There's something called "left turn hardening". This involves minor barriers to channel drivers into making wider left turns. New York City does a lot of this.[1]
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/turn-calming....
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/turn-calming....
> At SFMTA, we’re working hard to help drivers make left turns the right way. We’ve installed Left Turn Guide Bumps at designated intersections around the City, with painted safety zones and raised bumps to remind drivers to slow down and make squarer left turns. We’ll test how well these treatments make left turns safer, with a long-term goal of installing calming project at other intersections where they are needed most.
Escape shouldn't be an option, it won't work on the sidewalk either. Optimizing for that is optimizing for failure.
I literally drove all around town yesterday, a nice cool -5C (23F) with about 30-40 cm of snow which came in the last week, no problem at all. No bent poles anywhere (anecdotally). Always fun feeling the ABS kick in at the slightest too hard touch of the brake pedal, even with studded tires.
Refuge islands can be fairly safe, but not in this situation, where the pedestrian is standing a few feet away from fast moving traffic, with no curb and only a flimsy plastic pole for protection.
https://goo.gl/maps/8wP7UUb5ZtFm7uu87
Here's a more newly designed one, it should be possible to wait with a bike or a stroller there and still feel safe. See this high traffic and speed intersection without any lights. Would still want completely separated lanes though.
> yesterday, a nice cool -5C (23F) with about 30-40 cm of snow
Not sure if you're in US but if you are, and clearly live somewhere with snow, you must know that the snow-treatment budget is always an easy target for cuts.
I know you see a lot of concrete (+ grass) road medians in the South. Do those have a similar effect or do the cones need to extend out to really work?
I noticed how few of them are there in North America.
2) Because if it's a dedicated turn signal, you dramatically increase cross-traffic wait time. To compensate you need better signal timing to minimize the number of stops, but that tends to increase speeds, which is not good for pedestrians. If the signal isn't dedicated, it doesn't actually make it easier for the driver to see pedestrians as their attention is still split.
The problem with San Francisco is its reliance on surface transportation, both cars and buses. I live in the city but I can drive downtown 2x faster in a car then if I took the bus, whether there's traffic or no traffic. And while I'd prefer to take public transit, I don't prefer spending 45m-1h in a bus (the "rapid" line) when driving only takes 20-30m. That's an additional hour out of every work day, and an hour spent sitting at that. (I wouldn't mind walking 15m to a subway that would speed me downtown, but that's just not in the cards here. They're even discussing cancelling the Geary BRT project after only building a few bulb outs and painting some lanes, which in actuality saved 10 minutes at the very best.)
As a pedestrian I hate cars. However, in this city I can't only be a pedestrian. To get from one part of the city to another, I need to take surface transportation, which to be efficient needs fast, smooth flowing traffic. (And to be most time efficient for me, that means driving a car, at least to any place where there isn't a direct bus line.)
Doing things correctly requires a comprehensive solution which includes building new infrastructure rather than simply tearing down old infrastructure. Unfortunately San Francisco politics is too paralyzed. One the one hand you have the people who want to tear things down--close streets, etc. On the other hand you have people who don't want anything to change. And on the third hand... well, there is no third hand.