Millions of vehicles have unexpected, dangerous front blind zone
wthr.com
wthr.com
Cars (and the distrust of the ability of the people driving them) are the cause of so much worry and concern.
- There’s anxiety over walking, biking, or running places (not even that far away) because of the worry over cars.
- No parents I know want to let their kids ride their bikes across the neighborhood to their friends’ houses or to/ from school because of the worry over cars.
- Some people even drive their dogs to the park instead of walking around the neighborhood because of the worry over cars.
Cars basically monopolized the idea of transportation, and in effect it is also hard to separate from them. “Sharing the Road” doesn’t work in practice, as the sharing is never enough to make anyone not in a car feel comfortable about it.
We need some kind of government initiative or legislation or something meaningful to equip cars and safety features to mitigate the dangers of cars for the rest of the world around them. It’s going to take forever to be implemented if car manufacturers just roll out these things as “premium features” - that’s like enabling a system of charging extra for a car to come with seatbelts.
I’ve heard, “Well, I grew up in the {60s, 70s, 80s} and we would play in the streets and be ok around cars.” Yea, well, go look at the specs of cars from those decades. People weren’t driving around in F-150s, Chevy Surburbans, and 260hp 140mph sportscars like they are today.
A bit later, she heard the sirens. The police cars and ambulance went right past our house, in the direction of the dead-end street. She came running out of our house, to find my brother and I sitting on our bikes at the entrance to the dead-end street, watching the show.
It turned out the "show" was a neighbor boy about my age. He got hit crossing the road. He's been in a wheelchair ever since.
So, yes, we did a lot of things in the 1960s. Some fo us got away with doing them. Some didn't. For those who didn't, the consequences could be pretty heavy.
People are super, super afraid of everything.
Now, I will say that people looking at their smart phones or driving with headphones on (this is a thing. What the heck, what is wrong with these people. No, I don’t care if they’re on a phone call, blue tooth for your car is a thing) is a new thing and is very distracted driving.
I support safety mandates to implement safety technology in cars and retrofit it to older vehicles too.
The road is filled with assholes and dumbasses, and while the assholes certainly suck, as a person who walks/scooters around in the city, the dumbasses are the ones that I've learned to really to watch out for.
People looking at their phone while driving, people distracted that are looking away from the road, old people driving that can't even see a crosswalk and don't notice red lights, etc.
Part of the reason, I think, are the almost laughable qualifications to renew a license in most places, and another part is the lax assignment of responsibility on drivers to be competent.
I trust safety technology to do it's job better than I trust 100% of people to be competent while driving.
Like many things, even if 9/10 people do the right thing, all it takes is 1 person to fuck it up for others.
Kids should be taught to be aware of their surroundings and that if you can't see the driver of a vehicle, then they likely cannot see you either.
Ultimately though, all that is really just a last-resort safeguard against driver inattention and/or poor parenting. The driver of the vehicle should be 100% responsible for their actions, regardless of safety assistance features like cameras.
Even in my own experience of rear view cameras, pedestrians crossing close to the rear of the vehicle are obscured by the rear pillar until the last second, so it doesn't make mirror checks optional. I imagine similar issues exist for forward-facing cameras where a child walking towards then across the front of the vehicle could be obscured by the A-pillar until it's too late to stop. Again, the driver is responsible to check those areas by moving their head or even getting out of the vehicle and physically checking the blind spot if there are any doubts.
I had thought this article was going to be about A pillars. With modern ones I feel like there is an insufferable blind spot right in the arc of my turn. I know about increasing fuel economy and crash standards, but it feels like there has got to be another way.
- There is a camera on the 'out' side of the A-pillar;
- There is a screen on the 'in' side of the A-pillar;
- The car tracks driver's gaze and projects the camera view on the A-pillar screen, so as to stitch together the views from the windshield, A-pillar screen, and the side window.
The result being, it looks like the A-pillar is not there at all.
I wonder if some car already has that. Iirc some teenager presented similar solution on a science fair.
I think driver viability has be seriously compromised in the last 20 years. And suspect that we've only be rating cars by how safe they are for their occupants. Instead of over all. Not sure but I think pedestrian deaths are up sharply in the last ten years.
Definitely not in the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/...
„In 2016, 5.320 pedestrians were killed in road accidents in the EU (excluding Lithuania and Slovakia), which is 21% of all road fatalities. During the decade 2007-2016, in the European Union, pedestrian fatalities were reduced by 36%, while the total number of fatalities was reduced by almost 41%.”
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/01/pedestrian-deaths-rea...
I think it's relatively common to believe that weapon manufacturers are blameless and it's the owners that should keep them under lock and key.
Would you go so far as to say individual consumers are responsible for climate change because we use oil products?
If a drug company pushed doctors to prescribe more oxy, do they bear any responsibility for an increase in addiction rates?
I'm not saying I have the answers here, it just seems interesting to see where it applies.
I love going fast- In the city or in neighborhoods/parking lots with little ones 25mph is too fast- I generally idle through those areas or go about 20. On city streets 40-45mph is comfortable where I am....Much of how safe I feel going is actually up to good civil engineering. 'Road Diets' are all about mixed use and slowing down the speed delta with cars, bikes and peds sharing the same area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet
I love going fast- with technologies like forward collision radar systems and lane assist technologies we are hacking the human condition to augment our abilities. Cars are getting safer as we go even faster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
I disagree with your statement that we should not go over 25. But I am also willing to be that I drive through more nothingland than you do each day. Going over 25 in a crowded city is not the same as a highway in BFE. Am I accurate there?
For some of us, Driving is a hobby and cars are very fun. I love the hell out of my cars.
In the relatively recent path they just died and families had lots more children to make up for the loss. Now we have far fewer children and we are expected to watch then 24/7 without a lapse in observation or concentration.
Absolutely blind and uphill alleyways are a thing I will always panic about while trying to drive out of.
archive.org to the rescue:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200209133850/https://www.wthr....
1) people will aggressively creep up in cars against my rear; and,
2) when pedestrians decide to cut between cars when walking at a stop light.