to their neighborhoods simply based on how and where you choose to route buses/trains.
I can get in my car and go anywhere. That to me is the true spirit of America.
What about people who genuinely love to drive cars & ride motorcycles? Are we a danger this utopian self automated future? I just don't see it happening. There's so many people that are enamored with cars and motorcycles, who love the sensation, independence and freedom derived from the experience. Older manual Ferraris or air-cooled Porsches appreciate in value for a reason.
I almost lament at the future where an entire generation will grow up without experiencing such "archaic, manual and dangerous vehicles" because it will be too expensive, much as classic supercars will remain out of reach for majority of the population.
I suspect we can find a place for them outside of our most densely populated urban cores. The popularity of cars isn't in itself a scandal. The scandal is that cars still enjoy undue priority in places like Midtown Manhattan, it's that urban neighborhoods were destroyed and divided by interstate highways, it's that most cities no longer function properly for the carless.
That seems unconstitutional and a bit like North Korea where they restrict cars to specific areas and ban it in others.
There is no Constitutional right to bear cars.
I think the world outside USA would want a word with you about that "most cities" part.
There will be car clubs where people interested driving car can go and have the experience.
In my part of the rural US, one can get an isolated hour of horseback riding for $20 or so, or maintain a personal horse for a few hundred a month (if kept at a stable run as a business for that purpose; cheaper if you have your own property suitable for housing the horse).
I can see car garages and designated driving areas becoming the riding stables of the future.
It really makes no sense for an 80Kg person to go around in a 1000kg vehicle.
The 1000kg vehicle protects the 80kg person from harm because the 80kg person is not designed to go 100kph.
And until ALL the human drivers are gone, automated ones are going to have to drive 'on eggshells' in case an uninstrumented car happens by. IF it were known for a fact that all cars were instrumented (so the software knew where ALL of them were) then we could even do away with stop lights etc - the cars could regulate intersections 'in the cloud'. And so on.
Which leaves the interesting problem - what do we do to cross the chasm - from all human drivers to all automated drivers? There are few good solutions in the middle.
Such a utopia: not only do the police have a monopoly on violence, but also private transportation.
To me, that is the craziest sentence in the article. Reporters were outsourcing writing to the auto industry? Of course they blamed the pedestrians! In what world is this ethical?
What is next? Sending overdose details to pharma companies for them to blame the drug users?
See uber's "but taxis are evil/medallions are a monopoly!"
How many people would be willing to let someone else do their job for them when the cost is adding a little extra bias, something that isn't even a big deal in a single case (but which adds up over time)? It feels like ethics will quickly take a back seat for some small boon.
Even today it is fun to compare media articles with the original police press release. The media tends to spin such articles against any involved cyclists/pedestrians for free. There doesn't have to be much of a conspiracy, most of the media's consumers are drivers and don't want to hear bad things about that group.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/car-accident-car-crash-...
https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545
https://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_100...
News and Advertising have always been closely linked.
I'm just impressed it was going on even then.
I agree that this kind of thing should be disclosed, just as same as if it were "here's $500 and remember where it came from". It's something of value being provided by an interested party that taints the publication. Not so much that it shouldn't be printed, but definitely enough that it should be disclosed ("I'm just parroting what GM told me").
Suddenly that ecologically unsound packaging was no longer their problem; disposing of it properly was the consumer and the government's shared responsibility.
There is a person in that car, so as far as who is more important it's equal both ways.
Sometimes the person walking waits, sometimes the person in the car waits.
Given the massive external costs racked up by feckless motorists on the rest of society it rankles.
They ended up discontinuing that attempt.
I agree that companies often avoid the negative externalities of their activities, and support things like a carbon tax to fix that. But in the case of littering, whoever creates the mess needs to clean it up.
On the other hand, if you get rid of plastic packaging, the consumer will bear the benefit in other ways. A lack of plastic in the environment means a healthier ecosystem, which affects their food as well as their quality of life.
But this is all a bit of a red herring because goods aren't packaged in so much plastic in order to reduce costs or improve quality. The single most important factor in consumer packaging is "Will this make the consumer want to buy it more".
I've never seen an individually shrink-wrapped potato or bell pepper where I live. I do see sets of 3 large bell papers, or of a pound or two of "baby" bell papers, in a plastic bag, and don't know of any excuse for that beyond convenience.
[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/featu...
tl;dr Legislating for everyone to do what you want inevitably leads for others to legislate that you do what they want.
People here don't get how limited your life is without a car. You are limited to a ten-fifteen mile radius for everything, unless you use inefficient public transport which tacks on a huge time tax for even basic trips. You are captive to that transport, which means something like being called in is hard to impossible, as well as many duties of your workplace; dropping deposits off to a bank after hours as a manager, for example. That transport doesn't even expand your range that much, maybe one or two towns over; the time for further is so long as to be prohibitive.
Even with walking, you wind up spending far more time and expense on basic tasks. Instead of shopping one day you need to shop five, just because you can't fit more than a couple bags of goods. If you are on the bus, you can't even easily use perishables; 30-45 min one way is the norm. You can't do things like buy a mattress without tacked on delivery fees and more time spent waiting to receive it. If anything happens where you simply can't walk like doctor or dentist visits (because doctors don't always stay in walking distance of most people) that's an expensive cab or uber both ways. Sometimes its even worse...jury duty can be in the county courthouse 30 min by car and an hour and a half by bus.
You have no social life with no car. Not every town can simply cluster everything in one place; the downtown can easily be 30 minutes away from where people live. It took me an hour to walk to the comic shop one way; the bus would had made that longer, not shorter. Dates are impossible because of that; if the nearest date spot or bar isn't within five minutes, what do you do?
A life without personal cars would be a rather limited and even serfish one. Everyone assumes driverless cars might save us, but they have yet to prove they can even navigate a highway during a New England winter, which is what you'd need to do to replace a commute. People talk about bicycles, but 0 degree or snowy weather makes that horrid, as well as high heat. Please stop assuming cars are this evil thing that more walking and biking will solve; they wont, not at all.
But not having a car is virtuous! It takes an incredible toll on our world to enable cars. Mining is the most polluting industry of all time, followed closely by oil extraction and then refining. Then you gotta burn all that oil to actually drive the car.
Cars are responsible for many problems including wasted space, noise, visual and air pollution, danger, and unpleasant urban space breakdowns.
The Highway and Automobile culture are symbols of totalitarian cultures which deny people more sustainable and equitable alternatives for mobility and transport - Vandana Shiva, February 19, 2004.
The reality is that most people live in dense Asian urban environments, and this trend is increasing. More and more people rely solely on public transport, and this is a good thing for society and the environment. If everyone carried on like Americans or Australians, global warming would be insane. Let's encourage pluralism and change. Cars have had their chance - the 1950s called and wants its suburban utopia back.
How is calling a taxi every time you need a car any better than using a car you own in these areas? I do agree that the need for parking spaces is improved.
Outside a sufficiently dense city the pros might not outweigh the cons, but if walking/cycling/transit can cover most of your travel you probably don't need a car for the other half. I only have one for leaving the the city.
There's also a bit of good fortune involved. I was young, single, and healthy. But I'm older now, and there are times when I simply cannot afford to use public transit or walk. If you get the flu, you don't even have the choice; walking fifteen minutes to get medicine or food is agony. And you always have to walk fifteen minutes, just to get to the transit spot. You feel the weather a lot more as you age; a brisk rain shower is rougher on you at 40 than at 20.
And come on, what can be more totalitarian than restricting the ability of people to move beyond a tiny radius apart from communal vehicles that can be shut down on a whim?
The thing with walking is that it's very much a "use it or lose it" thing; people who never owned cars are much more likely to keep walking.
I know a lot of broke people who live within less than a two minute walk of a bus stop and could not possibly afford a car. You might want to consider how the built environment has dictated your choices.
Also on the point of cost, cars are incredibly expensive, especially in the US where everyone seems to have massive vehicles. If you live without one, in a pedestrian friendly area you'd find the costs of using a bus or subway would be a small fraction of your car costs.
Actually cars are dirt cheap in the US compared to Europe. Taxes are low, second hand cars can be had for basically nothing, and gas is cheap.
Also, the Americans or Australians comment is a bit of a broad stoke, no?
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... and order by 'emission per capita'.
Um. Do you have... kids? Spouse?
There's nothing to "get". His experiences are his experiences. I've also tried the living-without-a-car thing, and in both Atlanta and the Bay Area, it's about as fun as... I don't know, walking on hot coals or something. The fact that you feel otherwise (while living on a salary that allows you to talk about "offloading assets") doesn't invalidate his actual life.
I would be surprised to learn someone over the age of 16 doesn't have their license in a new england suburb. In my limited experience public transit is terrible in smaller US cities.
The truth is in NYC I don't even think about owning a car. In fact the opposite is true, sometimes I think to myself "wow, I'm so glad I can live my life and don't have to worry about all that car related stuff."
I'm not saying that's true anywhere else. I'm not telling you to feel guilty about owning a car. All I'm saying is that in NYC in 2018, no, life really isn't limited without a car. This isn't virtue signaling this is a calculated part of life for many people living in major cities. Public transit isn't perfect but the cost/benefit of car ownership overhead just isn't worth it in some places.
i dont know what the value of 'i live in nyc and i dont need a car' provides. everyone already knows most people in nyc doesnt need a car. the problem is getting people in the densely packed urban areas to understand not all people can (or wants to) live without a car. likewise europeans, we get it, a lot of you dont need a car.
there is very few places in the US most people can function without a car. Philadelphia, NYC, and DC that I can think of. I guess SF, but walking around there was really hard for me.
In Philly, I can walk nearly everywhere and get what I need. like you, it would cost me a ton of money even if I were given a car. I dont need it, and I dont want one. However, I am also a bit trapped in the city. if I want to do any hiking or anything 'outdoorsy', I either have to ask someone to give me a ride or I simply cant do it.
The OP argues not owning a car is a "virtuous shtick" and then: "You have no social life with no car" and "People here [hacker news] don't get how limited your life is without a car."
Such ridiculous claims deserve to be challenged since the OP seems to be speaking about car ownership in general, not just people living in suburbs.
This is highly dependent on your location and life circumstances. I live in Eastern Europe, have resources to easily buy a couple of cars, yet choose not to. I prefer to walk or cycle.
> People talk about bicycles, but 0 degree or snowy weather makes that horrid
In Amsterdam, people cycle in -10°C when there's 10cm of snow on the ground (I did so myself). While a little unpleasant, apart from walking it was the only viable means of transport: the metro and trains were cancelled because of snow, and cars and buses were mostly stuck in traffic jams because there were so many crashes everywhere. (Someone tell the Dutch about winter tires!)
I assume that the parent post meant 0°F which is around -18°C.
I cannot see an entire society doing this, in areas that range from small towns to medium sized cities.
The wind doesn't cut through proper clothes. I try to avoid the roads as well, but the bike paths work well where I live, even when the temperature goes down to -20°C.
Please try it again it's not really the same experience if you choose to do it. All your problems described above are easy to solve, if you have resources to buy a car[1]. Ice bark roads are navigable with cheap winter tires (it does take you 40% longer to traverse though). I need to have a change of clothes and layers. good gloves, shoes and socks are vital below -12° if you bicycle for and 1 hour in such conditions it's going to hurt alot.
[1] You might need to sell the car though, which might not be an option, but in the long run you should come out ahead
Of course they can. Why can't they? They have chosen not to. We can agree on that. But you think they can't? Why not? What do you think people did before cars?
In the UK, a 10 mile radius will probably encompass 4 or 5 different towns, each of which will have their own centre, and will provide _most_ of what you require, and public transport is sufficient for most people (there will always be exceptions).
> A life without personal cars would be a rather limited and even serfish one.
I invite you to come and live in the UK. Many of the cities, and even towns, are perfectly liveable in without personal cars. Yes there are things you can do with a personal car that you can't do without one, but that applies to most products in our lives.
The Bridge of Fools, the first footbridge over a road in Britain
In 1938 the inhabitants started to protest about the rising death toll on Western Avenue, the "Avenue of Speed and Death". They petitioned the Ministry of Transport to impose a speed limit of twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. The ministry said that would be an "ingenious provision" to save lives, but it would be against "the whole object of constructing a road free from congested traffic".
On 21 July 1938 the protestors filed across Western Avenue from the Approach, and then back, causing a huge tailback. The next day the Ministry arranged to build two bridges, one here and one by Gipsy Corner, much to the disgust of the protestors, who thought it would encourage cars to drive faster and to force pedestrians off more roads onto bridges and subways. A week later a thousand people demonstrated again for "their right to cross on the level".
In September the hastily erected bridge was complete, and five hundred people demonstrated against it again. The bridge became a tourist attraction and it was "quite usual to see people from other districts coming to look at it".
In October torchlight processions were held on the road every evening for a week, with a dog with a red light attached to it and four bearers carrying a coffin, and placards saying "We want crossings not coffins".
The war brought and end to the protests, and for a few years the traffic.
(from Leadville: A Biography of the A40 by Edward Platt)
It makes sense, having the right of way won’t save you if you decide to dart out in front of a car without warning
When people moved from farm to city and suddenly we had massive amounts of worker abuse, labor laws got introduced.
Barnstorming aviation gave way to regulated aviation.
It's not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a reaction to change in the operating environment. I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc. Today streets are prescripted and need to meet various contextual requirements (volume, traffic flow, vehicle types, pedestrians, weight limit, wear characteristics, etc.)
When a car gets crushed on the tracks, it's usually not blamed on the train. It's typically thought of as the responsibility of the car driver.
Now, sure, trains are constrained by tracks and don't enjoy manoeuverability, but same with ships, the little ones get out of the way.
Cars can't stop on a dime, so we put the ones on the entity with the most manoeuverability, in this case people.
It would be interesting to see data about the existence of the crime, and its enforcement. I know about the US and Europe, not so much elsewhere.
It's also worthwhile to consider all that cars have added to our society. People stayed in the streets because that's as far as they could go. Vendors came to the streets because that's where their customers could get to. Travel was limited, the movement of goods was basically nonexistent compared to today and "moving for a job" was not even a possibility for the majority of Americans.
We introduced cars, then made them faster because that enabled more of what we wanted for ourselves, and sure, we made a sacrifice in that trade but I don't understand this modern trend of decrying our future for love of navel gazing through the past.
Luckily, there are other societies that have managed to achieve most of the benefits of cars with fewer of the costs. We can learn from them as we try to find a balance that is acceptable to a broader population.
Having a combination of sidewalks and roads is the best of both worlds - both pedestrians and cars are free to go as fast as they want, without having to get in each other's way. I've personally experienced the chaos of driving through unruly streets, where pedestrians can get in your way at any second. It's intensely stressful and frustrating to spend half an hour on a drive that could have been easily accomplished in 15. I'll take the smooth roads, demarcated lanes and traffic lights, thank you very much.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern...
coin check
[1] https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
[2] https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2014/03/bsnyc-no-friday-fun...
But for 30 minutes every day, I’m just an ordinary pedestrian. And I follow the traffic rules and regulations which apply to pedestrians religiously: always cross at a crosswalk, never cross on Red, even if the intersection is devoid of traffic. Why do I do that? Because as a driver and as a pedestrian, I understand the challenges and the dangers of being on both sides. It has to do with discipline and maintenace of the very high standard of living I enjoy in the country where I live. Being undisciplined would erode that standard.
Many pedestrians are undisciplined. I see them crossing the road at places other than a crosswalk. I see them crossing the road on Red, while as a fellow pedestrian I patiently wait to cross at a crosswalk when the traffic light turns Green. It angers me greatly when other pedestrians aren’t disciplined, not only because they erode the standard of living, but because I could have just as easily been the driver who unwittingly hits them and has to live with that for the rest of her or his life.
And yet a lot of pedestrians don’t abide by traffic laws and a lot of bicyclists actively abuse and violate it. I just had a guy take my right-of-way in a rotor (roundabound) and fly right in anyway although I was already in it and about to make an exit, and when I honked my horn he just waved me down like it was nothing; If I had hit him even though he broke the law, the court would by default favor him because he was on a bicycle, never mind that when they are on one they are a vehicle like any other for the purposes of traffic laws and they have to abide by them.
The relationship between automakers and L.A.'s city government back in the 20s an 30s is an interesting topic. They seem to have had an enormous amount of power over the city. Automakers were instrumental in shutting down the extensive subway system as it transformed into the car based city it is today. Was this due to corruption or was L.A. just preparing for what we thought would be the future of transportation?
Seems much more sensible, and reasonable - basically you're technically free to cross as long as you're not immediately next to a pedestrian crossing, in which case use that.
Pedestrian crossing light control system is heavily geared towards cars, though, as pressing the button never changes the current cycle but merely says we'll consider your needs at the next check point. These intervals may be several minutes long (at least that's what they typically feel like).
I'm comparing this to Norway when pressing the button often has a rather immediate effect.
But in areas without crosswalks, you’ll get a ticket for stepping into the street even if there are no cars coming.
Edit: clarity
People who get tickets deserve them because they are obviously not paying attention to their surroundings.
If you can't see that a cop is there, what else can't you see?
http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-...
Interestingly enough, their source was an article from Vox from 2007: https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2934608/N...
EDIT: the article references the original author's work and the book (also cited as a source by the show) http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Traffic-American-Inside-Techn...
If you can find the total or per capita miles driven in 1923, I think that would make the data complete. But it seems quite clear pedestrian deaths are vastly lower now than in 1923.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...
The figure in the article is similarly reporting all automotive fatalities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...
I clearly wrote "pedestrian/car deaths" and linked to a source that clearly explained it. I'm not sure how else to put it.
Here's a better answer [1]: 21 fatalities per 100M vehicle miles of travel in 1923 to 1.36 in 2007. That should completely answer the request for a source.
[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/p...
[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/p...
Anything can be made to look like a massive net negative with the one-sided comparison that it's fashionable to apply to cars, social conservatives, and a handful of other topics around here.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hester+St,+New+York,+NY,...
It would be a lot easier to have a productive discussion if there were some way to have it in terms of something people find more neutral. Maybe find+replace cars with aircraft and people with service vehicles. Fork trucks, pallet jacks and foot traffic could be another substitution.
It makes sense to segregate traffic and govern their interactions with defined rules and put lots of redundancy in those rules. That's why bike lanes and sidewalks, are a thing. In ports, rail yards, construction sites, mines an anywhere else there's a lot of different traffic there's similar rules about who goes where and how they interact with each other.
Interactions between classes of traffic need to be well defined and include lots of redundant rules for safety. Redundant rules allow the slack from a violation of expected behavior by one party to be picked up by another party that is following the rules that govern how it should behave.
With regard to this article in particular, I see jaywalking laws being more a result of society tolerating micro-managerial laws than I do on any special interest group.
Jaywalking laws would have happened sooner or later. The only reason people ascribe them to the automobile industry is because the automobile took over from the horse at about the same time period where society started tolerating putting the force of law behind what's just good manners.
If someone crosses the street in a dumb manner and expects other traffic to "just deal" they're in the wrong. Whether it's a car running red light or a pedestrian or a rider on horseback cutting off an ox cart does not matter.
There are no jaywalking laws in the UK. So I don't think that's true.
The "jaywalking law" in my state is that you have to use a crosswalk if it's within 300ft. In practice this means that you either use a crosswalk, or cross the street in a reasonable manner at a reasonable time. It's like speeding. If you behave reasonably you have nothing to worry about.
The US seems to have more restrictive laws about traffic behavior and enforce them less.
If you compare jaywalking laws with the rules vehicles have to follow[1] the result is that if one party is following all their rule. It's similar to the redundancy in road traffic laws (e.g. a safe following distances and using one's signal provide redundancy that prevents rear endings when one party doesn't do one of those things)
[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian-cross...
No.
There is semi-binding guidance called the Highway Code, which includes sections for pedestrians (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedes...) but there are no criminal or administrative penalties for not complying, except for Rule 34 (railway level crossings) which carry a criminal fine.
Crossing the road in a dangerous way is discouraged by education ("The Green Cross Code") and by the obvious downsides of getting hit by a car. If you do something stupid you may well get a bollocking from any passing police officer, but no fine.
edit: The Highway Code is actually a very good example of (kinda) law which is sensible, well-expressed, easy to read and well-illustrated. Well worth a look.
The Highway Code does say that you shouldn't cross within the zigzag lines of a "proper" crossing, but that's just Best Practices, and not enforceable. There are also roads where pedestrians are excluded altogether (no possibility of a footpath, no walking on the verge, fenced off apart from sliproads). The same rules exclude low-powered and slow vehicles from those roads too.
* http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1982/1163/contents/made
edit: OK, yes, obviously you can and should distinguish between streets and roads, the former being smaller and mainly for residents and visitors of a subsector of the area (who can play hacky-sack on their residential street if they so well please, and you still have to wait for them), and the latter being mainly for car transportation in and out of the area itself. You can prioritize humans in one and cars in the other.
https://lsmlomza.pl/pliki/2014/03/lsm-znak1.jpg
And it basically means that pedestrians have an absolute priority before cars, they can walk on the street as much as they like and you as a driver have to exhibit some extreme attention because if anything happens, it's 99% certain you will be found at fault.
Warning of children in/near the road: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Ma...
As for the obscurity: A lot of traffic signs are, you learn their meaning in driving school.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street
In Europe you have to demonstrate knowing traffic signs before you get a driver's license. They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
I'm unaware of any state in which you don't have to do the same to get a learner's permit.
Test questions are a mix of obscure regulatory stuff (e.g. "what is the penalty for a 1 time DUI if the offender is age X and they have had Y speeding tickets in the last $X months?"), identifying signage (e.g. "a do not enter sign is what shape and colors?") and describing the appropriate action in a particular situation.
>They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
Literacy is technically optional to read signs in the US as well. Only auxiliary information is communicated via text. You'd just spend a lot of time waiting around when you could take a right on red or do a lot less sitting at red lights depending on whether you acknowledge the presence of signs you can't read.
Driving is more important to being a functioning member of society so in general we make getting a license easier and don't bend you over quite so hard if you do things wrong on the road. It varies a lot by state.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich#/me...
The official meaning is "begining of a traffic calming area" (verkehrsberuhigter Bereich) but most people call it "Spielstraße" (literal translation "street for playing"). I don't know if the sign was designed after the common term for those streets or vice versa.
The picture is an adult and child playing on the street. This street is for adults and children to play in.
In practise, in countries where it's less common it will have a text description, and you'd then recognize it abroad even when you don't understand the text: http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/uploads/3/2/9/2/3292309/publi...
Circular blue must be done. Pedestrians must use this path: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/footway-sign-picture-id...
Red-bordered circles forbid something: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/no-pedestrians-road-sign-253...
And red-bordered triangels warn of something: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Singapor...
You should now understand all the road signs used outside the USA and Australia :-)
In practice, many drivers do not like them, but it's probably because they are never pedestrians in those places. I often drive, bike and walk in the place shown above and I really find it nice, even if you sometimes have to wait for a minute or so for pedestrians to cross.
It's fine. It's just not the kind of sign you are thinking of.
There are at least two kinds of sign.
One kind tells you what the rules are or gives you specific instructions. An example of this kind of sign would be one that tells you that you must wear ear protection, or one that tells you that you must wear a hard hat.
Another kind tells you that you are in a region where a special set of rules apply. Examples are construction zone signs and school zone signs. These signs don't tell you WHAT the rules are, they just tell you that you are entering a place where the rule set changes from one well known set to a different well known set.
From what others have said, it seems this sign is the second kind. It's telling you that you are entering a region where the streets are shared more equally between cars, pedestrians, and playing children than they are in most places, and so you need to follow the rules that apply to such regions instead of the regular traffic rules.
There's a design language you learn: circular for mandatory, triangular for advisory, square for informational. Blue background for positive, red border for negative.
The idea is that this is an area where people live, and where cars, playing children and pedestrians can be expected to mix. To drivers this is a strong indication that they need to take great care when maneuvering because just about anything can happen. Typically the sign is accompanied by an explicit speed limit of 10 or 15 km/hour, or, alternatively it is encoded in the local bylaws but that doesn't really help for visiting traffic.
The whole idea behind traffic signs is not that you can decode them if you have never seen them before (though that is a nice benefit if you can have it) but that given some basic rules and a small booklet of those signs you can learn them by heart and the basic rules will help you to distinguish in case you forgot a sign or weren't sure.
As such this one is pretty clear, all the elements on it are also present on other traffic signs and the blue rectangle tells the rest of the story. As a driver I have no problem understanding this sign in isolation without looking up its definition, the sign is also common enough around here that you can understand what it means by the context within which it is placed.
Incidentally it drove me crazy when I saw big red X's in circles upon moving to a place with European signage. It always felt wrong to proceed, when in fact the sign means don't stop. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50403/what-does-t...
New technologies require new ways of organizing things, in the same way nothing is expected to take precedence from a train in a shared crossing. It is technologically infeasible
Did the automakers invent 'crossing a red light' as well? Did they invent the parking meter?
I think it's pretty clear by now that organizing whole cities around the automobile was a huge step in the wrong direction and the sooner we begin to correct it the better. Just look at Copenhagen as a shining example of a city that began re-focusing its traffic on actual people (and not f*ing metal boxes taking up way too much space) decades ago.
It can help, if it means parents feel less need for private gardens.
The fact that you're not prioritizing the car doesn't mean you can leave pedestrians and cars to self-organize
And if one insists on moving a 2 ton metal cage through a city going 30 mph or more, I think having to wait now and then is a reasonable trade-off. The natural habitat of the car is the highway and that's where it should stay.
For me personally it's a great injustice that cars are so valued that I am supposed to breath one of the worst kinds of air pollutions every other morning for 180 seconds while waiting for red light at just one intersection.
Any realistic plan includes high quality public transit, with at least some of it at street level.
If the law recognizes some kind of duty to yield and let traffic through, we’re back at status quo.
I work in and regularly travel through towns and cities that have various streets and junctions marked with the "shared space" designation for about five years now. Said towns and cities have furthermore had pedestrian precincts for decades.
Coventry's plans for pedestrian precincts go back to World War 2; it has had one since 1953. Exeter beat it by 1 year.
* https://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/postwar/postwar.php?pg=pr...
It's not a crime to "jaywalk" in the UK, and I quote it as the concept simply doesn't exist here.
Also, in the UK, if you are crossing a side street and a car wants to turn into it, officially speaking, the pedestrian has the right of way[1].
[1]https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-...
Edit: Seems it's a real mix, some there are none, others have it, some have it but it's never enforced and some countries have laws that only apply within a certain distance of designated crossings:
It is illegal to ignore a red light, although I can't figure out if there's a law forcing you to use that crossing.
And there is probably some kind of law against creating dangerous situations, but that's not exactly a law against jaywalking.
//Edit, I stand corrected. It's a very minor offence, costing you 10€ if there's no signal, if there's a signal 5€ if traffic is endangered and 10€ if an accident was caused. 10€ for crossing the Autobahn (or, more likely, your life)
In the UK it is very common to cross even if the man is red. I've been in walking conversations with continental Europeans in London, then suddenly noticed they aren't at my side any more because they stopped at a crossing that was clear.
I think your reasoning belongs with whatever lies behind the need for the "State law: Yield to Pedestrians in Crosswalk" signs[1] which I find confusing in the USA. In which states am I not supposed to yield?
[1] https://images.roadtrafficsigns.com/img/lg/K/Yield-To-In-Cro...
Everyone has a duty to try and prevent an accident if possible, but you do generally get to trust that a green signal means no pedestrians are going to dart out.
Giving a green light when pedestrians actually have right of way is incredibly dangerous. Why not a 4-way stop or uncontrolled to avoid a false sense of security?
No. That is unreasonable for children, the blind, the intoxicated, the mentally ill, the distracted and the reckless.
It's fine for the driver to be annoyed by having to slow or stop, but they absolutely must do that whenever it's necessary.
> "GREEN means you may go on if the way is clear." [1]
The second part very important. You must always be able to stop the car within a visible distance, and green traffic lights don't change that.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/light-signals-c...
There is also evidence that doing away with the aggressive use of traffic furniture to separate cars and people leads to safer driving. This also reduces the risk of people being crushed against railings and so on.
I think you should probably know better than to try and generalize all of Europe on a topic like this.
On the other hand if you go to France everybody crosses everywhere all the time and most drivers won't stop to let you cross on a walkway unless you're already on the middle of the road. I don't know if jaywalking is an offense over here but if it is I have never ever seen it enforced. You could jaywalk right next to a cop and nobody will care.
It is if on a designated motorway, motorway slipway or any other highway designated as a 'special road' under the Road Traffic Act 1984.
If a person uses a special road in contravention of this section or of regulations under subsection (2) above, he shall be guilty of an offence.
When a pedestrian gets hit by a car, the driver is responsible, crosswalk or not, unless the pedestrian was drunk, or actively trying to commit suicide (but good luck proving that).
Pedestrians still have right of way in almost every situation. Also note that bicycles are vehicles just like cars, and they must obey the same rules.
The article didn't prove that car manufacturers created jaywalking laws. The best they came up with was that they were involved in helping shape the laws that governed road. And why wouldn't they?
No doubt there were a number of different factors that led to current jaywalking laws. Auto manufacturer influence was just one of them.
But it makes for a much compelling story to simplify the issue and just call out one party.
>"Ultimately, both the word jaywalking and the concept that pedestrians shouldn't walk freely on streets became so deeply entrenched that few people know this history"
The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation.
No. The rules exist now because the majority of people agreed that cars should be given the road and people should be given the sidewalks, and that people darting to and fro on the street would be very bad for everyone involved.
Sure the car industry backed these ideas, but people accepted them because they made sense.
And yes, cars are bad for pedestrians. They impede their travel, sometimes hit them, cause air and noise pollution, and are highly space inefficient. We allow cars in cities so that we can traverse cities more easily, but from a pedestrian's perspective, cities would be far better without cars.
There is also mass transit, which can go over rails away from pedestrians or even underground.
This is also a point for automobiles.
These only work if the destination isn't an event that requires attendees to be presentable and thus avoid smelling like cyclists. (And if it was close enough for a "casual-effort cycling" then it was close enough to walk, too.)
> a segway
These are illegal in a huge number of places, iirc.
That didn't used to be true. I'm fascinated by ideas that become so canonized, so ingrained that you can't even imagine the alternatives.
> This article tries to make this seem like a pedestrian dystopia compared to the good ole days when kids could frolic in the streets.
Well said, we do live in a pedestrian dystopia now. I love that many urban areas in the US and globally are now designing more pedestrian and bike friendly streets.
Bikes are worse than cars. Cars respect pedestrians, at least in NYC. Bicyclists are a terror. Just my opinion.
I'm sure it feels like that sometimes, and I have no doubt that in NYC that you have witnessed some bad bike behavior, but even in NYC cars are the greater threat to pedestrians by a long, long way. Here are some statistics:
Just so you don't have to read through all the links, in the three years 2014+2015+2016, there were 3 pedestrian fatalities and 932 injuries in all accidents between a pedestrian and a bicyclist. In the same time frame, there were 32,217 injuries and 421 fatalities in all accidents between a pedestrian and a car.
Between 2002 and 2016, there have been 10 pedestrians who died from a bicycle collision, and 2,345 who died from a car collision. The rate of death from bikes vs cars is 0.42%.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2014-bicycle-crash...
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/10/the-rate-of-p...
Something to keep in mind is that the main reason bikers are behaving badly is defensive biking turned aggressive. It's when they're terrified of cars and don't have a safe space of their own that they act stupid. If we design better biking spaces that are separate from both the driving and the walking spaces, both behavior and safety on the whole will improve. Cities across the US, including NYC, are studying this and have been proving it true for years.
> It was enough to make me wish I had a steel pipe to stick in their front wheel and laugh in schadenfreude as they get carted off to the hospital.
I hope you never act on that wish, it wouldn't play out well for any party involved. (And, incidentally, it's not schadenfreude if you cause it to happen.)
I know that peds, bikers, and drivers at times are all frustrated and scared of the others. Take pity on the minority of assholes, rather than get angry. If we understand they're just scared and acting out, then we can ignore the bad behavior and focus on improving the situation as a whole.
Perhaps you need to take a good look at yourself.
Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Cyclists are not pedestrians.
The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation.
No. The rules exist now because the majority of people agreed that cars should be given the road and people should be given the sidewalks, and that people darting to and fro on the street would be very bad for everyone involved.
Sure the car industry backed these ideas, but people accepted them because they made sense.
Sure there are, cities in the US are starting to build better alternatives already.
> The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation.
True, the article does make it seem like that. Because that's what happened, it's a fact that US auto industry propaganda led to the establishment of jaywalking laws.
> Sure the car industry backed these ideas, but people accepted them because they made sense.
You seem to be wanting to litigate the safety of mixing cars and pedestrians. Nobody here is arguing that walking in the street is safe. The article is the story of what happened, which isn't up for debate. We can argue about whether crossing the street should be legal, if you want, but there are many countries in the world where it's not illegal to cross the street. There are many people in the US who think it shouldn't be illegal, and also think crossing a busy street is a bad idea.
Sometimes people dont follow accepted standards unless that standard is legislated. If the standard is important enough, it should be legislated. This standard will vary from person to person, but eventually we resolve the issue and either legislate or not.
I think enough people would have agreed that jaywalking should be legislated about to have it actually written into law with or without auto industry marketing.
Logic and speculation doesn't explain history. If you think the propaganda wasn't the only reason, then bring some historical evidence rather than opinion.
The fact that some other countries don't have jaywalking laws, even though everyone everywhere agrees that walking in the street can be dangerous is already evidence that jaywalking laws are not a given.
> I think enough people would have agreed that jaywalking should be legislated about to have it actually written into law with or without auto industry marketing.
Someone else already mentioned this here, but that is not how US traffic laws are created. The public doesn't have to agree or disagree with it. It can sometimes influence the process, but public opinion doesn't usually make or break traffic laws.
That's a very generous interpretation of how laws are created and passed in this country.
In the UK it's not a crime to walk in the road. It's just a bad idea, for the reasons you mentioned.
Traffic laws have redundancy to provide damage control for parties that don't follow the rules that apply to them.
Cars aren't allowed to hit people. People aren't allowed to cross in certain places. Hopefully at least one party is doing what they're supposed to do at all times.
Another way, is to give pedestrians priority and expect drivers to exercise due caution to not hit them the same way they do other cars or trains or ambulances or whatever.
In an alternate universe where the laws had ended up with pedestrian-priority being the norm, then you'd be coming in here saying "Cars shouldn't drive freely on the streets! Streets are for people! People have been walking freely on streets forever and now you're proposing we vacate them for the convenience of drivers?" and so on.
So let me ask you this: how are you any more right than alternate-universe-you? Other than the status quo bias that you're defending the way things currently are where you (and I) live.
Given the inertia of cars, starting and stopping frequently takes tremendous energy. Cars having to avoid pedestrians would waste tremendous amount of energy.
Also when you're driving you're focused on what's in front of you. People darting to and fro on the street is almost impossible to keep track of when you're driving and focused on the road ahead.
This is not an opinion. This is fact. And so, taking these facts into account, we've decided a system that optimizes energy use and safety for everyone involved. Pedestrians have sidewalks, cars have streets.
Complaining about this system is just silly.
The fact that cars are given priority because its more efficient to do so doesn't imply that people think they're more important. In a world with only bikes we would make the same contract so that bikes could go faster.
Allowing cars to achieve and maintain speed increases efficiency without impacting pedestrian walk times. Compared to this, a system where roads are shared does waste energy, time, and economic value.
Probably, but "energy, time, and economic value" isn't necessarily an unalloyed good that must be striven for. There are societal costs to the decisions we've made.
Optimal for whom? Why should I as a pedestrian have to wait or take an alternate route (e.g. a cross-walk) just to save you a bit of time and energy? Why is your time more important than mine, just because you're driving a car? Why is a pedestrian's safety less important than a bit of energy? These are people we're talking about! If there are limits or inefficiencies about stopping and starting, that sounds like a design flaw in the car to me, not in our laws.
We have certain roads where drivers get priority -- they're called freeways. Everywhere else, you're a person using the road just like anyone else. If you can't keep track of a few people walking around, then you're going too fast! Slow down. Then you'll have more time to react, and it'll even take less energy to stop.
If I were to run on foot through the streets, tackling anyone who got in my way (after all, I would have wasted time and energy moving around them!), then I'd get charged with assault. They certainly wouldn't get charged for impeding me by getting in my way, would they? Of course not, I hit them! Why does anything change just because you're sitting in a car? Why does that give you special status, to the point where it's okay to endanger other people who might want to use the road?
Obviously cars should not hit pedestrians, but IMO it doesn't make sense to have the slow group getting in the fast group's way all the time. The time and energy needed for me to go 15 miles without a car is much, much greater than the time and energy it takes for me to wait at crosswalks when I'm walking places. You could weigh pedestrians' time and energy twice as heavily as drivers' and you still end up with it being better to have many (not all, but many) roads be primarily car-places.
The roads end up mainly for traffic anyway, because people aren't dumb, and they're well aware that most drivers would prefer to kill them than make the effort to press the brake pedal. But there's no need to enshrine this in law and prevent people from crossing where they please when the road is empty, the traffic light and/or slow-moving, or the mass of people large enough.
The jaywalking idea was to add teeth to this; you want to train pedestrians to use crosswalks and signals. Its better all around.
> now you're proposing we vacate them for the convenience of drivers
This argument already happened and would probably go the same way if it happened again. The value proposition for vehicles is too strong. I agree that's it decreases pedestrian liberty to an extent but our current system allows for cars to reach their destination much faster and doesn't meaningfully impact walk times.
I will agree that having walk-only city centers is a good idea. Just so long as there is ample parking on the border.
The "I have a tank and I'll go where I damn well please!"-universe version of them shows up, then they all agree with that one. So tanks are clearly the answer to the cars vs pedestrians argument.
Firstly, that's an assumption that not everyone shares — there are alternative solutions to mass transit. Secondly, even if you, say, accept that driving across medium distances — across the city, but not to the corner shop — is a "good thing", that just means that there have to be some large transit roads, intended only for cars; residential streets could still be freely used by pedestrians, either with very stringent speed limits or no car access, at all.