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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

There's a near-exact correlation with the rise of smartphone use in the US. Anecdotally, I've almost been hit more often in recent years here in NYC and it's almost always due to absolute morons staring at their cell phone while behind the wheel.

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Anecdotally, and I'm sure other people can share similar experiences: I've also had a couple of instances of people jay walking, popping out from behind a parked car right into the road - staring at their cell phone and not at the street around them - and have had to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting the person. I'm glad to have been paying attention but things could have easily gone badly.

popping out behind a huge SUV or truck nearly as tall as an adult...

Not sure if you're trying to justify the jaywalking here, but if you want to live through 2020, I suggest looking before you leap.

who said anything about jaywalking? big cars block visibility at intersections too.

Because you were in a car with the potential to kill people. Don't equate the two things like they are somehow the same.

If you think pedestrians "jaywalking" is the problem, you are the problem.

What I was pointing out is that distraction is the problem. Walking on a street and operating a vehicle are both potentially dangerous tasks, and people need to be vigilant looking out for others and themselves. If you're going to cross the road -jaywalking or not-, you should look both ways. You can't assume that a driver is going to see you, just as a driver can't assume that you aren't going to hop out in front of them, right or wrong as you feel that may be.

This is 1900s rhetoric. Putting up a poster in the 737 cabin to "watch out for MCAS".

It's now 2019. We're smarter. We know how to engineer streets to not embarrass ourselves further with meaningless "appeals to everyone to watch out".

City streets are dangerous -- this is a fact.

Can you provide a example of these 'engineered streets' that you are talking about? I truly don't what you mean here.

Your story of the time you encountered a drunk/stoned/distracted pedestrian is not really helpful to this discussion. No one is claiming that pedestrians are someone perfect. The fact is that most collisions are caused by an error on the part of the driver. Knowing who to blame still doesn't help but false claims that the pedestrians are to blame tend to cause people to forget about the problem.

A pedestrian staring at their phone is mostly risking injury to themselves, but also risking others for a poor driver that swerves to miss them and into others. A driver staring at their phone is mostly risking injury to others, especially pedestrians and bikers who they will severely injure or kill. They both suck, but one is making a far more selfish/basically evil choice.

Are smartphones not available in Europe?

There are other circumstances that can account for the same relationship not being as prevalent in Europe. Here, for example, cars intermingle with bicycles all the time, at pedestrian crossings pedestrians always have the right of way and there are shared roads that are open both to vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The circumstances aren't great for getting into the habit of looking down at your phone while driving in the first place. It was still perceived to be a problem here, so now it's illegal.

Anecdotally, cars in Europe on average also seem smaller than those in the US, and maybe a similar correlation for vehicle-pedestrian accidents exists but simply don't result as often in fatalities.

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