Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)
vox.com
vox.com
Oh, and what's the definition of "near" you may ask? While in Germany almost everything is regulated in detail, the definition of "near" is up to the cop.
ObJoke: it's midnight somewhere in Europe and no car in sight, but some people are waiting for the traffic light to turn green? You can bet that these are Germans ;-0
But like, German do not actually respect all the posted rules. Nec ver did.
The latter is not allowed anywhere in the US. However, I have seen cops giving a pedestrian a ticket for crossing right next to a giant "No Crossing" sign as they were being loaded into an ambulance. At that particular section of the street the assumption was that the driver did not intentionally hit the pedestrian as there was a blind corner.
Also, I don't know if you saw the footage from a few years back of the self-driving-car hitting the pedestrian in Arizona while the safety driver was on their phone? Without the dash-cam, the driver likely would not have been found at fault, as the cops are likely to believe a driver that says they didn't see a pedestrian crossing in the dark at night until too late.
If I hadn't been 1500 miles from home I would have gladly continued moving forward at idle speed or just left my car where it was and gone on my way but any legal hassles would have been extra painful having to travel back and fight it. As it was after about 5 minutes of this, a spot opened up two spaces over and I was able to slide over and grab it.
In the case you're describing, a car turning off a main road encountering crossing pedestrians, isn't considered a special case in NL: straight traffic always has priority over turning traffic, and if a car encounters pedestrians while turning that implies the pedestrians were going straight ahead so they already had priority by default.
> At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/introduction#ru...
And I've never been fined, while I'm sure it already happened the police had seen me. But I will admit that Germans are happily waiting while there is no car in sight - until they see people crossing by red, and then they join ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-trust_and_low-trust_socie...
And common sense might tell you that waiting at a lone traffic light in the outskirts of a town in the early morning, sun rising, no car in sight for some hundred meters in each direction, does not add value to society?
I come from a city where people jaywalk(Stockholm). Jaywalking makes the city extremely walkable, and quite frankly I suspect it was designed with jaywalking in mind. It is obvious when someone is not from Stockholm - they wait for the signal.
I don't get the ease of jaywalking in many other large cities I've been - Zürich comes close. In the UK, even crossing at a green light feels dangerous.
Not to be nitpicky, but if that were the case, wouldn't she have seen the cop?
* It wasn't unplanned. It was the purposeful design of city planners who failed to take into account unintended externalities including gridlock, pollution, and cost.
1. Cars are discriminatory: only licensed 18+ (and not too old) can drive. A whole demographics of children+teens+disabled have lost their mobility independence.
2. Cars robbed children of they street. Street should be a social place for humans, not a car storage space and a race track for rat runners.
3. (UK) 50% of car tripes are less than 1 mile. If these motorists had the option of cycling, everyone (pedestrians,cyclist,motorists) would be better off.
4. Much more....
Cities should be for people not machines. Cars should be treated as guests in our social space, not first-class citizens with cyclists and pedestrians having to tiptoe around cars.
Some links:
https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNRnKXd9sHE (Sam Balto Bike Bus)
Melissa & Chris Bruntlett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoSdNTwizHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhYcJH_m5o (Watch as 100s of Kids & Parents Bicycle to one Amsterdam School)
Robert Moses being the most egregious direct example, but Plessy v Ferguson enshrining racist segregationist laws around transportation which then provided precedent to spread to other segregationist laws.
Is racial segregation was by design (100% non Whiltes) or just happed due to economic factors (majority of non whites happens to be in this category)?
As an example, banks refused to lend in minority neighborhoods, so unlike for white Americans who used loans to bid up houses owned by white Americans and got wealth that way, Black Americans actually experienced negative housing wealth growth. Those areas are still poor, but now banks don’t lend in them because they’re not profitable, even though the reason they are not profitable is that they were never lent to in the first place.
When Black people managed to build parallel financial systems and economies to provide them wealth, usually they got their properties burned down or firebombed for their trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
And they’re much nicer in a neighborhood than speed humps
It does make some predictions that haven't dated well though (like hitting peak oil in 2023)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D6HDTu5LYmk
Apparently it's not as black and white as many in this thread would suggest.
https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2015/vat/title-7/artic...
1152. Crossing at other than crosswalks.
(a) Every pedestrian
crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or
within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right of
way to all vehicles upon the roadway.
(b) Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian
tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing has been provided shall yield the
right of way to all vehicles upon the roadway.
(c) No pedestrian shall cross a roadway intersection diagonally unless
authorized by official traffic-control devices; and, when authorized to
cross diagonally, pedestrians shall cross only in accordance with the
official traffic-control devices pertaining to such crossing movements.
(a) Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.
(b) Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing has been provided shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.
(c) Between adjacent intersections at which traffic-control signals are in operation pedestrians shall not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk.
(d) No pedestrian shall cross a roadway intersection diagonally unless authorized by official traffic-control devices. When authorized to cross diagonally, pedestrians shall cross only in accordance with the official traffic-control devices pertaining to the crossing movements.
In cities in much of the developing world the pre-jaywalking regime remains: road users with cars, carts, bikes, trucks, or on foot instead are in a delicate and complex (and often dangerous) dance of theory-of-mind and courtesy (or a game of chicken, depending).
The "right-of-way" dominated way of thinking about roads is hard to argue with when you look at most roadways in the developed world (cars zooming around on multiple lanes with few pedestrians in sight). But the idea that every pedestrian must yield right of way to every car is much more questionable in dense cities like NYC, on small, residential streets, where one car trying to go from point A to point C is effectively given total preference over all the people trying to live their lives (and cross the street) in B.
If you want it back to the old way of chaos on the streets, then you'll have to admit that horses would regularly shit all over the street and pedestrians would have to be far more careful in another sense as they crossed busy roads of buggies, streetcars and early autos zipping around with no lanes or traffic lights.
The modern system evolved because it made sense given the demand load and traffic. Cars have to follow rules, too, and have to stop at intersections, yield at crosswalks, obey speed limits, etc.
In the old days if an early auto hit you and killed you, it would be the driver's fault. Pedestrians were pushing back on cars because they were so deadly; from the article: "The November 23, 1924, cover of the New York Times shows a common representation of cars during the era — as killing machines. (New York Times)". It was automakers who deliberately propagandised and lobbied to shift public perception of blame from the person in control of the heavy machinery in a public place, to victim blame the pedestrian.
> "The modern system evolved because it made sense"
No, it evolved because it was profitable (to the automakers) and beneficial to the rich (more likely car owners) and powerful (white / preferred a country residence and a drive into town, but didn't like a streetcar letting poor black people out to the suburbs). Automakers colluded to tear up Los Angeles' electric streetcar network - the largest on the planet - and scrap it. They were found guilty in court and fined ... $1. That's not because it made sense, that's to make people more dependent on their products.
> "Cars have to follow rules, too, and have to stop at intersections, yield at crosswalks, obey speed limits, etc."
Yet they still put out fumes which affect the residents of the area they drive through, while not affecting the driver inside the car. These fumes kill a 9/11 equivalent of people every 9 months in the UK[1]. They put out noise pollution which worsens the education and health of those around and the noise pollution effects kills someone in Denmark every day or two[2], but the driver is insulated from it. They could have had to be routed around pedestrian areas, living areas, and yield to pedestrians at all times, mandatory park and ride on the edge of urban areas with bus and tram and metro transit in the pedestrianised centers - which would have made sense in various ways and been beneficial for the majority, but inconvenient for the wealthier minority of car drivers. Cars don't obey speed limits in a lot of situations; people drive some combination of the speed others are driving, what they think they can get away with, or what feels safe for the design style of the road.
The USA is up to a 9/11 of car accident deaths every two weeks.[3] Compare the response to that, to the nationwide implementation of the TSA and changes to air travel after 9/11.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17704116
[2] https://www.brainfacts.org/Thinking-Sensing-and-Behaving/Die...
[2] https://forcetechnology.com/en/articles/traffic-noise-danger...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_de_Kindermoord
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/20/the-origins-of-hollan...
In the Netherlands in many residential areas, the streets are primarily for walking and bicycling; drivers must yield to everything else, because they are the greatest danger on the road. There's extensive, comprehensive separated cycling infrastructure. There's a presumption of fault, not innocence, if you hit a cyclist or pedestrian with your car.
In the US, guns have only recently overtaken motor vehicle related deaths (which have been declining) as the top killers of children.
Unfortunately, the Dutch are weaponized against cycling infrastructure elsewhere. "Well, you can't have bicycles in the streets until you have comprehensively education of children in how to cycle", for example (despite plenty of evidence that, around the world, cyclists do not break traffic laws more than drivers.) Or defeatist nonsense like "there's no point to legal protections for cyclists in the street, we must only work for separated infrastructure."
And more generally they almost always require the vehicle most able to prevent a collision to yield right of way to all other vehicles. Cars turning across or into traffic must yield to oncoming traffic. Cars making U-turns must yield to cars turning into traffic (to my understanding because a U turn crosses 2 directions of traffic, where a turning into traffic crosses 1). A car making a turn at a stop must yield to pedestrians already in or entering the road, because a stopped car merely needs to stay stopped to avoid a collision while a moving pedestrian must stop moving and clear the way first.
Designated crosswalks by their very existence imply "this is an area you should be especially aware of pedestrians", which by nature makes it easier for a driver to avoid causing a collisions. If cross walks have been provided, it only makes sense to require pedestrians to use them if they want prioritized right of way.
If the term meant what people thought, motorists would never have the right of way, since driving is not a right, but requires a license, and the ability to travel on public highways in cars is a creation of statute, not common law.
Recent revisions of the Highway Code put about a hierarchy of road users, but opposite to the one you have put across. Smaller, slower, more vulnerable road users have priority over larger and faster vehicles.
>Designated crosswalks by their very existence imply "this is an area you should be especially aware of pedestrians", which by nature makes it easier for a driver to avoid causing a collisions. If cross walks have been provided, it only makes sense to require pedestrians to use them if they want prioritized right of way.
This begs the question. You only need specially designated areas where pedestrians might be, if it is otherwise dangerous for pedestrians to cross the road. Why build roads to be dangerous to pedestrians in the first place? Why should pedestrians have their freedoms curtailed because of the actions of motorists?
In the UK, pedestrians are not required to use zebra crossings, nor are they even required to obey a red light at a pelican crossing (it is merely advisory). Britons have the absolute freedom to cross the road wherever and whenever they please, so long as it's not on a motorway. You are simply allowed to use your own common sense and situational awareness. And we have far fewer traffic fatalities than North America, so maybe we are doing something right.
>Every rule I've seen on cycling requires pedestrians to give right of way to bicycles.
As a cyclist I find this idea appalling. What you are describing sounds like the Law of the Jungle.
Should we take this to mean that pedestrians may enter the flow of traffic willy nilly and drivers will always be found at fault in a collision? I assume not.
To me what I've been able to find sounds an awful lot like pedestrians are required to exercise due caution, and like basically less strictly worded versions of most US laws. Like for example from these rules https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedes...:
"D If traffic is coming, let it pass. Look all around again and listen. Do not cross until there is a safe gap in the traffic and you are certain that there is plenty of time. Remember, even if traffic is a long way off, it may be approaching very quickly."
Or rule 8: "If you have started crossing and traffic wants to turn into the road, you have priority and they should give way (see Rules H2 and 170)."
Which certainly seems to imply that there are times when the pedestrian does not "have priority"
Or this rule, which sounds an awful lot like the rule quoted from New York: " Where there is a crossing nearby, use it. It is safer to cross using a subway, a footbridge, an island, a zebra, pelican, toucan or puffin crossing, or where there is a crossing point controlled by a police officer, a school crossing patrol or a traffic warden. Otherwise choose a place where you can see clearly in all directions. Try to avoid crossing between parked cars (see Rule 14), on a blind bend, or close to the brow of a hill. Move to a space where drivers and riders can see you clearly. Do not cross the road diagonally."
This one sounds an awful lot to me like cars have "right of way" when the amber light is flashing and a pedestrian has not yet entered the cross walk: "Pelican crossings. These are signal-controlled crossings where flashing amber follows the red ‘Stop’ light. You MUST stop when the red light shows. When the amber light is flashing, you MUST give way to any pedestrians on the crossing. If the amber light is flashing and there are no pedestrians on the crossing, you may proceed with caution."
Even from H2 which is the main new thing I see citing the higher pedestrian priorities has "Pedestrians have priority when on a zebra crossing, on a parallel crossing or at light controlled crossings when they have a green signal.", which again certainly seems to say that when not on such a crossing or crossing against the lights that they do not have priority anymore.
>This begs the question. You only need specially designated areas where pedestrians might be, if it is otherwise dangerous for pedestrians to cross the road. Why build roads to be dangerous to pedestrians in the first place?
And yet, the UK is littered with pedestrian crossings. As near as I can tell you have an entire bestiary of different crossing types with different rules and regulations for each. Seems like they should be unnecessary if pedestrians have absolute priority over all other traffic right?
> In the UK, pedestrians are not required to use zebra crossings, nor are they even required to obey a red light at a pelican crossing (it is merely advisory).
This seems heavily contradicted multiple times from what I found above, but then there's also this (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/27/section/25/2018...):
"(2)Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1) above, regulations under that subsection may be made—
(a)prohibiting pedestrian traffic on the carriageway within 100 yards of a crossing, and "
So that sounds like you absolutely can be compelled by law to use a crossing where one is nearby.
> As a cyclist I find this idea appalling. What you are describing sounds like the Law of the Jungle.
Why? To me it sounds like a law reflecting reality. You could say a pedestrian has the right of way but when a pedestrian tries to occupy the space a bicycle is already or will be within the time that they are unable to safely stop, physics says the pedestrian will lose that fight. That doesn't mean cyclists can ride and just slam through joggers. Everyone is still requires to try to avoid collisions.
It really feels like you have a misunderstanding of what "right of way" means here. This isn't some absolute authority where cyclists may mow down pedestrians in front of them, and cars may mow down cyclists in front of them, and busses may mow down cars and trucks may mow down busses. It's trying to resolve who needs to yield when a collision is likely to occur. As a general rule like I said, the person most able to prevent the collision in the first place is given lower right of way. A car already in a lane has right of way over a car trying to merge into the lane. That isn't carte blanche to simply ram people merging into your lane out of the way, it just means the person wanting to merge has the responsibility to do so safely and not cause a collision, and if they can't merge without causing a collision, they're the one that has to wait.
Pedestrians may enter the flow of traffic whenever they like, and the law will not punish them. If there is a collision, the driver may or may not be found at fault, it depends entirely on the circumstances.
>To me what I've been able to find sounds an awful lot like pedestrians are required to exercise due caution, and like basically less strictly worded versions of most US laws.
Pedestrians are encouraged to exercise due caution. They are not required to by law. You are confusing a common-sense recommendation with a legal obligation. Drivers should never assume pedestrians will behave as they "should". Pedestrians include children, the elderly, the blind, the deaf, drunk people, the mentally retarded, and so on: people who may not be able to sense, judge, or move in the normally expected way.
You will never be arrested for "reckless walking" in the way you might be arrested for reckless driving.
(You might counter with "pedestrians should not assume drivers will behave as they should" -- quite so! The distinction I am making is: if a pedestrian uses the road carelessly because he thinks drivers will always act properly, this is stupid, but not illegal. If a motorist uses the road carelessly because he assumes pedestrians will always act properly, this is both stupid and illegal.)
The specific thing you are quoting is the Highway Code, which is not law, but a series of guidelines.
>This one sounds an awful lot to me like cars have "right of way" when the amber light is flashing and a pedestrian has not yet entered the cross walk: "Pelican crossings. These are signal-controlled crossings where flashing amber follows the red ‘Stop’ light. You MUST stop when the red light shows. When the amber light is flashing, you MUST give way to any pedestrians on the crossing. If the amber light is flashing and there are no pedestrians on the crossing, you may proceed with caution."
You are incorrect. Cars do not have "the right of way" when the amber light is flashing, because as I said there is no "right of way" to be had, in that sense you describe. A pedestrian may legally step out into the street while the lights are green for cars. It is usually a terribly unwise thing to do, but idiocy is not against the law. Sometimes it's safe, such as when there's a traffic jam. I saw many people doing it this morning during rush hour -- nothing bad happened to them because the risk was objectively low, and they would have nothing to fear from any policeman who happened to see it, because their actions were not against the law.
For cars it is different: cars must stop when the light is red for them. That is a legal requirement and there can be fines or other consequences for breaking it.
>And yet, the UK is littered with pedestrian crossings. As near as I can tell you have an entire bestiary of different crossing types with different rules and regulations for each. Seems like they should be unnecessary if pedestrians have absolute priority over all other traffic right?
You misunderstand. I never said there was no danger -- of course there is danger! Crossings are a necessary evil in many places. As a matter of common sense, they should be used. But as a matter of law, pedestrians are under no obligation to use them. The police cannot fine you for not using them.
>So that sounds like you absolutely can be compelled by law to use a crossing where one is nearby.
This is only on A-roads, and only under specific circumstances, which local authorities must opt into. It is not a blanket ban on crossing the road, like the "jaywalking" concept is. I have hardly ever run into any such marked restrictions.
>Why? To me it sounds like a law reflecting reality. You could say a pedestrian has the right of way but when a pedestrian tries to occupy the space a bicycle is already or will be within the time that they are unable to safely stop, physics says the pedestrian will lose that fight.
This isn't about the laws of physics, it's about the laws of England. Yes, a pedestrian might end up in the hospital if he jumps out in front of me before I have time to brake. But he won't end up in jail. Why is this so hard to understand? You don't need to make something illegal for people to recognize it's a bad idea.
>It really feels like you have a misunderstanding of what "right of way" means here. This isn't some absolute authority where cyclists may mow down pedestrians in front of them, and cars may mow down cyclists in front of them, and busses may mow down cars and trucks may mow down busses. It's trying to resolve who needs to yield when a collision is likely to occur.
>It really feels like you have a misunderstanding of what "right of way" means here. This isn't some absolute authority where cyclists may mow down pedestrians in front of them, and cars may mow down cyclists in front of them, and busses may mow down cars and trucks may mow down busses. It's trying to resolve who needs to yield when a collision is likely to occur. As a general rule like I said, the person most able to prevent the collision in the first place is given lower right of way. A car already in a lane has right of way over a car trying to merge into the lane.
Priority rules for traffic is a different concept to the hierarchy of road users. The former is about on what the road users are doing, the latter is about what the road users are. We have the similar rules about which vehicles need to give way to others when it comes to merging and turning and so on. But a car will always be a car, no matter what lane it is in, and hence the driver has a greater degree of responsibility in circumstances where conflict with pedestrians is likely.
In those developing countries the reason that there is chaos is because traffic rules are not enforced. When traffic rules are enforced vehicle speeds increase such that pedestrians avoid roads by their own volition.
That's a very simplistic view - it was never questionable and no one was "given preference". It was simply a practical decision in order to allow cars to use the road.
The car took a few seconds to stop from even a pedestrians walking speed. The pedestrian takes a few hundred milliseconds to stop from a walking speed.
Giving the pedestrian the right of way would simply result in a lot of dead pedestrians.
It's a no-brainer that the party to yield should be the one who can yield.
The physics didn't allow your preference, and that turned out to be an incredibly good thing as the automobile was one of the biggest drivers of trade and industry the world over.
We all benefited, yourself included, from having those early laws on the books.
Alternative no-brainer - the new entrant to street traffic that doesn't have the handling or control to safely co-habitate the street with existing users shouldn't be allowed onto streets. They should instead be restricted to specific and limited long distance routes that actually take advantage of their ability to travel many miles an hour on an artificial fuel source - with an allowance within streets to allow emergency vehicles of course.
In short, walk or take a tram to your parked car if you need to drive it to the next town.
You gotta give it to the auto-makers. Probably the greatest propagandists of the modern world.
The fact is that cars make places suck. They are dangerous to other road users, the roads built for them create dangerous microclimates, monopolise what was once shared infrastructure, and they enable evils such as the supermarket.
Cars are like guns in the states but worse.
> Cars can't safely be on streets with pedestrians, so we probably shouldn't allow cars onto roads where pedestrians could walk. Instead the only place where cars should be allowed are roads meant for long-distance driving, like interstates, as that's the environment where a cars advantages shine. Once off of an interstate, you gotta park that car in a dedicated car-storage facility and then walk or use public transit to get around. If you want to drive a car, then "walk or take a tram to your parked car if you need to drive it to the next town."
What does that have to do with what I said?
Without allowing vehicles on roads (and the jaywalking laws that came with it), deliveries to the high-density places where people live , or to city centers, would be limited to what can be drawn on a horse and carriage.
Those laws specifically benefited those people who live without cars.
The high-density car-free life you dream of would never have been possible had your "no-brainer" alternative been adopted - you can't transport that much goods, that quickly, and that often, and that reliably with horses alone.
High-density living requires much more cargo space than motorbikes can handle.
Just moving into the area alone requires an automobile (you're not moving 3 beds, 5 couches and everything else on cargo bikes). hundreds of thousands of eggs, loaves of bread and litres of milk alone is delivered in a large high-density metro per day. you aren't going to fit 100k cargo bikes into the train station.
My point is not that we need to keep autos, my point is that the high-density living we have now would not have been possible if automobiles were not allowed on roads.
We're lucky that it was allowed, because it enabled a rate of progress that would never have been possible without it.
Not at the scale we commonly have now. If you have any links to a 2000 year old skyscraper, now would be a good time to post it.
In people-centric culture, a street is a place for people. This is the way streets worked for millenia. Horses and horse-drawn carriages were usually allowed on the street as well, which are more dangerous than a person.
In car-centric culture, a street is simply a kind of road, and all roads are the primary domain of cars. There is no logical reason that this must be so - cars could, for instance, only have right-of-way on non-street roads, like highways.
Also, your assertion that cars (even old cars) cannot travel at a low enough speed to have a safe stopping distance around pedestrians is simply not true. Even a collision between a pedestrian and a car at "walking speed" (if the car completely failed to notice the pedestrian) rarely results in a fatality. Which you can easily look up yourself, but the numbers I'm seeing are less than 1% fatality rate for collisions below 10mph.
The article is pointing out that belief was a specific policy choice driven at least in part by automakers.
So, they paid for cartoonists to draw cartoons that made pedestrians look like careless idiots, got their newspaper-owning friends to write editorials, the car companies joined in, and boom, jaywaying laws.
(c) Restrictions on crossings.
(1) No pedestrian shall enter or cross a roadway at any point where signs, fences, barriers, or other devices are erected to prohibit or restrict such crossing or entry.
(2) No pedestrian shall cross any roadway at an intersection except within a cross- walk.
(3) No pedestrian shall cross a roadway except at a crosswalk on any block in which traffic control signals are in operation at both intersections bordering the block.
I assume b) is simply enforced by some regulation, but a) sounds like it could lead to lots of unintended problems. What if there's miles between two adjacent intersections? A person standing in the middle would have to know if by chance both the intersection to their left and right have a traffic light, and then walk to the closest one if that's the case (or find a marked crosswalk).
Diagonal crossing is a thing in Quebec City at certain intersections which stop the traffic flow in every direction.
Otherwise I only ever do it when I cannot see any cars which is fairly common at night in rural areas.
In general, I routinely jaywalk here, traffic permitting. If nobody's coming, I just walk. In over 20 years, I've never heard of anyone getting a jaywalking ticket in SF.
Ticket pedestrians for creating an unsafe environment. It's what we do to drivers when they do the analogous thing.
But it seems like they’re respected if you install large flashing lights that the pedestrian can activate.
At zebra crossings with no traffic island, stop and give way to people walking on any part of the crossing or who are waiting to cross.
NZ also has courtesy crossings:
Courtesy crossings are usually made of bricks or paving or raised above the level of the road. A courtesy crossing is not an official pedestrian crossing, but to be polite, you should stop for people on the footpath waiting to cross. You must give way to people already crossing.
Our cops are pretty busy - you would have to be pretty unlucky to get a ticket. But also the social norms in NZ are to be polite - drivers tend to be more forgiving towards pedestrians than some other countries. The justice system is definitely very unforgiving towards anyone that actually hits a pedestrian.
I have to disagree. Where I live in NZ a local elderly couple were run down by an impatient driver turning into a quiet side street. One died, the other was critically injured. The same driver had recently accepted fault for hitting and injuring a motorcyclist.
The sentence? 250 hours community work, $15,000 to the family as an emotional harm repayment, attend a defensive driving course, and disqualification from driving for nine months.
I might add that the driver was a very wealthy businessman (so the monetary amount is likely insignificant).
Nine months is ridiculous in my opinion.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/wellington/132178677/driver...
This might also be the reason for the light sentence? Not sure about NZ but in many countries it works this way unfortunately.
I live near one of these and not even the strobing yellow lights are always enough to get drivers to yield. I've never once been able to cross when cars are present without fairly recklessly walking in front of them.
Maybe I'll have to try the brick method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEI8ppiMzZM
I hope it teaches them. Even if you can't see anyone, if there's a pedestrian crossing, especially in an urban area, just slow down in case.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1997/2400/part/I/crosshe...
“ Precedence of pedestrians over vehicles at Zebra crossings 25.—(1) Every pedestrian, if he is on the carriageway within the limits of a Zebra crossing, which is not for the time being controlled by a constable in uniform or traffic warden, before any part of a vehicle has entered those limits, shall have precedence within those limits over that vehicle and the driver of the vehicle shall accord such precedence to any such pedestrian. “
The point is that simply waiting to cross you are not “on the carriageway” and therefore the driver of the vehicle is not required to stop (by some reading of the law).
Common custom is that you do stop for people waiting to cross but sometimes you really do have to stick a foot into the road to make people stop for you and allow you to cross.
But the Highway Code says drivers MUST stop if the pedestrian is /on/ the crossing:
> you MUST give way when a pedestrian has moved onto a crossing
This should be sufficient to make drivers understand that you give way to pedestrians at zebra crossings
This was in Switzerland, in the late 80s, and yes, drivers did not tend to stop for pedestrians waiting to cross.
What's the point of that? At that point just turn it into a proper traffic light that's always green (or off) and when activated turns red for cars and green for pedestrians.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
https://www.klfy.com/local/vermilion-parish/kaplan-starts-pe...
> “I was approached by a couple of citizens asking if there was anything we could do about certain people walking around at night riding their bicycles,”
"Certain people"
> “The curfew would more or less be at the officer’s discretion,”
Cool, so you're explicitly giving cops a legal reason to harass people if the cop thinks they looks suspicious. I can't see how any subconscious or overt bigotry could come into play here.
> “The chief noticed a big influx of bicycle traffic during the night and people walking around, [...] It’s not usually a good thing when that happens."
> "Louisiana is a stop-and-identify state, so that ordinance is not really to hurt anybody it’s just to stop these people walking that have no reason to be walking,”
Yup! Sure doesn't hurt you at all for your existence to be criminalized and your mere presence on the street to be probable cause for the cops to harass you.
> "There’s a fraction of people that believe that is infringing on people’s rights, but at the same time, I think people can sit back and put a little perspective on the situation and agree that the good simply has to pay for the bad right now,”
Something, something, possibly apocryphal quite about trading freedom for security and deserving neither.
> "that ordinance is not really to hurt anybody it’s just to stop these people walking that have no reason to be walking,”
Sir! Step back and lie on the ground! Your feet are a threat to the State of Louisiana! I'm going to need to confiscate them and you along with them.
Fuck these fascists and the spineless politicians who enable them.
That's how it's been for a LONG time. Loitering laws are explicitly that. They are often ruled as unconstitutional, as a result, law makers keep trying to find different ways to empower cops to remove "undesirables". Be it anti-camping laws, curfews, or whatever.
On January 1, 2023, jaywalking became legal in California with the Freedom to Walk Act, reversing what was once one of the strictest laws against this practice in the country. Now, pedestrians can cross the road at places other than intersections and crosswalks without penalty.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-cops-scrutiny-teens-jay...
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
There are too many cases where it's perfectly safe and reasonable to do that I see any sense in making it illegal. But it is, to be fair, very dangerous in some cases. It's hard to judge how fast a car is moving, sometimes you simply don't see one coming at you. Toronto Police call this a "mid-block crossing", and in the city, they account for a significant % of all pedestrian fatalities, particularly at night, and in busy traffic.
When I first moved from the UK to the USA, I assumed that "jaywalking" was a made-up thing that you warned tourists about, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_bear. How could crossing the road be _inherently_ illegal, even if done in a safe manner!?
Walking is just an afterthought really, until you get into certain areas like South Beach in Miami.
It’s also not illegal to cross a dual carriage way in the UK on foot afaik. Motorways are but not at A road.
This is true on average, but not a justification for jay-walking being a crime on roads which _are_ safe to cross.
I would and do, and I appreciate the law being on my side when I do.
* disregarded any safety measure (arrogant crossing red light while cars are present)
* were crossing red light in front of a Police station
Because I'm saying that the act of crossing the road _itself_ should not be illegal - merely the act of crossing it unsafely. By definition, this is not disruptive to traffic flow.
> why pedestrians should not be expected to follow traffic laws
They should. This is begging the question - I'm saying that the law itself is flawed, not that a law should exist and be flouted.
> why the law should allow pedestrians to step into traffic whenever and wherever they want
This is a strawman. Pedestrians should be allowed to step into _roads_ (not into traffic) whenever and wherever it is safe to do so.
Perhaps the phrase “perfectly safe” is wrong. Maybe “otherwise intrinsically safe” would be more accurate. Having said all that, I do wonder if we have U-turn accident statistics.
That's no longer a U-turn
There was a Boston globe article about this, where some journalist spent his day intentionally and blatantly jaywalking everywhere, including right in front of cops. He didn’t get a single fine.
[0] https://www3.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2017/05/24/what-does-...
Was the journalist white?
So, yeah, there's technically a crime of jaywalking but in practice it's mostly limited to whatever you feel you can get away with absent being run over.
Is it? It seems like in the example, both parties are following a signal. Cars must yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. Sure, some places have jaywalking laws when not in a crosswalk (in some cases including implied/unmarked crosswalks), and most require impeding traffic as a component. A few places could move towards common sense of adding impeding traffic as a requirement. Nothing I've seen says pedestrians are second class. It's like saying that one should be allowed to run a red light. Everyone can wait their turn.
Pedestrians are totally treated as second-class almost everywhere.
I'm not sure where you're from, but I have seen very few of these. Usually the ones I've seen are over a very busy road with few to no intersections and a lot of foot traffic. These are beneficial to the flow of both car and foot traffic instead of using long cycle times.
“beg buttons”
I'm sorry, but that is some extreme spin. What do you think happens at traffic signals? Those signals use sensors to identify when cars come up to them. These sensors don't work for pedestrians lacking large amounts of metal to trip the fields. So yeah, they have a button to tell the machine they want to cross. Usually, the lights change just as fast if not faster than if a car pulls up at a red light.
When in a shared space, everyone must wait their turn. If you don't, you end up with people steeping out in front if cars and people running red lights. Taking turns is part of a functioning society.
For traffic lights that are always green except when a pedestrian wants to cross we do have the “beg button” but the problem is that there is usually a reasonable delay before the lights turn red to stop the cars.
Obviously there needs to be some sort of delay between sets of red lights otherwise someone could just spend the day pressing the button and crossing all day whilst the traffic backs up. But the delay is front loaded. There doesn’t need to be such a long delay before the lights turn red if the lights have been green for a long enough period prior to that. Poor implementation.
I’m sure there’s a study somewhere where they decided to go with the pre-delay for some reason, but I’ve never found anything.
Well I’m not sure where you’re from but I have seen tons of these pedestrian bridges :) wouldn’t it be better to inconvenience the car by building an overpass? The car has an engine and doesn’t get tired.
On beg buttons: I did not invent the terminology. Look it up.
How can you explain pedestrians as second class users if they have the right of way and do not have to wait at non-signaled crosswalks?
There seems to be a mix of who gets priority based on things like volume and efficiency, demonstrating that neither pedestrians nor cars are a lower class than the other.
It's obvious major regulation was needed, and not just for pedestrians. Pretend cars didn't exist on that street for a moment and think about the changes needed to make it safe: carts needed lanes and rules for changing lanes, cable cars needed dedicated lanes, intersections needed a system to allow traffic from multiple directions, and pedestrians were being a bit too free with their judgement calls.
From https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve...
"Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph. The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph, 75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph."
Slower speeds mean a collision is less likely to occur. We're pretty good at moving in crowded conditions without frequent collisions at low speeds. See also NYC sidewalks.
Also, it appears the video is slowed down. I played at 1.5 speed to make my estimates
It's a 1990s concept from France. It was implemented in the 1990s on Theater Way in Redwood City. CA, and did not work well. One side of the street has a curb, but the other side does not. Vehicle traffic was allowed, and people could get out in front of the movie theater. The other side of the street, with no barriers, had cafe tables.[1]
This worked badly. The cafe tables kept creeping outward. Some auto traffic was too fast. During COVID, the outside seating kept growing into the roadway. Plastic bollards were erected to discourage non-delivery traffic. Overpowered electric bikes zooming through became an problem. Police cars were sometimes deployed to block the roadway. Then plastic Jersey-type barriers were set up at one end, but not filled with water, so they could be moved for deliveries. Currently, one end of the street has been torn up for installation of some kind of raiseable barrier.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.48560402,-122.22909676,5.07...
If we go back to lower speeds then maybe it could be manageable in a same way.
But as it is actually used now for 3000 pound vehicles to zoom about in, it makes no sense for pedestrians to be intersecting and sharing the space at all. Just due to the physics of collisions between a person and a vehicle. I don't think slow vehicles is a good solution because we do need to get places.
I think an actual good (but very expensive) solution is for new cities to be designed differently in several ways. One of which is for roads to be only for small autonomous vehicles and entirely separate from pedestrian paths. To make that reasonably practical you need some other core assumptions to be changed. And also a totally new development probably.
Cars can go “quickly” between cities and towns but around pedestrians they really do need to slow down.
I wouldn’t want to live anywhere where the car is king and everyone else must cede to its ultimate priority.
People need to give themselves more time to get places, rather than thinking they are far more important than the greatly decreased safety of others.
The American mindset is not. I swear that a huge portion of people in the US have been propagandized to believe that the car is king and that any idea to the contrary is heresy punishable by death under the front bumper of a Ford F-250 jacked up 3 feet higher.
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/sustainable-sa...
https://swov.nl/system/files/publication-downloads/dv3_en_ko... (pdf)
Urban design talks about street vs road. You can have places for vehicles to zoom about in (roads), and you can have places with shops and businesses and homes for people to use (streets), but you shouldn't try to make the same place serve as both. So in cities and town centres you need to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists: low (and enforced!) speed limits, narrow streets that naturally reduce speed, car-free zones. It doesn't need radical new development, you just need to break the assumption that cars are entitled to go full speed everywhere and everyone else has to deal.
As I understand it, this vision does not compute. The number of movements of people in a dense city is too large for everyone to move in a car, autonomous or not. Cars take a lot of space. They need to stop someplace for someone to get in and out, merge in and out of traffic. Streets cant be designed in a way that accomodates this at the scale of a city like NY.
Similarly, in spread-out suburbia, autonomous cars would still get stuck in traffic jams if everyone has to use them to get to work. Making cars autonomous makes things a bit more efficient, but not by orders of magnitude.
Mass transit, combined with walking and biking, is simply way more efficient for moving people in cities and is a proven model that does scale.
You can easily experience the scenario you envision, practically average 1905 San Francisco roads, by walking or biking through JFK street in Golden Gate Park, which is closed to all vehicles but food trucks and shuttles.
It's so crazy fucking nice, fun and safe so I have no idea what you're talking about.
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds
Wait why would your impulse be to regulate pedestrians at all? The street doesn't even seem that dangerous without high-speed vehicles.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/californias-new-2023...
"Starting Jan. 1, the Freedom to Walk Act officially becomes law, allowing pedestrians in California to jaywalk without fear of a ticket, as long as it's safe."
Also, most people including police misunderstand how jaywalking works, or is intended to work. Nobody should be expected to walk a mile out of their way simply because that is where the only crosswalk is. Jaywalking is technically only possible near a crosswalk, so if the pedestrian was near a crosswalk but didn't use it, then that would be jaywalking. If the pedestrian is say half a mile from the nearest crosswalk, they are free to cross so long as they yield to oncoming traffic and don't cross dangerously.
The Invention of ‘Jaywalking’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33825009 - Dec 2022 (4 comments)
California greenlights jaywalking. It’s a step in the right direction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33769009 - Nov 2022 (107 comments)
Jaywalking is decriminalized in California under new law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33077573 - Oct 2022 (6 comments)
What does a guy have to do to get a jaywalking ticket in this town? (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29135602 - Nov 2021 (6 comments)
Jaywalking decriminalization, 100 years after the auto industry made it a crime - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25497772 - Dec 2020 (438 comments)
“Jaywalking” Shouldn't Even Be a Thing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22050973 - Jan 2020 (3 comments)
Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18187751 - Oct 2018 (2 comments)
How Automakers Invented the Crime of “Jaywalking” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16158918 - Jan 2018 (424 comments)
The Invention of Jaywalking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14246003 - May 2017 (1 comment)
California's Broken Jaywalking Law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9384972 - April 2015 (65 comments)
How automakers invented the crime of “jaywalking” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893738 - Jan 2015 (189 comments)
The Invention of Jaywalking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3888104 - April 2012 (81 comments)
What about horses and carriages?
[1] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse...
[2] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p...
While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications ... how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. [21] The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).
Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward greater technologization. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but technology can never take a step back—short of the overthrow of the whole technological system.
Cars on a Monday. Lorries and HGVs switch on Wednesday. All remaining traffic on the Friday.
Done!
(Note that it was a follow up to patently satirical parent comment, but it does remind me that Sweden made the change on 3rd Sep 1967)
Edit: why disagree? We should be focusing on education and testing for the best improvement as it will be beneficial to multiple problems.
Kind of https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w1300-q80/upload/58/85/6f/shutt... vs https://mobycon.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/IMG_20190725_... - that's not quite a fair comparison but that kind of thing.
Also pedestrian deaths on the highway: the number is so minuscule it doesn't even register.
And they aren't as dangerous as many would think. Cars have done lots to improve such collisions (airbags, crumple zones). A head-on collision between cars is still two relatively lightweight objects. Hit a concrete wall, overpass support, cliff or tree and you are going up against an object that makes a care look like tinfoil. The head-on seems bad, but it is more survivable than having your car bisected around a tree trunk. Or get pulled under a big truck.
This is only really true for a very small number of places in the US, even smaller when you consider the lack of enforcement.
"killed thousands almost daily"...source for this?
https://www.hindustantimes.com/kolkata/two-west-bengal-toddl...
"Automakers accept the responsibility for the thing they've created and attempt to improve safety outcomes in a patchwork regulatory environment dominated by gridlock and disagreement."
In other words, people with driving experience are usually safer, more considerate as pedestrians.
So you get drivers who don't understand that they need to look both ways even on a one way street, because someone might be using the sidewalk, drivers that don't pay attention to walk signals at intersections, drivers that speed down low traffic streets, or drivers who don't recognize dangerous situations that they create.
I own a car, but I bike and walk a lot. The person driving the mutli-ton machine should carry the responsibility of operating it safely. It is a big responsibility, but it is their responsibility to not hurt or threaten others.
Cars don't stop as fast as feet. Everybody is a pedestrian sometimes but not everyone is a driver. You can say accountability belongs to one or the other but one is gonna walk away and one isn't. Personal responsibility should take precedent over right of way.
You cannot regulate or control others, but you can regulate yourself.
I'm fine with cars having the right of way. They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax, registration fees, inspection fees, insurance that pays for all kinds of things, and the car itself which is a huge investment into the economy. Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road. They earned it.
However, we are subject to the regulations of the people who came before us, who set up the street and road system to prioritize car transit over other forms of transit.
You can't simply ignore that existing system of controls away and claim the main issues are "personal responsibility" and self-regulation.
Not after over a century of explicit laws that shaped the very way you live and how you judge what is normal.
> They pay for the roads with sales tax, excise tax, gas tax
Those fees pay for only about half of the roads. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-taxes-and-... says:
"Nationwide in 2011, highway user fees and user taxes made up just 50.4 percent of state and local expenses on roads. State and local governments spent $153.0 billion on highway, road, and street expenses but raised only $77.1 billion in user fees and user taxes ($12.7 billion in tolls and user fees, $41.2 billion in fuel taxes, and $23.2 billion in vehicle license taxes).[3] The rest was funded by $30 billion in general state and local revenues and $46 billion in federal aid (approximately $28 billion derived from the federal gasoline tax and $18 billion from general federal revenues or deficit financed)."
For another source, https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roa... says "general taxes paid by all tax-payers cover nearly as much of the cost of building and maintaining highways as the gas tax and other fees paid by drivers".
> Quite literally it is the drivers who pay for the infrastructure used by everyone on the road.
Quite literally they do not.
https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roa...
Looking up from their phones being at the top of the list.
A great example of this is pedestrians in San Francisco. I've never seen more entitled oblivious assholes that pedestrians there. They seem to have no situational awareness and blithely jump out in front of cars. One of my favorite stupid pedestrian tricks is them jumping out from between parked cars crossing without so much as turning their heads to look for cars.
Thankfully I don't have to deal with SF pedestrians very often. The city very obviously hates cars but is decidedly dependent on them existing. The pedestrians there act dumber than a deer in the rut.
Another one that baffles me is seeing people ride E-bikes and scooters on streets with cars or worse, walk ways and trails where other motor vehicles are not allowed.
These are not environmentally friendly alternatives. They are Chinesium E-waste with low quality batteries. They will be driven for one or two years then put in a closet and forgotten about. When they do get used they typically cause more greenhouse gasses from regular cars that have to yield to them, or stop busy intersections so they can cross.
As an avid dirt bike rider it is especially frustrating because these are usually the same people (yuppies) who would call the police on me if I took my 17 year old 200cc dirt bike down the same trails.
Wait, where is the place e-bikes should be in your opinion, then?
At least where I live, the laws are quite clear which type of vehicles are allowed where. The laws here generally allow a pedal-assisted ebike to ride whereever a non-electric bicycle may ride. The pedal-assist is important.
So yeah, you probably can't ride your motorbike down a pedestrian path ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They are bad for the environment. Worse then small motorcycles. Most of the time when you see them they are crossing 8 lane intersections with the walk signal and there are 25 cars idling waiting for them to GTFO the way. If that person were riding a conventional motorcycle they would be part of traffic and contributing financially to support the infrastructure they require. Rather they are leeches. Slowing everything down and giving untrained motorists unregulated motor vehicles.
They are made to last 2 years tops and will need new batteries shipped from China. Chances are the owners will outgrow them or get bored. Then they will end up in a land fill instead of a junkyard like normal motorcycles that get recycled almost completely.
Speeding laws do little for the bikers in unsegregated bike lanes, mere inches away from an inattentive driver.
On segregated bike lanes, I’m afraid to tell you, cyclists don’t use them anyway, so why on earth should anyone focus on putting them in?
Or, if they are actually separated, they don’t go everywhere people would need to go.
The safest 3000lb piece of metal and glass is the one that doesn’t exist. Car companies need to stop advertising fairy tales to buyers to get them to buy bigger and bigger cars, and need to start advertising (lobby) to cities to have them start banning cars out of. Ore and more of the city.
As long as our cities stay designed with the primacy of cars in mind, we’ll at best be duct tapping solutions for everyone else.
And finally, “in an addressable way by auto makers, when it’s the buyers demanding larger and larger vehicles”.
A) this is not inevitable, it is North America that’s dominated by a want of giant cars. And why? Because the roads and culture are designed specifically to accommodate them.
B) the car manufacturers are still responsible for making them, and it’s not like they’re sitting around saying “darn, well it looks like people want big cars, guess we will have to make some bigger cars”. No, they are actively pushing and advertising bigger cars.
This claim is so ridiculous is invalidates everything else you might be trying to argue, come on.
Apparently in the US, it's easier for automakers to meet the efficiency requirements by increasing the weight of their vehicles instead of actually making them more efficient.
Moreover, crash testing does not include crashes with pedestrians.
The results are predictable - the rise of big, heavy, wall-like-bumper, limited visibility pedestrian killing machines.
We have roads. They are shared by all users and taxpayers for common purposes. The responsibilities are likewise shared. The available technology changed. We can't expect to force the prior status quo to continue to exist in the face of available technological changes.
This article points out that attitudes like your similarly existed at the time and contributed to the apparent delay in creating a reasonable solution.
Meanwhile.. take a look at the way life was 120 years ago. Are you eager to go back to the rural life of farm labor that implied for the majority of Americans?
In 1906 no less, at the twilight of the long horse cart era.
I just arrived at a different conclusion. To compare the number of people killed by automobiles and their infrastructure, compared to the numbers for people killed by horses (I can't give precise numbers for either, I'll admit that) - that comparison seems absurd to me.
In other words, relative to the population in urban areas, I'd be very surprised if horses causes as many deaths as cars+roads.
It had more to do with secular humanism almost fully supplanting diverse traditional value systems at the government level, and with capitalism’s insatiable hunger for living bodies that can produce and consume widgets.
I see the fines for jaywalking as a function to encourage safety rather than criminalizing sensible behaviour (ie crossing a completely empty street probably won’t yield a fine but crossing a busy street while holding your arm out to stop traffic will, and should).
This problem also exists when cycling on shared bike gutters where oblivious drivers veer out of their lane into the bike lane, roll through stop signs, or are just generally unaware that they're sharing the road with people not surrounded by 1 ton of steel.
A pedestrian stepping into the street isn't going to kill other people with their negligence - the burden of caution should not be placed onto them.
I don’t disagree that there are bad drivers, but unfortunately it’s the cyclists and pedestrians who pay the highest price for either their or a drivers negligence.
So if I’m a pedestrian, I’m going to make sure the cars are stopping before I step into traffic. Doesn’t matter if I’m right or not, I don’t want to be dead.
> Their environment is unescapable and every time you interact with a road as a ped. there’s a huge chance you might die.
I’m not excusing bad driving, but when I walk, this is plenty enough reason for me to be doubly cautious. I don’t trust any driver until they’ve stopped.
This view was not espoused by the OP. You've made it up for some reason.
On responsibility - each party has one. Don't stumble across streets glued to your phone; don't drive recklessly. There's no point pretending one is the real responsibility. It just adds noise.
My general experience is that in practice, in most areas, most drivers don't yield enough and most pedestrians yield too much because the pedestrian has a lot more to lose. It's also important to remember that driving is a privilege specifically granted by the state, walking is not.
But it would be less dangerous for the cyclist, than it would be for a pedestrian to collide with a car.
And of course, in the former case, it's the person who chose the riskier mode of transport who assumes the risk.
also debatable
I changed the brake pads of my car two years ago, for 50 euros.
They are still perfectly functional (according to my mechanic opinion).
Admittedly I drive ~200kms a month, but nonetheless maintenance, at least for me, is really cheap.
same for cars (retail price on Amazon for consumers, it's cheaper if you buy them as a professional).
https://www.amazon.it/BREMBO-23-160-Pastiglia-Freno/dp/B01LW...
> Most cars need a tool to depress the piston, not to mention you have to lift the car and remove
mechanics do it for 50 euros here.
And I can change my brake pads, everybody could do it, it's just that people are unaware of how easy it is.
They mostly are unaware of how easy it is to change brakes on a bike too, that's why bike shops make more money than car shops compared to the amount of work required.
I’ve shown about 5 friends how to do it. I don’t think any have continued to DIY additional work, but I tried and at least they know a bit more about their car now.
Maybe you shouldn't assume your friends represent a representative sample.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle#/media/File:Left_side_...
> Maintaining a bike is cheaper and easier than maintaining a car.
but very few do it, given that they are not forced to keep it functional, unlike here, where I live, where your car has to pass a state mandated safety inspection every 2 years.
You can see by yourself the kind of the average bike and its maintenance state
notice: I deliberately chose the Netherlands because it's the country with the most bikes, the best infrastructures for bikes and with the best kept bikes, so Imagine that 90% of the bikes in Europe are in much worse shape that those you can see in the picture.
[1] https://www.planetizen.com/files/styles/featured_large/publi...
BTW if you never had a car, how can you tell?
does your bike has ABS?
Everything you think you know about cities and the role of pedestrians is wrong -- a distortion introduced by auto companies to diminish walking and public transport and encourage automobile purchases. We are currently radically rethinking our cities and imagining a greatly diminished role for cars in them.
That's not really correct.
Even if all types of traffic (cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc) had the same priority you will often get much better flow for everyone and improved safety by requiring traffic streams going in different direction to cross to certain points, and in higher traffic areas requiring some kind of turn taking at crossings.
This is often even true when you've only got one type of traffic.
Those are usually synchronized with the walk signals controlling the crosswalks that the right turns will cross, so that the car does not have a green at the same time the pedestrians have a walk signal.
In this particular situation I feel like while the Automakers had ulterior motives it was ultimately a net good. Pretty sure we know who will win in in a car vs a human body.
Also as much as I do believe in pedestrian focused cities, that isn't the norm in the US and likely will never be and will instead of smaller pockets (I mean it just makes sense given how large the country is). We should have more car free zones, but where we have to share the space it makes sense.
I am not going to sit here on a high horse and say I don't jay walk. But I do it knowing the risks.
Even with right of way, and decriminalizing "jay walking", the pedestrian can still be assigned some portion of fault in an accident, which e.g., may prevent the pedestrian from successfully suing the driver to pay for medical costs.
To me it's the same if a driver cuts in front of me and then slams on their brakes, there was nothing I could have done about crashing into them no matter how safely I was driving.
If a person runs in front of a moving vehicle it shouldn't be the driver responsible if they basically cut the car off. A car can't stop on a dime.
Drivers should be held responsible if they were clearly driving in an unsafe manner, but we have the share the space somehow.
You mention drivers cutting in front and pedestrians running out into the street, but not drivers who aren't paying due attention or who think that amber lights are advisory at best and a signal to speed up at worst. I'm one of those saps who actually crosses at pedestrian crossings even where there's no obligation for me to do so, and I make a habit of counting how many cars run an amber light when I come to traffic lights. I've found that you can guarantee at least one will, even if the speed limit is low enough that they could literally "stop on a dime", and more than likely, you'll get up to three doing the same.
And then there's the number of times I've seen people run reds, including at a pedestrian crossing where I wouldn't be alive if I didn't trust drivers.
So, I'll have more sympathy for drivers when they stop running lights, and until then I'll continue to turn my head towards oncoming traffic when I cross so the driver who might end up killing me has my face seared into their brain.
That's not going to work, you need to post it on their Instagram feed instead.
That sounds like a you problem. Why is it up to the pedestrian (who may have never driven a motor vehicle) to anticipate the performance characteristics of this large metal vehicle in the street ?
The UK already has designated areas with no pedestrians ("Motorways" ~= US highways [?]) and it has expended considerable resources closing or diverting at-grade crossings of railways (which obviously have a more extreme version of the "can't stop on a dime" problem). You aren't allowed on most airstrips at all, without special permission, in a vehicle or otherwise - so that mostly leaves cars hitting pedestrians, seems robustly like that's actually always the car driver's fault even if (as we see for "Jay-walking") they'd prefer to pretend it was not.
Because we have to share the space?
Replace car with bike, and while the risk to the person walking is far less than with a car it's the same idea.
Just pay attention and realize that you can stop on a dime (at least if your walking) as a human and something on wheels cannot. If you are a teenager and older and you don't know that a car can't stop on a dime and you run in front of one I don't know what to tell you, you should wether or not you have ever driven a car before.
Ignorance is not a defense in my opinion.
Edit: Also I am going to point out that any of our opinions on who is at fault, laws, or whatever has zero impact if your in the hospital or dead because you did something stupid as a pedestrian.
That is a pretty absurd take.
Knowing that a ton of steel moving fast can kill you is a necessary knowledge in modern civilization, much like knowing that an enraged mammoth can kill you was a necessary knowledge in the Stone Age. And normal parents teach their children how to be safe(r) in the street long, long before they could possibly become drivers themselves.
Humans can change velocity and look in all directions much easier than cars.
We are arguing about the burden. Right now, the burden of preventing accidents is placed on pedestrians and kids. Everyone on foot needs to look carefully, and only step on the road when it is safe
We could revert this burden. The cars need to drive in a way that, if a kid appears at a distance of X meters, they can fully stop without touching the kid. This would mean slower speeds and perhaps better breaks.
Instead of parents afraid for their kids, we could get drivers afraid of jail, losing cars, heavy fines.
There is no question that, when a car is allowed at absurd speeds (like 20 miles per hour -- see the graph in https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds) then the motorist has no time to react and incurs a risk of killing people. If we manage to restrict the speed to 20 mph everywhere a pedestrian might be reasonably expected, then the driver can (physically) react.
What you are saying is basically: I want to drive in a monstrous speed so that it is impossible for me to prevent accidents, so you should prevent accidents. The problem is not the fact that the speed precludes your ability not to murder children (we agree it does!) but that you insist to be allowed to drive at those speeds anyway.
Also, note that this speed we are asking for is typical for many people in rush hour (see: https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/los-angeles-traffic/)
20 mins for 10 km means 30 km/h, or around 18 miles/hour.
So people drive most of the time at safe speeds (to commute) but still don't want to drive at safe speeds to avoid murdering children
You're basically saying we should make cars uselessly slow, because "think of the children!!!1"
It's trivial to look for cars when crossing the road. If you think otherwise, that's just your misguided ideology. Even animals know well enough to not put themselves in danger; and for the ones which don't, Darwin wins.
No. I've had enough of these insane ideological battles.
In roads, between cities, the benefits are obvious (or at least, I agree with you that they are substantial). So I expressed the belief you seem to hold with an added hypothesis of 'city environment'.
Do you agree with the belief as I quoted? Was I fair?
If so, why do you think so? I just tried some different paths in my city (currently with very low traffic) in google maps. The greatest average speed I was able to find was 26 mph. The city seems to work fine and have good economic development.
I used >>> distance_in_km/((time_in_minutes)/60) * 0.62 (is this wrong? I don't think so)
Might be the case that I just lack intuition, but the advantages of much higher speeds inside the city limits do not seem obvious from an economic standpoint. I would indeed hesitate if I believe that this would have any significant economic cost. A small reduction in productivity can be very costly in human suffering.
As to 'my side', I am not saying only that I want to reduce accidents. I am saying that I want to reduce accidents while increasing the amount of time people can safely spend outdoors and while increasing the activities that they can do outdoors.
The idea that a significant part of our cities must be (or simply is) high speed road is a choice, and I think it merits discussion.
It shouldn't be. The risk to you is much greater if you hit another car, than if you hit a pedestrian.
Addtionally, while you are right that a car can't stop on a dime, speeds have a large influence on the size of coin needed for a car to come to a complete stop. And I think we both know that they are not linear.
Over the decades, posted speed limits in North America have only increased.
https://www.brake.org.uk/files/images/Speed/Infographics/_la...
True but the idea to me is the same for this particular situation, it is something running in front of a moving vehicle with little to no chance to do anything about it as a driver.
You are right for speeds and too many people drive too fast in an urban setting, but even a reasonable driving at 20-30 mph can still cause damage.
All I am trying to say here is everyone take responsibility for their own actions and don't assume that just because you are a pedestrian that cars are going to get out of your way since they may not physically be able too. Same for drivers, don't assume you have the right away because you are in a car.
Imagine if whenever a car hit a person, it was the car's fault. I bet we'd get less accidents then the current regime.