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Comment by Bermion | Hacker News Reader

We need to limit speed and the amount of interactions between cars and pedestrians. This will necessarily be at the expense of the drivers who will have to drive slower and get less space since they have historically been prioritized.

It is much easier to implement the necessary measures (against the will of many drivers) if it is clear that drivers run over people, not that people accidentally end up under cars.

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But the solution that comes out of that framing is to somehow shame drivers into being better, as opposed to making roads better.

Blaming the driver starts the root cause analysis in a different direction than blaming the pedestrian.

Neither solve the root problem - poor road design

Poor road design is mainly a political problem. We know how to make good roads, on the technical side it is a "solved problem", but we lack the political will to do it. So setting the proper framing did solve the root problem

Then target leadership. They're the ones responsible for building better roads (which is the whole advertised purpose of this project!).

Writing an NLP bot that rewords articles to blame the driver 100% of the time is nothing but an exercise in getting a nice revenge dopamine rush. But drivers aren't the ones building roads.

Leadership (politicians) respond to public sentiment and attitudes held by their constituents. They're not going to build safer streets, despite the benefits and means to do so, without the political will of citizens. Shifting the way the public perceives fatal car crashes would compel more people to bring up the issue with their local leaders and gather the momentum needed for such changes.

So shift focus towards how dangerous the streets are

So this is purely propaganda, then? Ends justifying means and all that?

"We need to limit speed and the amount of interactions between cars and pedestrians" doesn't sound to me like relying on shaming (which never works). Rather, it evokes like building e.g. walkways and bike paths that are physically separated from roads with cars. That is much more effective.

> But the solution that comes out of that framing is to somehow shame drivers into being better, as opposed to making roads better.

This tool actually includes a recommendation called "framing" which asks writers to incorporate sentences specifically to highlight the systemic nature of the problem as opposed to blaming individual drivers. Click on one of the examples to see, explained at https://visionzeroreporting.com/issues#framing:

Article lacks thematic framing. Readers who encounter episodic frames tend to hold individuals responsible for negative outcomes and put less pressure on public leaders to make changes. [Learn more about framing]

SENTENCES None found.

HOW TO FIX Include at least 3 thematic elements.

I agree that roads need lower speed-limits and to be made safer by their geometry. That's done by reporting on the unsafe conditions of the road.

It does no good to play this game of rhetoric, reframing the matter so the driver is at fault (which is not always the case). A driver does not decide to not run over a person because they think a news story will be more accusatory of them.

What I remember reading about the impact of speed limits is that reducing them only affects the slowest quartile or so of drivers while changes to road design such as reducing road width and visibility slow down almost all drivers. Reducing the speed of some drivers and not others increases aggressive driving and probably isn't good for safety.

I don't take the position that reducing speed is a good answer for every high-risk road situation, but for those where it is, changing the speed limit alone is likely a poor solution.

> reducing them only affects the slowest quartile or so of drivers

And having to navigate traffic that is not of a homogeneous speed creates cognitive load for all drivers. So then they don't notice things like cyclists and pedestrians.

That makes no sense. Mixed use and mixed speed creates an environment where drivers have to notice diversity of traffic, including cyclists and pedestrians.

> I don't take the position that reducing speed is a good answer for every high-risk road situation

Why not? There's clear evidence showing that crashes at higher speeds are much more deadly. IMO any street that allows pedestrians and bicycles should be designed for 20mph car traffic. If you want to drive faster than that, do it on a limited-access highway.

There are multiple solutions to your 20mph car traffic restriction, one of which is “disallow bicycles and pedestrians on this stretch of pavement”.

Limiting access to the road, e.g. using pedestrian overpasses, fencing, segregated sidewalks and bike lanes, etc... is among the options I had in mind. I don't think one solution fits every problematic road.

Roads aren't badly designed because no one has "reported" them. Improving roads for pedestrians needs to be a priority for politicians, instead of convenient commuting by cars. And for that to happen, voters need to see the world like it is: drivers run over pedestrians.

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