Why the article doesn't mention of distracted and inattentive pedestrians? It might be possible that the sudden increase in deaths is due to the rise of handheld distractions.
Also the same could be true of drivers and cyclist using their handheld.
Also the same could be true of drivers and cyclist using their handheld.
The ultimate cause of these deaths is principally in the tons of metal propelled to abnormal speeds by engines that could just as well serve the power needs of an entire row of houses. If your traffic policy doesn't realize this basic fact and instead prefers to make worthless publicity campaigns appealing for "everyone to pay attention", it is not rooted in evidence and doomed to fail.
Imagine every day we had 10+ planes crash, killing everyone inside, and we collectively shrug our shoulders, make tactless comments along the lines of "if it goes up it's gonna come down" and put up posters for plane construction workers to pay more attention putting the rattling cans together.
>Most pedestrians and bicyclists are killed or injured while they are obeying the law.
It's risky out there. Everybody, please keep your heads up!
... Oh, wait, we're victim blaming about something else this time?
The whole right vs. wrong thing is only useful in assigning blame when something really bad happens, and society wants to punish someone to achieve "justice". But having justice isn't really useful if you're dead, and not really worth it IMO if you're maimed for life. It's better to avoid the whole incident in the first place. "Justice" is nothing more than a concept society created to prevent people from seeking personal vengeance.
And sure, maybe (maybe) the legal system will penalize the driver, but is it going to change anything? No, because our society has decided that cars are more important and we're not going to curtail our usage of cars at all, and accidents like this are unavoidable because of the nature of cars and ever-increasing traffic. If we built more trains/subways to take the load off the roads, we really could reduce the cyclist/pedestrian fatalities, but the US isn't going to do that; it's proven that it's completely incapable of building new public-transit infrastructure.
Yes, this is the problem that is being discussed -- and the problem that we really need to solve, for a host of reasons ranging from public health to climate stability -- and it is a distraction from discussions of this problem (and also, condescending and unnecessary advice) to suggest that the victims of reckless motorists try harder to not be victims.
This is linked in that passage: https://theconversation.com/the-value-of-unplugging-in-the-a...
I don't know what you mean - it shouldn't matter how distracted and inattentive a pedestrian on the sidewalk is, because the cyclists shouldn't be in the same space as them in the first place.
Distracted pedestrians (and cyclists!) is a significant problem.