In North America, roads are usually built in the complete opposite way, with long straight roads and wide lanes, so the design speed is actually quite high -- even if that wasn't the intent. People go fast, because it feels safe to go that speed, but isn't, because there are pedestrians and turns. We then "fix" that shit road design by having low speed limits.
This video is all I think of when this discussion comes up now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
But the local residents don't want that, because they want the traffic from the road to come into the little town and patronize local businesses. So they put the businesses along the main road and put pedestrians where the traffic is, and then complain about the speed limit on the road whose purpose was supposed to be high speed travel.
Because the town wants to be as close to the highway as possible, which in practice means the town gets built on either side of it and the highway ends up going straight through the town.
If you moved the highway outside of the town then the town would just move over there because the businesses next to the highway get more business.
Nobody actually moves next to the highway - it's mostly workplaces that are next to the highway so that employees can easily get to it. Businesses that have regular people visit as customers, however, are where those customers are, which is where they live and walk around.
Here in Switzerland even foreigners have their cheeks so tight on the roads even sharpened hair wouldn't cross, they behave like angels and traffic is generally well behaved. And when they don't, punishment is heavy and it doesn't matter how many millions you have on your account or whom you know.
Have this, and peace comes. Don't have it, fast a-hole drivers doing whatever they want is not your biggest problem anyway.
In Houston, bollards and raised pedestrian paths were removed recently (after being installed last year) because drivers kept hitting them.
It's not a tech issue.
Suppose you have the same intersection but put bollards on the sidewalk. This is a bad design because drivers hit the bollards and damage their cars.
You want a design where cars go through the intersection without hitting anything.
Why would you not want an intersection that is safe for everyone, period?
> If drivers aren’t capable of negotiating streets with them, then they shouldn’t be driving, or they should be driving a smaller vehicle.
The size of the vehicle isn't what causes most collisions. Moreover, there are certain roads that have a disproportionate number of collisions. That implies there is something wrong with the road. Roads should be designed for actual reality rather then ideal hypothetical drivers and conditions.
> The idea that we should be building our streets to make driving easier is exactly how we’ve ended up with so many people being killed by cars every year in the US.
That is not how we've ended up there. It was quite the opposite. We made driving a necessity by moving people to the suburbs, without making roads safe enough that everybody could do it, and then demanded it of them regardless.
It isn't the monkey's fault that the only housing he can afford is 30 miles from his job and he has to take a road full of obstructions to get there. The monkey's behavior is predictable, and we know that what happened last year will happen next year unless we do something different. "Damage the monkey's car" is not a solution, it's just the fast track to angry monkeys.
So the city chooses not to pay the cost of protecting pedestrians, in favor of letting individual pedestrians bear the risk, and cost, of being injured themselves. If ever there were a better example of externalizing costs ….
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Until then, we have bollards.
Physical features are much harder to ignore.
Edit: The statement "speed limits are about right" does not mean "current travel speeds are about right." If you read the rest of the comment, it means that current travel speeds are about 5-10 mph too fast for most roads, but you don't actually need to change any signs if you start making speed limits a credible fact about the actual speed limit of the road.
The obviously-too-low speed limits cause all speed limits to be called into question. Thus, Americans drive about 10 mph over the limit on suburban roads, where lots of fatalities occur, and the opinion that speed limits are too low is very common. Also, significant data exists that shows that the vast majority of fatalities involve a driver that is speeding.
However, if you want to know how I got my opinion, I would suggest that you look at NYC, which has almost eliminated pedestrian fatalities by heavily enforcing its 25 MPH speed limit and similar traffic laws. Conversely, most drivers I see in suburban areas drive at least 5 MPH over the speed limit.
Also, I have exactly as much data as everyone else is bringing to this discussion, including you and the GP comment, who have brought no relevant data either. This is just my opinion.
And yes, I can absolutely say speed limits are too high, even if people are exceeding them. People drive the speed they feel safe, not the speed we want. So, we should design the roads to ensure people drive the speeds we want.
IE, a wide open 4-lane road is going to see speeds above 40mph, even if it’s posted at 20mph. Because it looks/feels safe from within a car. Yet, we keep building wide open 4-lane roads and wondering why everybody speeds and people keep getting run over.
My experience with the design of many roads suggests that people generally take them far too fast regardless: they cut corners, don't stay fully in their lane, and do lots of other things that indicate they are driving far too fast.
Are we talking about the same article? The article says she was at a bus stop.
> Ashlee McGill was waiting at a bus stop at Southeast Stark Street and 133rd Avenue