If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic. Which seems like might be what happened here, from the description.
17th street in Potrero is relatively quiet but that particular area often has cars coming off the freeway. It can be a maze to get through on bike. I wouldn't rush to make a judgment until we had a dashcam video.
Is it just a priority based on power? 18 wheeler > Buses > Cars > motorbikes > cyclists ?
- first to the intersection has the right of way. - if you both arrive at the same time, the one to the right has the right of way. - If you both arrive at the same time facing each other you can both proceed driving straight or turn right. - If you both arrive at the same time facing each other anyone turning left must defer to the other.
1. no markings at all, for very low-traffic places. You're supposed to be driving so slowly that you figure it out. (Yield to the right, if you can't figure it out. In practise, yield to bigger vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists etc — the roads is so small there might not be much choice.)
2. one road is the main road, the other is minor — minor traffic yields. This is most common. There might be signs, but there might only be road markings involving some sort of triangles (i.e. a yield sign).
3. a painted or similar shallow roundabout, showing roundabout rules apply (yield to the left) but allowing large vehicles like buses to drive over the paint. Only used in some countries.
4. an actual (concrete, kerbstone) roundabout, if there's space for that and traffic is higher.
I think you see 3, 1, 1, 2 if you follow this road north-west in Copenhagen: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6993358,12.5310164,3a,75y,32...
The practical reality of this is that if you're stopped at a stop sign, a bike may be coming from behind and will pass you on the right as you're trying to make a right turn.
AIUI, in this situation the bike has the right of way.
The actual law is that you need to complete stop first, yield to any vehicles already in the intersection, yield to the first car (tie goes to your right).
Which allows for an interesting scenario to occur.
1) East-bound truck arrives at intersection and stops first before proceeding into intersection.
2) South-bound bicyclist arrives at intersection and proceeds (illegally) without stopping.
3) West-bound Waymo arrives at intersection and stops but proceeds (now also illegally; as the cyclist is within the intersection) through the intersection.
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/divisi...
Unless the North & South people arrive at the intersection at the exact same time they must still come to a complete stop. While say the South person is stopping an East person could have finished their stop and since the North car has passed by them they can enter the intersection.
Sure as the intersection backs up it becomes very likely that the North-bound person will be blocking an East person from entering the intersection such that the South person can enter. But just because a car is coming at you in an intersection doesn't mean you can legally enter it.
By convention though, literally every East bound person is going to expect the South bound person to travel at the same time as the North bound one. My point is strictly that the law doesn't require this and under some circumstances the South bound person may be breaking the law.
I would argue you can; if you only have to yield to someone who is unable to enter the intersection for other reasons, you are free to go.
> By convention though, literally every East bound person is going to expect the South bound person to travel at the same time as the North bound one.
Sure; it's worth assuming that the Southbound person has slightly screwed up timing instead of forfeiting what would normally be "their turn".
Or if auto traffic fails to yield/stop appropriately to you.
Of course it's almost always the case that dangerously-designed roads only cause accidents when someone does something wrong. A one-track road with blind bends and no speed limit is perfectly safe if people use it safely.
> Safety
Pick one. Danger doesn't come only from other vehicles.
You won't get beaten with a hammer in your car, you'll just be driven into by a 16yo on his phone or a drunk driver. Neither should be driving in the first place, but there are no viable alternatives to cars, so we've just got to deal with it.
Various countries in Europe have a dense network of public transport that you can use - often unlimited all around the country - for less than 50 Euros per month. Given the choice, most would take cars, especially outside of dense cities.
People in aggregate don't have any preferences actually. They just want to get to their destination in the cheapest/most convenient way, which is mostly dictated by what has been designed to be that way. If you design everything around the car, then obviously choosing the car will be the most convenient; it's hardly a choice at that point.
There is only one country that isn't completely drunk on cars that I know of - the Netherlands - and even then it's only barely so. The bar is on the floor.
Shortage of bus/tram/train drivers is a major bottleneck all across Europe, especially in places where they just can't offer competing wages and lose their drivers to the richest cities of the EU. Rural Bulgaria will never be able to pay their drivers as much as Vienna or Munich can. Not even third of that, the economic gap is just too big.
Many of the current drivers are in their 50s and 60s and with the bad demography of the continent, situation is likely to worsen in the near future.
With self-driving buses, you would be able to add more connections, as shortage of drivers would cease to become a factor, plus the cost of running the service per km/mile would be reduced with the salaries going away from the budget.
Today, even a flu epidemics will mess up the reliability of the system. If one in five drivers calls in sick, canceled services will skyrocket. Nothing like waiting on a desolate windy stop in subzero conditions for half an hour only to find out that the bus just didn't arrive, period. Been there, done that. (A perfect way to fall sick too, by the way.)
What it isn't optimal for is getting from origin to destination without walking and without waiting.
If I am carrying heavy/bulky things or I am less mobile than average, walking to the nearest public transport stop isn't great, and every change of transport is painful.
Waits are also long basically anywhere that isn't the center of a densely populated city, and add up with every change of vehicle.
Eventually, a public transport based solution to travel ends up using "find ways to travel less" as a component.
The existence of direct door-to-door transport with cargo space, however it is achieved (cars, self-driving, carshare, taxis...) is needed to close these gaps, and therefore I do not see it ever going away.
Societies need to make the other forms of transport attractive enough that, given access to direct door-to-door transport, they still remain a viable choice.
Using a bus would mean I have to wake up earlier, and therefore fall asleep earlier, and also get back later. It would mean less time at home with my family. I suppose next you'll say that I should be living in walking distance of my job, like my life and indeed entire communities should be structured around employers like during the industrial revolution. God forbid you ever want to change your job, you'll have to hope the new one is next door or you'll be moving your family... more likely you're locked into your current job which is just the way employers would like it. The normalization of cars were a huge win for labor, but the anti-car crowd always ignores this. I guess being locked into my job and at the mercy of public transit is meant to be compensated by the benevolence of The Party who will surely have my back? No thanks.
I used to commute 1.5 hours each way on the train from Wollongong to Sydney. The alternative drive takes the same or longer, depending on traffic. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this trip every day (and the equivalent from Newcastle).
Another period of my life was living in Brunswick (MEL) and working in Richmond (MEL). Drive 40 mins to 1 hour, train including 5-6 min walk at both ends 44 mins. I can read on the train though.
Every situation is going to be different. When the public transport is as bad as most US cities I'm not surprised that people don't want to take it, but with European/UK and Australian public transport you're almost certainly better off commuting that way (excluding things like carrying goods, or mobility issues).
I just checked this with google maps. In 12 minutes i can get 10 km from my house. That's a 2 hour walk.
Granted an hour of walking each way isn't necessarily doable. But that same track can be done in about 25 mins on a bike, probably less on an e-bike.
I'm not recommending buses, buses suck. European public transport is amazing and the US could learn something.
Europe and the UK has an absolutely extensive train network, not just big cities. I could have as easily said Ancona to Bologna, or Strasbourg to Stuttgart. You're just unlikely to know anything about those places. Or even smaller stations/towns -- Hinkley or Inverness.
Australia's regional towns are primarily linked by regional airlines, the drives are insanely long to get to the nearest city. People do, of course, but flying is always going to be quicker.
I am moving to an apartment 50km away from my workplace. Commuting by car or by train will take around the same time (~50 min door-to-door), but the car will be subject to random traffic, hunting for parking spot, stress, etc. Oh, and the train is several times cheaper.
How is that relevant? No one commutes from NY to LA everyday, much as no one commutes from Berlin to Munich everyday.
> and half the country does not live in a city
Yes, and that's what I mean by "dumb land-use patterns". That people living in suburbs are not technically within a city's boundaries is a distinction without a difference. Land is wasted to highways and parking lots no one can cross without a two-ton machine, useless lawns no one really has time to enjoy or maintain, dumb McMansions that cost and arm and a leg and so on.
And all of that is subsidised in what is effectively a [pyramid scheme]<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI>.
I've been there, done that. I used to commute from Philly to Radnor on SEPTA's regional rail. I like trains but the amount of time I burned every day on the train, let alone walking back and forth to the stations, was simply a waste of my life. Reading on the train is great and all but I'd rather have that free time at home.
I would never recommend more buses - buses suck. Trains and trams though, are great.
I'll also take European and Australian communities over the parking lots that are American communities any day of the week. I'll also take the high-speed rail between London and Paris (and a host of other EU/UK examples) rather than driving.
Europe is absolutely an example of how you don't have to have a terrible experience if you have good public transport. London by train is ~2.5 hours, and by car it's 5-6 hours at a minimum.
There is a small regional small bus system that serves the train station and the Walmart about a mile away. No idea of the schedule--I'm sure it doesn't run late. But I'd still be taking my life in my hands to walk the mile to the Walmart.
[1] combining exercising + commuting will make you gain time over commuting faster + exercising separately in that kind of distances.
I know a singer that avoids doing any heavy exercise near major roads because it affects their performance after even just after a short exposure.
Then you can cycle there in ~20 minutes. The difference would be that cycling infrastructure is dirt cheap, bikes are dirt cheap, you can fit way more bikes on a path than cars, you get daily physical exercise - longer lifespan, emit trivial amounts of pollution and parking is a non-issue.
Unless, you know, there's no way to actually cycle there in 20 minutes because the routes are not cyclist friendly or accessible. Or maybe they live in a hilly area where cycling means either working up quite a sweat, or getting an e-bike to assist. Or there's inclement weather that makes cycling extremely uncomfortable if not impossible. Or if you have an injury that makes cycling difficult or painful to where you can only go very slow. Or when you have to carry something heavy with you.
There was a point where I had a 15 minute commute to work by car. Cycling, it was 40 minutes and required getting pretty sweaty. Why? Because by car I could take the highway, and by bike I couldn't. Cycling was also much more dangerous on that route than the highway drive, because I had to go through many intersections, pass multiple schools during the morning drop-off time, cross over a major highway overpass that always had heavy traffic that time of day.
You could say that it's flawed to live in the countryside and/or have distant friends but my point is that public transportation on fixed lines will never reach every place at every time, especially where people are spread thinly. Taxis can do that, self driving cars can maybe drive their cost down. I could do without my own car if I could summon a public transport car at a whim anywhere I am to go anywhere I want.
I doubt there are a lot of places where you're replacing that scenario with public transit.
I think my last commuter rail is around 10:30pm but I'd have little confidence that I could get a taxi/Uber from the train station; it's not that far but certainly not safely walkable especially late at night.
Picking some random village I've never been to, from Copenhagen to Uggeløse (population around 2000) takes 65 minutes, the last connection to the bus requires leaving Copenhagen at 23:16.
Picking some other village that's on a railway line (Veksø, population 1800), the trains run all night every 30 minutes on Friday and Saturday nights. On other days the last train is at 00:30-ish.
The original claim was from a city to a town, which is easier than either of these examples.
There's a class of "ban cars" city people who cannot fathom this.
Your preference for where and how to live or inconsequential to their goal of removing cars from earth.
Note that this solution would also constrain me to a life of teetotal evenings enviously watching my friends share a few pints.
But if you say you want to avoid at all costs, and assuming there are more people like you out there, maybe we should just start _charging that cost_.
I'm definitely in favor of re-designing our cities and infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle; I believe most people would prefer it if they experienced it. It seems inevitable from a carbon stand point. But I'm skeptical it will ever be more efficient?
Note a 15-30 minute wait is what I have to endure at night (21.00 to 01.00) if I want to travel to/from the suburbs of Copenhagen on a weekday, similar population to Austin. On Friday and Saturday nights each line runs every 20 minutes all night.
And your comment noted, it's a godsend for the mind. I've moved to a country with public transit and haven't commuted by car in the last 5 years. Daily driving was destroying me.
... while still being subjected to random g-forces.
Make me a robot that cooks meals, then I would actually save time.
For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Think about how much time a car spends parked and waiting to be used.
With greater utilization we should have a lower absolute number of vehicles that are replaced more frequently. This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario.
How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point, any point, transit system using an army of electric minivans (minibus in urban areas).
Why would this be the case? At least one order of magnitude?
>This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario.
Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets.
>How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point,
What is preventing this today? Not the lack of autonomous vehicles. Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets.
I don't really see any benefit to this being public transportation.
When people go out with their cars, they expect their car to be there when they are done. They expect to be able to stop at a store, buy some things, stop at another store and buy some more, leaving their first purchase in the car while they keep shopping.
Making this work is less "public transportation" and more "short term rental" like Car2Go. Which was a shitty service that I hated using.
If we get self driving cars, I am still personally going to want to buy my own, not rely on some public transportation fleet.
How many cars are needed for that?
How many cars are needed for typical evening or night traffic?
There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.
It's probably a bit misguided in the sense that, if the end-result further down the line is the "more machines than humans driving in the streets" (let alone zero humans), then it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead, rather than have machines try to work under infrastructure that is designed to be good for humans but bad for machines, and then try to "iteratively improve" under conditions that carry significant risk of injury.
Brings Ford's quote on "faster horses" to mind. Imagine if we still required roads to be horse friendly, and expected our cars to go through mud and jump fences.
I agree with GP: automating everything and removing humans from the equation would be a much better solution. Unfortunately it's not practical because it's not profitable.
Getting humans to agree on something at scale larger than half a dozen is like herding cats. Money is catnip - it works well at aligning masses towards common goal.
Except iteratively changing the infrastructure requires political capital along with actual capital in the form of tax dollars. Self-driving cars can be built outside of existing infrastructure and paid for entirely with private funding.
Changing infrastructure is a nice idea in theory, but the practicality of getting anything done in SF means that if you want progress, you should look to other options.
"While I'm excited about the potential improvements to traffic safety, congestion and waste of life that self driving cars can bring. I still yearn for improvements to public transit and micromobility that can eliminate cars from the road altogether and yield major improvements in density, efficiency, safety and pollution (noise, tires)"
6 minutes dense with revelations.