Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers | Hacker News Reader

Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

collegetowns.substack.com

311 pointsraybb443 comments

As a pedestrian I will take a busy light controlled intersection with a pedestrian scramble type walk signal over a busy 4-way stop where every single time.

With the 4-way stop there is never a time in the cycle when all traffic is stopped. The drivers who are present are continuously paying attention to what other drivers are doing which robs them of situational awareness to note pedestrians. You can try and time it but that's risky. With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you and are all stopped so you as a pedestrian can account for them in preparation just before you get your signal and make your move.

The author can get lost with this sort of textbook correct but questionable in reality take. Legally having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead when the driver who's got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn't see you.

> With the 4-way stop there is never a time when all traffic is stopped and the drivers are always paying attention to what other drivers are doing. With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you and are all stopped so you as a pedestrian can account for them in preparation just before you get your signal and make your move.

That's... not true? With light traffic a 4 way stop should have no cars at all at it most of the time, leaving pedestrians with the right of way, whereas with a traffic light there will always be a road with priority until a pedestrian hits the button. Requiring cars to pay attention to the condition of the intersection is the explicit design goal.

This was laid out very clearly in the article we just read.

>That's... not true? With light traffic a 4 way stop should have no cars at all at it most of the time, leaving pedestrians with the right of way, whereas with a traffic light there will always be a road with priority until a pedestrian hits the button. Requiring cars to pay attention to the condition of the intersection is the explicit design goal.

>This was laid out very clearly in the article we just read.

This is what I mean about theory vs reality.

4-way stops don't look like the animation they show you in driver's ed. In practice what happens is that non conflicting traffic tends to parallelize so someone taking a left might start their left while the person across from them is finishing theirs (or one of any other bunch of combinations) so there's a car in motion basically all the time the situational awareness of every driver who's about to get their turn is mostly absorbed in monitoring who's turn it is and who's going where.

So when you're a pedestrian and you don't time it right you could find yourself starting to cross right before someone wants to drive where you're crossing. Usually this is because you started walking before it was their turn and they didn't notice you until it was their turn and they started moving (because they were accounting for the other traffic) until it was their turn at which point they started looking where they were going as well. Normally this results in absolutely nothing, you speed up a little, they don't gas it as hard, everyone goes on their merry way. But the potential for things to go badly if the conflicting driver is inattentive or further distracted is very much there.

Sure, theoretically the rules say they shouldn't do that but that's not how reality works.

There's just so much less potential for conflict if there is a scheduled time when all the cars stop and then the walking happens. Even without a dedicated walk time it's just so much easier to time it when there's a light because you can start walking when all the cars have red and only have to look out for right on red or potential red light runners, it's a much easier problem than the degree of swiveling your head around you need to do to at a busy 4-way.

> ... the situational awareness of every driver who's about to get their turn is mostly absorbed in monitoring who's turn it is and who's going where.

Right, that's the intent. Drivers paying attention to their surroundings is the goal.

> So if you're a pedestrian and you don't time it right you could find yourself starting to cross right before someone wants to drive where you're crossing. Usually this is because you started walking before it was their turn...

You have the right of way!

> There's just so much less potential for conflict if there is a scheduled time when all the cars stop and then the walking happens.

How about a system where all cars are expected to stop all the time?

> Drivers paying attention to their surroundings is the goal.

In the real world, drivers don't pay attention to their surroundings; instead, they look for other cars to avoid being hit. Further down the list is avoiding static obstacles like street lights or bollards. Lastly, they may think of looking for pedestrians. In other words, they care about their safety, not their neighbor's.

Cyclists, if even noticed in the first place, are seen as nothing but a nuisance that should be overtaken at all cost, even when they are about to reach a stop light and there's no room to pass safely.

> You have the right of way!

A non insignificant number of drivers believe that "might is right" and will knowingly play chicken with you if they perceive that they are safer in the event of a collision. As a vulnerable road user, you don't know whether the driver you are interacting with will be one of the 95% of reasonable people or one of the 5% of insecure bullies.

If you treat that as a given, rather a thing for us to change with environmental design, the only ethical solution is banning private drivers entirely.

Encouraging anti-social people's deadly hobbies is terrible for the community.

Motornormativity makes most of the population accept that endangering their neighbors while operating heavy machinery is acceptable, as long as the heavy machinery is a car. We call it "speeding", and it's treated like a very minor offense. It is a complete disaster.

> Right, that's the intent. Drivers paying attention to their surroundings is the goal.

The drivers are paying attention to the cars, not the pedestrians

> You have the right of way!

Graveyards are full of people who had the right of way.

> You have the right of way!

Which, while true, in no way guarantees the driver sees you. If they miss seeing you for some reason, you very well may end up on the losing end of the physics of a collision between a 150lb object and a 3000lb object.

> This is what I mean about theory vs reality

> Sure, theoretically the rules say they shouldn't do that but that's not how reality works.

Do you have any evidence for this or are you just making this up as you type? Because it's a bit rich to be harping about "reality" otherwise.

A large body of research supports traffic calming measures for pedestrian safety and to increase driver awareness. A four-way stop intersection surrounded by intersections that also have stop signs (as indicated by the article) would fit that bill.

are you so engrossed in the driver's POV that you can't imagine an intersection without cars in it?

I tend to agree with you. I regularly walk, sometimes up to 40 miles per month, in the suburban hellscape that is South Hill in Puyallup, WA. This is the land of major 4 lane arterials w/ turn-lanes and hundreds of unprotected two-way and four-way intersections. There’s almost no pedestrians, I’ll rarely meet other people on my way to work, and sometimes go the whole two miles without making eye contact with a single driver.

This article didn’t touch on it, but there’s another even scarier monster lurking out there. They’ve started to replace some of our larger intersections with these “Smart” traffic lights. Most drivers have a pretty well developed feel for the pattern traffic signals follow. These are pretty much random, adjusting the traffic flow based on some metrics. They use yield left turns with single direction flow and other tricks to try and control traffic. Since the light cycle doesn’t really follow any standard pattern, they’re also pretty much random when they’ll insert the protected pedestrian crossing into the cycle. It’s a death trap. There can be people waiting at a yield left turn which will be going to red, it will click on the pedestrian walk, and the opposing traffic will still be in full green, with drivers never coming to a stop. Add to that, if volume is heavy, you can stand there for 5 minutes or more waiting for a protected pedestrian crossing.

> With light traffic a 4 way stop should have no cars at all at it most of the time

Unless there's protected right turns, of course.

Agreed, but I would not call an intersection with a dedicated turning lane a 4 way stop, or at least not a low traffic one.

At least in my neighborhood these aren't dedicated turning lanes. Most people do pull into the bike lane to make the turn. Instead, the traffic shifts between straight (which leaves open an opportunity to cross) and right turns (which occupy the entire intersection).

> With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you and are all stopped so you as a pedestrian can account for them in preparation just before you get your signal and make your move.

Having almost been hit a few times by drivers making a right turn on red, I can tell you the drivers never wait even if you have the right of way. You'll be lucky if they even look for you.

> Legally having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead when the driver who's got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn't see you.

Also, and I know this is unpopular, but maybe you shouldn't dress like that if you don't want the attention.

Why is right-on-red always cited as the biggest problem with turns? My anecdotal experience is that drivers turning on green are way more likely to hit me when I have a walk signal on the cross-street than drivers who turn right on red.

On a green arrow turn, drivers are looking to where they are going. Legally crossing pedestrians are in that cross walk where the driver is looking.

With right on red, the driver is also looking to where they are going, but legally crossing pedestrians are not there, they are directly in front of the car.

The riskiest thing for a pedestrian is approaching a right on red car from the left, because the driver is simply not looking at you.

The big problem with right on red is that it perfectly synchronizes them to hit each other.

Say a driver and pedestrian are at the same corner facing the same way and the pedestrian wants to cross into the area the driver wants to turn. The street is busy so the driver can't turn right on the red and the pedestrian isn't gonna just walk against the signal into the traffic. Cross traffic lets up, either because of a big gap or because the light has cycled to red for the cross traffic. The conditions that both parties require before making their move have just been satisfied at the same time. The pedestrian walks and the driver turns, leading to inevitable conflict. If both the driver and the pedestrian are in a hurry and trying to shoot a gap in traffic and go quickly there can be no time for either party to avoid the accident.

Edit: The above example is crosswalks only, no dedicated pedestrian signals.

> Say a driver and pedestrian are at the same corner facing the same way and the pedestrian wants to cross into the area the driver wants to turn.

That's not a thing that normally happens though. In a regular four-way intersection, if a driver is at a red light, the pedestrians that are allowed to cross are the ones that are crossing the street the car is on. If the car wants to turn right on red, then the pedestrians it has a risk of hitting don't care about the traffic that the car needs to wait for.

This seems to not actually be the case in my experience, because right-turn drivers love to look to the left while turning right, because they are afraid of a fast-moving car appearing from the left, but they think they already verified that no slow-moving peds are crossing on the right.

It's usually because a driver turning (right) on green doesn't have to worry about merging into traffic, so they only need to focus on pedestrians. Hopefully they will. A driver turning right on red has traffic coming from their left and pedestrians walking in front, and they're usually more concerned about the cars, so they tend to look left while turning right. Ouch. It's a growing issue as well because of the growing size of cars. Littler people can be completely concealed behind a front grille.

A car turning left on green is also an issue because while they should be able to see and wait for pedestrians, they're often occluded by other cars and trucks, and those left turners can be in a hurry to proceed through a gap in traffic.

Also, while technically a right on red should require one to come to a full stop, then start their turn, in practice many people are doing rights on red at rolling stops at significantly higher speeds.

Are you saying that a right-turn can be green simultaneous with the pedestrian's crossing light being green?

Because where I'm from, traffic lights are not allowed to be set up like that. No simultaneous green for crossing traffic flows, unless otherwise indicated (eg, an extra warning light+sign under the turn's traffic light flashing when it's green and off otherwise).

> Are you saying that a right-turn can be green simultaneous with the pedestrian's crossing light being green?

I can't think of many places that I drive where this isn't the case.

The pedestrian crossing lights are in sync with the traffic lights, if traffic going N/S is green then the pedestrian lights going N/S will also be green even if cars are turning E/W

I know at least one intersection that crosses a bike path and walking path near me that changed recents so now oncoming traffic goes with the walk signal while turns are forbidden, then only right turns are allowed, then only left turns. It takes slightly longer to go through the cycle (particularly on busy days where pedestrians don’t yield the street for people to turn), but otherwise makes it much less stressful to go through that intersection regardless of my mode of transit around it

Yes. This pattern is normal in the US.

While vehicles are traveling north and south, the walk sign for crossing north and south is available. But vehicles are typically allowed to turn in the same cycle, protected lefts with their own cycle are common. Some intersections have a dedicated arrow for right turns and those will signal no rights while a walk sign is on, but otherwise pedestrians and right turns conflict.

Yes: https://ibb.co/86tqnBM

Direct link: https://i.ibb.co/Hn36L27/Green-crossing.png

solid green (right turn allowed) + pedestrian green (for crossing).

car and ped both have access to ped crossing. (Car should yield to any ped in crossing.)

Also, I drew a picture before I realized that this wasn't what you were asking about. But I like the picture.

                C
                A
                R
                2
                |
                v

    ---------         -------- 
     CAR1 ->         
    ---------|ped ->  ------- 
             |       |
             |       |
             |       |          




                C
                A
                R
                2
    ---------         -------- 
                C          
    ---------|  pAed  ------- 
             |    R   |
             |    1   |
             |        |

There is a way to mitigate the danger somewhat by giving pedestrians green light first, so when the car turns they are already in the middle of the road.

A car turning on a green light can be simultaneous with the pedestrian's crossing light being green. The driver is obligated to see the pedestrian and wait.

What's not simultaneous is a green turn arrow with a green ped crossing. Intersections in the US are designed so that a green arrow will mean the driver has no conflicts and can proceed.

Not everyone (both drivers and peds) understands that distinction.

I feel like I see a lot of fairly crazy intersections in my US city, where it feels like they break at least one expectation of the simple red/yellow/green patterns from drivers ed. I wouldn’t want to trust anyone’s life to assuming that a green arrow should mean I have the unconflicted right of way, let alone that others are even paying attention to their own signal

Drivers have to worry about the traffic which has the green light vs. just looking where they're going.

My anecdotal evidence is that everyone is looking out for themselves and people in bigger vehicles will always take advantage of that.

The number of people that make right-on-reds that not once during the approach or during the turn look to their right is what makes it a problem. I have often been tempted to do one of those YT videos of people spending their day videoing people at intersections to show how prevalent bad behavior really is. I just have no presence there for it to make it worth my time. I know how bad it is, and adjust my personal behavior accordingly

Right on red is (or should be) never allowed during a pedestrian scramble. That's just asking for trouble. The box must be entirely clear of cars during the walk signal.

I'm nearby this intersection and there are 2 scrambles- this one and one about 2 blocks down closer to the university. There is very clear signage for cars that there are no turns allowed on red. I've crossed both intersections many times and rarely have I seen cars violating that rule. Perhaps they do but in my experience, they generally respect it.

Left turns on green (with no green arrow) are also pretty bad imo, as are right turns on green with no arrow. In both cases pedestrians are supposed to have right-of-way, but cars often don't respect it.

That's part of what pedestrian scrambles so great: you always wait for the pedestrian phase before crossing. There is no pedestrian crossing in the car phase.

The other great benefit is you can cross the diagonal (kitty corner).

I think the interesting bit in this article is that "pedestrian scramble" is sort of the assumed default at a 4-way stop though the safety of that relies on drivers noticing Stop signs and also not treating them as Yield signs (and also not recognizing that Yield implies pedestrians, too). Why isn't it the default in the version of this intersection with lights instead of just stop signs? Why is it pedestrians have to "beg" for the scramble and cars just wait for a timer? Could this be red at all lanes by default and rely on something like weight sensors instead?

(I'm also amused at the idea of making a beg button for cars. Maybe make cars have to text a phone number to beg the light the change. If cars had less annoying to the neighborhood horns you could have "horn recognition" and use the horn as a universal button.)

Unfortunately it seems useless/impossible to situationally forbid right-on-red, drivers just do it anyway. There are several intersections in Seattle with "no right on red" signs for various reasons (poor visibility, trolley intersection) and drivers just ignore them and make the right regardless. I frequently get angrily honked at by the car behind me when I am obeying the no right on red sign.

> maybe you shouldn't dress like that if you don't want the attention.

Have you ever taken the selective attention test?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo (short 1:22 video)

You have never had a driver wait?

In the UK, it is very rare for a pedestrian crossing that is controlled by a button press to not completely stop traffic. The first time I was in North America as an adult, I realised that when on a crosswalk drivers will come sailing at you and will cross behind you as you cross over. That is illegal here. The drivers need to wait for the pedestrians to cross, even on "Zebra" crossings (which are the ones with no buttons and striped lines across the road.) The only exception to this is if there is a traffic island in the middle of the road, and then they are treated as 2 different crossings. But quite often those are staggered, so the pedestrian can't just walk out directly from one side to the other.

The trade off is that the pedestrian has pretty much no right of way anywhere but a crossing, and cars will drive at you (or at least not stop for you) if you try to cross somewhere that is not a crossing. Though "Jaywalking" is not a thing and you can actually cross where ever you like.

> The trade off is that the pedestrian has pretty much no right of way anywhere but a crossing, and cars will drive at you (or at least not stop for you) if you try to cross somewhere that is not a crossing.

That's not true, or at least it's bad/illegal driving if they do so, a pedestrian who is 'established in the road' as the right of way anywhere.

As you said:

> Though "Jaywalking" is not a thing and you can actually cross where ever you like.

Otherwise it would be a contradiction wouldn't it? If the pedestrians allowed to be there, the motorist obviously isn't allowed to run them over, ... I suppose you could say the pedestrian can continue crossing but only after first giving way to the motorist? There'd be more time with pedestrians in the road though.

Not that I recommend using that fact to cross when you don't have time, because you will anger motorists. Or they could not see you/be paying attention. They'd be wrong, but it's just not worth it, obviously.

It is more attitude. As in - people in the UK seem to have a vendetta against pedestrians in the road.

I know the laws surrounding cycling and pedestrians changed even recently, but no one in my experience actually cares and carries on as before.

If you are crossing a busy road, no one will stop for you. Maybe parts of the UK that are more rural are different, but in cities this is the case. You will always get across at a crossing, and cars are generally not trying to run you down. Though, Zebra crossings have started in recent times to be more problematic, and I see people driving across them whilst people are still on the crossing regularly.

Anecdote example: When I was a kid I got clipped by a car because of this (the heel of my back foot got struck by a car who was basically giving nothing and driving at me, despite me being over 50% across a road that was only 2 lanes and not particularly wide.) In North America this doesn't happen. Cars will drive at you, but they will generally stop and let you go. In the UK you are made to feel like a criminal for daring to cross a road most of the time.

> I realised that when on a crosswalk drivers will come sailing at you and will cross behind you as you cross over. That is illegal here.

It's illegal in most if not all of USA too, but no one cares in practice. Legally, even when a car driver and a pedestrian both have access to a lane separately, if both are present, then a car driver must give a full lane-width of space to a pedestrian crossing or at the corner.

Also, even when a pedestrian is committing the auto-industry-invented crime of "jaywalking", the pedestrian still has the right of way in traffic, unless it is physically impossible for the car driver to avoid the collision. Car drivers are not judge/jury/executioner.

(Nit: "Cars" don't "drive" (yet, in most places). "Car drivers" drive cars.)

I see people more and more ignoring this rule too on wider non light controlled (Zebra) crossings. Sadly a lot of them are taxi drivers and they are often recent immigrants. Rules vary a lot, but in Europe the general rule seems to be that the driver is not penalised for crossing lane of a crosswalk behind a pedestrian after they have passed the middle of the road. I have no idea if that is actual law, but you see it in France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czechia and Spain for sure (as in I have witnessed it there first hand.)

"Cars driving at you" is probably a dialectical thing.

> Having almost been hit a few times by drivers making a right turn on red, I can tell you the drivers never wait even if you have the right of way. You'll be lucky if they even look for you.

Right on red should not really be allowed. It's a real hazard.

It isn't in much of Europe.

IMO the problem isn't right on red itself, but rather that vehicles have to be in (and often completely over) the pedestrian crossing area to see oncoming vehicle traffic they have to yield to (at the distance required due to higher oncoming vehicle speeds). This encourages the behavior where drivers plan to have a single stop in that area, where they wait for an opening in vehicles to go - completely failing to take into account the possibility of having to stop before that area due to pedestrians actually using it. The situation is more like two separate stop and yields, and when drivers don't expect pedestrians they skip the first one.

If there is no way of configuring the intersection so that right on red is safe for pedestrians, then the problem is the right on red.

The point of looking deeper at the actual dynamics is to brainstorm ways intersections could be made safer, without overshooting and then getting a campaign to undo it all in 20 years. For example:

Less visual obstructions so that oncoming traffic can be seen sooner? maybe, but probably not going to change learned behavior

Advance the crosswalk even more, with two separate lights? perhaps on a per-intersection basis

Hard square corner kerb instead of a round bevel? Might help in general.

> Less visual obstructions so that oncoming traffic can be seen sooner?

This is called daylighting and California passed a law for it https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/walk/daylighting

> Advance the crosswalk even more, with two separate lights?

Pedestrians already have a "leading signal" in intersections with lots of people, which makes the wall signal change before the green for cars. Right on red defeats their purpose, which is to ensure pedestrians are on the middle of the street by the time a car wants to turn, putting them where they are easiest to be seen.

> Hard square corner kerb instead of a round bevel?

Yes. I would go further and have bulb outs https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/walk/pedestrian-improve... and at grade crossings (the zebra crossing is at the same height as the sidewalk). All of these have been proven to work.

> overshooting

I don't think there is any risk of "overshooting" in making cities nicer and safer for pedestrians and all other road users in the US. If anything it will be an uphill battle to accomplish any change.

I don't know why it feels like you're jumping on me here. Is it just CivE attracting people who overly focus on nouns?

What you're calling an "at grade crossing" is indeed a good one I missed. I would call them something like crosswalk on a speed bump, which might be "car centric" or whatever, but at least isn't overloading a term that generally refers to using different levels for actual traffic separation. Everything we're talking about here is actually an at grade crossing.

> I don't think there is any risk of "overshooting" in making cities nicer and safer for pedestrians and all other road users in the US. If anything it will be an uphill battle to accomplish any change.

You really don't see the possibility of backlash to "no turn on red" everywhere creating a campaign of drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections?

And also FWIW, "no turn on red" doesn't actually prevent drivers from driving into the pedestrian crossing area - it just removes the benefit. It would still take a generation or two to change learned behavior.

> I don't know why it feels like you're jumping on me here.

I think what you're sensing was terseness of response because I was writing on a phone.

> What you're calling an "at grade crossing" is indeed a good one I missed. I would call them something like crosswalk on a speed bump, which might be "car centric" or whatever, but at least isn't overloading a term that generally refers to using different levels for actual traffic separation. Everything we're talking about here is actually an at grade crossing.

They are usually called "continuous sidewalks", but the terminology is locale dependent (not every place calls them sidewalks).

> You really don't see the possibility of backlash to "no turn on red" everywhere creating a campaign of drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections?

Anything that is perceived as a source of frustration will cause backlash. That's not a reason not to do things that have been proven to work better. Dedicated bus lanes and congestion charges always get backlash, for example, but after implemented traffic always ends up flowing more smoothly, which does make driving less stressful. "No turn on red" is the default in most of the planet. Forbidding it in cities (particularly downtown and during the day) shouldn't be a problem.

> it just removes the benefit. It would still take a generation or two to change learned behavior.

I think that people adapt much faster than generationally. And it is important to change incentives. Incentives affect us way more than we realize. Something as trivial as changing the coloring or texture of the intersections causes us to change our behavior in ways we wouldn't necessarily notice unless we paid a lot of attention.

> drivers getting frustrated while waiting for timed red lights to change at completely quiet intersections

There's a red light I run - frequently - in the mornings going to work. I stop. If the cross traffic has a green light, I stay stopped. When the light provides a protected green arrow for left turns for traffic going the opposite way, I'll run it if no cars are visible coming toward me. It would be better as a simple four-way stop, but our city traffic engineer is a self-important idiot who refuses to take even a suggestion from people who drive the area daily. I discovered this during a prolonged power outage that took down a route that I pretty much had to use to leave my neighborhood at the time. Outside of rush hour, the intersection functioned much better as a four-way stop than as a signalled intersection. But that was inappropriate for two arterials (one of them really is, but the other is only one at commuting times, and at off-hours neither is especially busy).

Not stopping before the pedestrian area is an instant ticket in my small town. They really promote walkability here. All of the issue listed seem to stem from lack of law enforcement. Our town also has bins at intersections with bright orange flags to increase your visibility as well as flashing 'pedestrian crossing' strobes initiated by button at problem location.

> All of the issue listed seem to stem from lack of law enforcement

When its a few bad apples its an enforcement issue. When its many bad apples its a design issue.

Do you mean bins where people like, take an orange flag out, cross the street holding the flag, and then put the orange flag back in the bin on the other side? This is the first I'm ever hearing of that, and it sounds immediately ridiculous. But with further consideration I could see this being quite interesting for significantly changing the dynamic.

Yes, the flashing lights are more common in my area, but either are a nice signal that someone wants to cross (and isn't merely waiting for their uber or to get in their own car)

It is completely rediculous and I take every opportunity to ham it the eff up when I use them. They're in in several of the nicer places on the east side of seattle but are being replaced by aggressive pedestrian flashers. I'm 6'2 but I take the opportunity to re-enact my favorite olympics floor ribbion routine.

I understand bricks are far more effective than some flag.

The real issue are the road rage drivers who can't wait a minute and start honking behind you.

We all get it, we are all late now and then, but unless you are literally trying to catch a plane or a boat, in all likelihood you can sit your candy ass down and wait a minute.

I just keep my turn signals off and wait for green (or a very obviously safe opening). Let them think that I want to go straight.

It's not allowed here in NYC. I've nearly gotten mowed down by people from the suburbs driving into the city not knowing it's illegal here on a few occasions. They also seem to get pissed and honk at me, as if walking around NYC isn't the default mode of transportation.

To be fair I've seen NYC _pedestrians_ yell at other pedestrians for walking wrong, NYC isn't exactly an outwardly friendly place in that respect.

Haha that’s fair. There are unwritten sidewalk walking rules that tourists and new transplants don’t always know. Once you start thinking of the sidewalk as a place that commuting takes place it makes a little more sense — people are late for work and that tourist walking while looking up or another with their face stuck in their phone is like a car driving 30 in the leftmost lane.

It hasn't been a problem here in Maine, but Portland is an extremely relaxed place. The intersection outside my apartment is quite literally a cliche'd Indian street style free for all with a set of lights that offer suggestions, but people wait for pedestrians and nobody honks.

Here's how I handle right on red: When I have the walk signal, I look to my left for cars that might be turning right. If there are any, I look at whether the driver sees me. Try to make eye contact. If they are moving and apparently don't see me or are going to turn anyway, I wait. I may have the right of way, but I'm not going to win that battle.

I make it clear with body language and eye contact that yes I see them and no I'm not meekly yielding my right of way. However, I leave just enough space to avoid being hit, for those situations when the True Assholes knowingly cut me off anyway. Or maybe they're not assholes by intent, but instead in the 90th percentile for inattentiveness and bad driving habits, which may even be the same thing. I don't know, I'm not a driver psychologist.

I think a pretty large percentage of drivers don’t actually know that they’re supposed to yield to pedestrians when turning at lights.

I’ve had multiple close calls where the driver looks at me angrily, I point at the white ‘walk’ symbol, and then their anger turns to confusion. They had no idea that they’re supposed to wait.

I live in seattle where people are pretty good about yielding. It's confusing as eff which lights and what times the peds are going to get a walk signal when I'm taking a right and when they're not. Some also go walk at the same time they go green for right turns. Some slightly delayed. It's hard to watch both lights as a driver and the oncomming traffic.

I agree that it's confusing, which is why I think pedestrians should be given their own exclusive time to cross the intersection, just like cars. It would be easier and safer for everyone.

Rights on red are an inherently dangerous design flaw of North American traffic laws. It's not allowed in NYC and soon won't be allowed in DC and Atlanta.

Any time you grant vehicles a shared path with pedestrians is dangerous.

I was in the middle of a long line of cars taking a left from a left turn lane. The green arrow light turned to a yellow arrow light for a brief second before turning full green. I was at the front of the line at the time so I slowed down and waited for the car in front of me to clear the intersection before I turned so that I could see that there if was oncoming traffic who light just turned green. No oncoming traffic, start turning, notice when I'm way to far into the intersection that a pedestrian is trying to cross the 90 feet of crosswalk as well. I violate their right of way and get myself out of oncoming traffic lanes. In the rear view mirror I see the pedestrian waiting in the middle of the crosswalk for the rest of the line of traffic behind me to finish their left turns. The corner is a 120 degree turn, definitely my fault for not being aware of my surroundings but also... 120 degree turn on two 4 lane 40mph roads... the pedestrian needs a dedicated time to cross free of vehicles.

If they get that close to me, the car is getting kicked or slapped to elicit a reaction from the driver.

Turns out you can take out a driver side mirror by putting most of your weight on it and bouncing a few times. But that's reserved for drivers that have made contact with me...

This is what was taught to me in drivers ed as a driver. Make eye contact with the pedestrian. So I do the same as a pedestrian as well.

A pedestrian scramble means that no vehicles should be moving through the intersection period. It is a time in the cycle where ALL vehicles stop, and pedestrians can use the intersection freely in any direction, including diagonally.

Worse yet, at least in Seattle, are right arrow lights that go green at the same time as the walk light. You get a green light to go and pedestrians start crossing at the same time. Having a green light and a walking sign on should be mutually exclusive.

>> Legally having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead when the driver who's got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn't see you.

>Also, and I know this is unpopular, but maybe you shouldn't dress like that if you don't want the attention.

in driver's ed you're taught to "drive defensively" i think the same applies to pedestrians. Don't just step into the road when the walk sign comes on, have some situational awareness and protect yourself.

This is just not true.

In Toronto for instance, the majority of pedestrian deaths are caused by impaired/distracted drivers with a significant portion of failure to yield by left turning drivers at major, light controlled intersections.

There isn't even a category for "four way stop" pedestrian fatalities.

Speed is nearly everything and controlling (ie. reducing) speed should be the primary way to influence fatality rates.

Having lived in both Toronto and SF, both cities with 4-way stop and controlled lights intersections.

I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower. Much better to get hit by a car at near zero speed than a right or left turning car at higher speed. Which is probably why Toronto doesn't have a category for four way stop fatalities.

(The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

As a cyclist, I've been yelled at by drivers for not stopping at that type of intersection, where they have a stop sign and I don't. People are working off of their personal version of the rules of the road, where they are always right.

> I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower.

Exactly. People are, at worst, doing a "rolling stop" so they are still only going a few kph when they "didn't see" you.

A municipality could (and should) add speed bumps or other traffic-calming measures even at the approach the light-controlled crossing where pedestrians are often present.

> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)

If you think that's bad, Seattle has 0-way stops at intersections in residential. AFAIK, the rule is if you have a stop sign, you must stop; if you don't have a stop sign and other directions do, you have right of way and should proceed if safe; if you don't have a stop sign and neither does anyone else, treat it as an all-way stop. But from my observations, common behavior is to make it through the intersection about half way before realizing there are no stop signs and then just continue through because what else can you do at that point?

Here's a particularly challenging example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gmuFk8jbo4GMJ1Ru7 where five roads come together with no signage.

What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points. Yes, they're invariably controlled by a signal, but that's because a four-way stop is totally out of the question. The signal didn't cause the fatalities, it was necessary to install it because of the same factors that lead to fatalities.

Using that data doesn't remotely begin to predict what happens when you take a small four-way stop and add a signal to control it. Adding a signal does not create new conflict points, it does not increase the speed limit on the road, all it does is control the intersection in a more aggressive way.

> What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points.

That's not what the point plot of the Toronto data shows. Many of our fatalities are on city streets with 40 or 50 km/h speed limits.

Anyway, I was responding to the OP who was claiming that they would rather deal with stop lights than 4 way stops. There is nothing that shows that 4 way stops are dangerous at all, let alone more dangerous than light controlled stops in similar situations.

Make it a roundabout with protected pedestrian crossings. That forces drivers to be looking at the conflict point with pedestrians as they manoeuvre the roundabout.

This. Roundabouts with medians. The answer is (almost) always roundabouts.

Those don't fix it in my experience. There's one about a quarter mile from where I'm sitting right now and I avoid it when walking because of how dangerous it is. Yes, they will see you crossing... as they almost hit you. They recently redid it to be a bit safer for driving on (before people were unclear on how many lanes it had and which lanes could turn where) but it doesn't seem to have improved the pedestrian experience much.

in practice i find this does not work well at all… for some reason in roundabouts is when cars most feel justified in running down a pedestrian in a crosswalk. sometimes i think they’re just afraid to slow bc of the cars behind them

I was very impressed in Denmark, where that roundabout approach worked very well. Every car slowed down & stopped for me at the crosswalks.

It turned out that that was because they installed a cobblestone speed bump in front of every crosswalk. Cars slowed down even if no pedestrians were around, because otherwise they were going to pop a tire. It made walking so much safer than anywhere else I've been.

A stat of how many injuries occurred at this intersection would help settle your point. You're talking a lot of theory, where this person seems to have lived and traversed this intersection many times without incident.

Was the upgrade worth $600,000 in this town, this street? And why, if it is a small town with heavy pedestrian traffic, does it default to vehicular movement instead of pedestrian movement?

It's not even a textbook correct take. Its less risky to run a stop sign in a clear intersection than to run a red light. There are more people likely to run a stop sign on an empty intersection than a red light.

I get your point, but still, while the "pedestrian scramble" is maybe good for pedestrian safety, it's probably the worst solution for pedestrian speed. If the pedestrian lights were at least green at the same time with the car light in the same direction, you would at least have a chance of crossing the street without having to wait. This way, the lights never turn green on their own (as seen in the video), so you always have to press a button and wait.

> With the walk signal there is a brief moment in time when the drivers are doing nothing but waiting for you

In my area, there are plenty of stop lights with pedestrian signals where both are active at the same time. This allows the traffic to flow if there are no pedestrians on the assumption the drivers will recognize the pedestrians have right of way. To me, this is bat shit crazy level of assumptions. Either protect the pedestrians, or you might as well remove the pedestrian signal.

i hate pedestrian scramble systems they make it so slow to walk anywhere

> The author can get lost with this sort of textbook correct but questionable in reality take

I find this perspective very weird when (1) the "textbook" take (i.e. the one traffic engineers follow) is to almost always prioritize vehicle speed and driver safety over everything else, and (2) in what world is it questionable in reality when it existed in reality for decades, seemingly without incident?

This is why it's often safer to "jaywalk". If you're in the middle of a block, you only have to look two ways. Even if you screw up, a driver going at a reasonable speed is more likely to see you anyway because you're directly in front of them. I'm not exactly advocating for crossing in the middle of a street in North America since it's depends a lot on the situation, but there's a reason why people sometimes just do it intuitively, and it's unfortunate our infrastructure doesn't know how to address it.

Jaywalking is very common in the Northeastern US, and I believe it is generally safer when done well. I have a rule that if you don't feel like you can calmly saunter across the street, you shouldn't jaywalk by running across, but many people do not follow such a rule, and just take the soonest opportunity they can find to run across the street.

Be careful, though - I once jaywalked when I was with some friends from the Midwest and they were very offended.

California just made jaywalking legal in 2023 too.

NYC legalized jaywalking in 2024, and the change will take effect next month, Feb 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jaywalking-legalized-in...

mid-block crosswalks exist[1] and can placed where people already "jaywalk". To me it's like installing sidewalks on the desire paths[2].

[1]: https://sustainablecitycode.org/brief/mid-block-pedestrian-c...

[2]: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/least-resistance-desi...

Our town has Installed several crosswalks with flashing lights in common crossing areas away from traffic lights. It feels many times safer.

A 4-way stop is the best intersection for pedestrians in terms of speed. Just keep walking and don't yield your right of way. You may need to put up a hand to make yourself seen by the occasional distracted motorist. But because all vehicles need to stop, the average speed you are dealing with is 0-5mph, so the risk is low and everyone has time to react. Compare that with any lighted intersection where some cars are going full speed, making it a far more dangerous scenario.

Plus, the author is wrong about both drivers running the red light. YEs, they are pushing the yellow, but they are both legal insofar as the car is over the line when the light turns red.

The first "running the red light" car at 11sec has his/her bumper fully over the white line in the last yellow-light video frame and his wheel fully on the line in the first video frame when the light is red. The second "running the red light car" has the entire car more than half way across the intersection with the light still yellow.

His point still stands that people are rushing to make the light, but it does his point no good to exaggerate like that.

While the 4-way-stop was maybe better for pedestrians, as traffic increased that would degrade.

Overall, it probably would be favorable to fix it in favor of pedestrians instead of vehicles, and to that end they should be narrowing the street and adding close-in trees and obstacles to cue the drivers that it is a much slower zone.

> I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span

Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated.

----

Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they're visible on the video. You can get a better picture of what the intersection actually looks like here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/L37hZyvXs8BeWmFE8

Not only legal, but safer than slamming on one's breaks.

Generally speaking if you're going the speed limit you don't need to "slam on your breaks (sic)" to stop before a light turns red unless you didn't have enough time to clear the intersection anyway.

Depends how far you are away from the light when it turns.

And, of course, your speed.

Clearly both are a factor but you don't need both. Even if I go 20mph I have to slam on the breaks hard if the light turns when I'm just three ft away. The only way around this is to treat every light like a stop sign where you do a California roll

Edit: As a related pet peeve I've never understood why we don't have countdowns for car traffic lights like we do for pedestrians. These IMO would not only increase safety but also fuel savings (especially if we had them for each signal change) as I could time my arrival at the traffic light to minimize braking and acceleration.

Surely it depends how close you are to the line when the light turns yellow.

My partner slams on his breaks even though he goes below the speed limit and has plenty of time to clear the intersection. It's not just the speed.

One car enters the intersection on red.

That's false. The stop line for cars is out of frame in the video, and the driver has already passed it by the time the light turns red. You can get a better view of what the intersection actually looks like here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/L37hZyvXs8BeWmFE8

I think it depends on what one uses as the definition of intersection. Is it the actual point where the two roads collide, or is it at the stop line?

You can't be serious. The stop line is where the intersection begins. If you cross the stop line on yellow you won't get a ticket and it is perfectly legal in most US states.

Just rewatched and agree they both entered on orange, which is legal. This clear misinterpretation makes me question the author's take as a whole. Did they consider that cars also regularly run stop signs? Is it possible that this is, in fact, safer for pedestrians, albeit more frustrating while waiting?

OT, but it fired me up a bit - people that enter the intersection on green or orange awaiting a break to turn left. And then don’t clear the intersection on red. Now they’re in everyone’s way. How do you get them to understand they’ve already “run the light” and just need to move?

Would you rather they floor it and beat the straight through traffic when the light turns green? 1-2 cars entering the intersection and then getting through when traffic clears on the red is less worse than the alternative.

One of us has misunderstood the other. Maybe I’m misreading you. Let me clarify my position.

If you’ve entered the intersection on green or orange, and must await oncoming traffic before you can safely turn left, then the light turns red before oncoming traffic clears, once that traffic has indeed stopped for the red, you need to complete your left turn to clear the intersection, even on red.

This situation is clearly spelled out in the driving manuals for my state.

If you are not willing to continue on if the light turns red while you are in the intersection, then don’t enter the intersection until it’s clear - wait behind the line.

For the last sentence, do you mean continue on straight if the desired left turn is not available?

Indeed. Clear the intersection by continuing along a ‘forward’ path. Meaning if you’re left turn became unavailable (crash, blocked by utility workers or police, sink hole opened up, etc), continue on moving back into the correct lanes for your direction of travel.

Other traffic (who are now, or have been) waiting at a red light should be able to tell you’re in the way and wait for you to move.

No, he means wait behind the line.

I remember my father telling me that was how it was supposed to be done, as the yellow light for oncoming traffic would convince them to stop and give you the time to complete the left turn. It only worked when they weren't also running the yellow light! These days I prefer waiting to turn so that I'm not stuck out in the middle of the intersection when the traffic light changes.

If you are stuck in the middle when turning crossing traffic needs to wait until you clear the intersection.

I find it's better for me to just miss the turn while I wait behind the line. I've seen too many instances where that doesn't work out the way it's intended to want to make it a habit for me anymore.

This is really odd and would be extremely frustrating for people behind you. You are supposed to enter the intersection. Keep your wheels straight and then turn whenever there is a gap in the oncoming traffic or when the light turns red and the oncoming traffic stops.

Wouldn't you have the same issue at the next light, and still be stuck waiting to turn, making no forward progress at all?

Note that I'm assuming an unprotected left turn (with right hand traffic as in the US) at a busy intersection with incoming cars running yellow lights; please let me know if any part of my assumption mismatches yours.

If you do not wait in the intersection itself then you would never get a chance to turn in many intersections. The only solution is to always wait in the intersection itself.

I don't know where you live, but where live, you are allowed to complete the left turn even after the light turns red. Hopefully the red light will convince oncoming cars to stop even if the yellow did not. Cross traffic has to yield to you as you exit the intersection. I hope this gives you more confidence in making left turns safely!

This is literally everyone where I live, and if you tried to wait before the intersection, people would be (rightly) incredibly angry at you. It just wouldn’t work. Nobody lingers in the intersection after oncoming traffic clears either.

As far as I know, that is both legal and standard practice in California, and at many intersections with traffic and no protected turn, is in practice the only possible way to turn left: there will simply never be a break in traffic, from the moment the light turns green until it turns red, and so without entering the intersection and then turning on red, it is simply not possible to turn left at all.

They even teach you to do this in driver's ed. I know HN skews "rules are rigid" but this one should be known by everyone.

In parts of Europe the practice itself is even rigid, with markings for where in the intersection your car is supposed to be while waiting to turn.

This is why I always find it weird that in the US (and a lot of other countries) the stoplights are on the end of the intersection, instead of at the entrance. If they're at the entrance, there's no dillema - you can't cross the light if it's red. If it's yellow, you brake if you have time, but if not, it's fine to keep going - the opposing light is going to wait a few seconds before turning green specifically to avoid this.

This also encourages drivers to actually stop in the right place (since they can't see the light otherwise), and it's friendlier for pedestrians since it avoids drivers stopping on top of the crosswalk.

(I've also never heard of the turn-right-on-red rule anywhere other than the US. Over here in Portugal if it's fine to turn right while the light is red, there's just going to be a separate green/flashing light to turn right. A lot clearer!)

The location of the traffic light has no legal meaning, there's a white painted line on the ground, which is the stop line.

But if we were to modify signal positioning to make it impractical to stop past the white line, fewer people would overshoot and wait.

We do this kind of thing in many other places in life. Imagine if we didn’t use barriers anywhere and only used painted lines to tell people where to be - don’t walk to this side of the line, that’s where the valuables are “stored” (no walls, just markings.)

We use ‘guardrails’ all over the place. Sometimes to nudge people (one can jump a literal guardrail), sometimes to prevent injury (you simply cannot physically access the active industrial robot without intentional effort), and all kinds of inconvenience in between to suggest where to be.

Place the lights so that they’re only visible further back, and people will stop further back.

When I stop past the while line, it's almost always because I thought the way was clear, but then something happened, and I had to stop, and then the light changed, and I was stuck past the white line.

If you implement your plan I would never even see the light become red!

And that's fine, because you've _already crossed the line_ and therefore you can (and should) go through. You're no longer running a red light at this point, since it's behind you, you're just crossing the intersection like normal.

Do you drive much in cities? I'll lay out something that happens all the time:

I cross the line slowly, and some pedestrian darts out, so I stop, by the time they cross, the opposing traffic has a green, I however (in your scenario) do not know this because I can't see that the light is red for me.

So now I'm driving forward, thinking I'm good and some car comes flying through because it's green for them, and they can't see me because of the layout of the block.

I need to see and know that the light is red and just stop and wait there.

Similar things happen when the car in front of me wants to turn left, but didn't bother with a blinker - I'm in the intersection, past the line, and suddenly I need to stop because he's turning. He turned, but now it's red for me and I better wait right there, and not go forward, because other cars are about to drive.

You also aren't taking into account the varying heights of cars. If I'm in car behind a van, I won't be able to see the light because it's directly above the van so I can't see it.

Also:

Your goal is to keep cars from going too far into the intersection after a red, right?

The problem is you are assuming this happens due to incompetence, but it actually happens because of driving conditions like I mentioned.

If the stoplight was suspended above the stop line it would be harder if not impossible for the driver to see it.

There's usually two - one suspended above the stop line, and one lower, on a pole on the side of the road, usually around eye level. This way both the driver in the front and drivers in the back get a clear view.

This is not a hypothetical "if", pretty much every country in Europe has traffic lights set up like this. Just take a look at Lisbon or Amsterdam in street view to see what I mean.

I’ve seen this in on-ramps but surely you can understand why duplicating traffic lights isn’t an ideal solution.

In some jurisdictions, this is literally how it works. You claim the intersection, wait for oncoming traffic to stop, then perform your turn. It's legal in jurisdictions where red means you cannot enter, like California.

The major problem is that on very congested streets, the driver won't know if the exit will be free of traffic when the light turns red. Blocking the intersection is illegal.

To a certain degree, it is a failing of Civic design and the ruleset. The solution is generally no left turns during peak hours, which is a duct tape fix

What difference does it make? The main point is that this design induces drivers to speed up even more than they're already speeding (and, this being North America, they're already speeding), at a dangerous point in time when pedestrians are starting to cross. It literally makes no practical difference whether they're entering on a very late yellow or a red.

Traffic engineers aren't blind to the fact that it's NA custom to (roughly) +5 on residential, +8 on state highways, and +5-15 depending on on the lane on interstates. People get up in arms about it on the internet for some reason while IRL the roads are just designed with this in mind.

I have more of an issue with the idea that you can make a previously dangerously fast street/road safer by mere virtue of reducing the speed limit, but leaving it physically designed as before. You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint. I wish North American traffic engineers (and municipal politicians) were better educated on the idea that the only reliable way to slow down drivers is to force them to slow down by making it physically intensely uncomfortable to speed, and that sending drivers to body shops after fender-benders with traffic calming features is preferable to sending vulnerable street users to the morgue. Alas, both occupations are still stuck in an outdated car-centric view of urban transportation.

This competency shortfall is present in other transportation- and infrastructure-related fields. See for example how badly North American construction companies and government bureaucracies handle big transit projects. Third-world levels of mediocrity compared to the cost-effective, competent management in, say, Spain or Japan.

> You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint.

A couple weeks ago, a 55mph limit near me was lowered to 50mph. A cop watched during the busy times for a few days. Now everyone is generally going 5mph slower than they were. Seems successful so far.

You can not say this without the caveat that it is location dependent. This is an illegal action in some cities and states. Like in California, where that video was taken, yellow means STOP if you can safely do so. Both of these cars had ample time to stop and chose to accelerate to make the light.

How can you tell both cars had ample time to stop? We didn't see how close they were to entering the intersection in the video.

They entered the intersection on a yellow light, which is perfectly legal if they could not stop.

I disagree. The first car doesn't even cross their side of the pedestrian crossing before the red light blinks on, so they have had ample time to prepare to stop and are running a red light. The second car is more debatable but also had enough time to stop, as the light turns red while they are still in the middle of the intersection.

The second car definitely entered on yellow. It doesn't matter if they could have stopped. They have the right to enter on yellow.

The first car passed the first line when the light was yellow, but not the second line. The area in between is the crosswalk. I can't tell if "enter the intersection" means "enter any part of the area past the line where you're supposed to stop" or "enter the part past the crosswalk, where the roads actually intersect".

Does anyone know what the rule is?

The fact people can't figure what the rules are is a problem in itself vs a stop sign where everybody knows you should stop.

I know where to stop. I stop before the crosswalk What is less clear is what the word intersection means in a technical sense.

Complicated or ambiguous rules are a part of life. If the idea is to get rid of anything that requires lots of rules, then we'd all still be on foot. No cars, no horses, no bikes. Would that be a net improvement?

It's well spelled out in vehicle code 21453 (a)

> A driver facing a steady circular red signal alone shall stop at a marked limit line, but if none, before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if none, then before entering the intersection, and shall remain stopped until an indication to proceed is shown, except as provided in subdivision (b). [subdivision b allows for turns on red]

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

Yellow generally means do not enter the intersection unless you are so close that you cannot reasonably stop. It is not legal to enter the intersection if you cannot clear it before the signal turns red. Exact rules and enforcement vary by state.

> It is not legal to enter the intersection if you cannot clear it before the signal turns red.

That does not appear to be the case in California, which this article is written about. It seems to be a bit confusing, because there are suggestions that the driver handbook suggests that you should follow the rule you note, but that the law itself has no such requirement.

In practice, in many areas of coastal California almost no one would stop at a yellow unless they felt they could not enter the intersection before it turned red, and doing otherwise would likely be seen as impeding traffic by many other drivers.

In CA we have many intersections where one wants to turn left, but there is not a dedicated left turn signal. When the light turns green, you pull out into the intersection. Ideally you pull out enough that the car behind you can also get into the intersection. On busy roads you may not be able to complete the left turn until the signal goes red. If you chose not to pull out, then nobody would ever be able to turn left. I believe CA passed a law some 20 plus years ago that you must be able to clear the intersection before the red light, which is in conflict with what is sometimes necessary. There are situations though where the direction you are headed is backed up, such that if you pulled out you could end up stuck in the middle of the intersection long after the red light. I believe the law was intended for this situation. So don’t pull out if your direction of travel is blocked.

I had to look this up. In California in particular, this is true, which surprised me.

Per a random law firm: California’s yellow light law permits drivers to enter an intersection during a yellow light. No violation exists unless any part of the car is over the stopping line when the light turns red. However, the law encourages drivers to slow down before reaching the intersection.

Whereas in, for example, Massachusetts, this would be considered running a red light.

https://www.wccbc.com/red-and-yellow-light-accidents/#:~:tex....

I'm wondering how you would know when the yellow light was going to come on.

Do you have some sort of countdown, or innate knowledge?

Because, otherwise do you just randomly stop at green lights guessing that a yellow light might come on? Or do you drive so slowly that you can stop in the width of the white line before a pedestrian crossing? Really, I'm trying to figure out how you don't ever enter just as a light turns yellow. Once you do, do you stop in the intersection or try to clear it before it turns red? I hope the latter.

For me yellow lights are a warning that a red light is coming. It should be long enough for cars to clear the intersection (in many states without gridlock rules even this is not the case for left hand turns).

My experience in Boston is that drivers try to beat the green light change and accelerate while it's still red.

> For me yellow lights are a warning that a red light is coming

Correct, yellow means "start slowing and stop before the intersection if you can do so safely, otherwise proceed". Red means "do not proceed if you aren't already in the intersection".

This is why the opposing traffic signal and walk signal will wait for a second or two after red: to allow people who entered on yellow to finish their transit across the intersection.

Indeed, in the author's own video where they incorrectly claim someone ran a red light, the author had no legal right to cross anyways, so there was no chance of the author getting injured unless they ran a red light at the crosswalk.

In short, the author seems most frustrated that the situation changed from everyone waiting on him, to him waiting a few seconds for others.

> Do you have some sort of countdown, or innate knowledge?

often, in the form of the pedestrian signal.

> try to clear it before it turns red?

This is the rule in much of the world, yes.

I assume you mean the perpendicular direction crossing lights? Most pedestrian lights have delays longer than that in California for safety so you might stop at a green light.

Also, if nobody presses a button ped-lights don't even turn on, just like left turn signals don't turn on without a vehicle triggering it.

> Also, if nobody presses a button ped-lights don't even turn on

This is no longer true in many cities. Most SF crosswalks don’t require a press anymore, many don’t in LA, and all don’t in New York. AFAIK it was a Covid thing, back when people thought surfaces spread the virus, but it stuck.

If this surprises you, consider the alternative: Driving through a yellow being illegal or unexpected doesn't make sense, given the finite stopping distance of cars, and reaction time of humans. This is because the yellow light is the first explicit indicator you must stop.

If this doesn't make sense still, picture this scenario: You are driving at the speed limit. You are 500ms from crossing the stop line threshold. The light turns yellow.

Your interpretation would make sense only if there were a (paler yellow?) light warning of the yellow light!

Austria does that: 4 seconds of the green light flashing in order to announce the yellow light.

With this change to the scenario, being required to stop before yellow makes sense. And blowing through red means you extra screwed up! (?)

On this note: In the UK, there is a yellow light prior to green; love it.

The US sometimes has something similar: visibile countdown timers for the pedestrian crossing turning form stop to go, which coincides with the car light turning from red/stop to green/go.

This encourages people to run the light by trying to turn exactly as the countdown timer hits 0, trying to race against pedestrians trying to cross crossing pedestrians.

You could always do that before in most instances just by watching for the yellow on the cross street too. Though I think the green is often slightly delayed relative to the pedestrian light, precisely to ensure the car cannot win that race legally

So a pre-yellow light? This seems like you just changed what we call a yellow light to the 4 flashing greens, and made the yellow the new red. If yellow means “don’t enter the intersection”, how is that different than a red?

How long until we can get a proper countdown like some pedestrian signals have?

Yep, something something Chesterton's fence. If you couldn't drive through a yellow then you effectively have two lights go/stop which makes drivers choose between the safe but illegal thing of running the light or the dangerous but legal thing of slamming on their brakes.

You can't have an instant switch between go/stop which yellow— effectively meaning unsafe stopping distance go, safe stopping distance stop— solves very neatly.

> effectively meaning unsafe stopping distance go, safe stopping distance stop— solves very neatly.

That's how it works in Poland and it works reasonably well.

On the other hand when light is about to turn green, yellow lights up. So red and yellow at the same time means prepare to go.

In France, it is illegal to drive through a yellow light unless it would be dangerous to stop, for example if it required you to break hard. That part is up to the officer judgment.

In practice, I have never seen it applied, and it is only a small fine anyways, much less serious than running a red light. I guess it can be used as an excuse if the police really wants to pull you over.

On the contrary, I think it could make perfect sense: What's written in the law is one thing, and how it's enforced is another; I would argue that the former should be done with consideration to the latter.

Based on my own experience, I'd estimate that well over 99% of traffic infractions go entirely ignored by the law: minor speed violations, unsignaled lane changes, rolling stops at stop signs, expired tags, cell phone usage, and yes, running red lights.

When the letter of the law is broader in scope or errs on the side of caution, that enables the police to exercise their judgment in enforcing it (with the obvious caveat that some police will abuse any power you give them). You could imagine a scenario where someone technically runs a red light but it's totally justifiable and safe (heavy load + moderate speed + short yellow + no other traffic) and another where someone technically makes it into the intersection on a yellow light but senselessly severely endangers public safety (busy intersection + rapid acceleration + traffic backed up on the other side of the light).

I would be okay with someone evading a ticket in the first case and getting one in the latter.

This is the law in Illinois, too. It, in combination with the way the lights are timed, makes some intersections particularly challenging for pedestrians.

The basic way the timing goes is: traffic light changes, pedestrian crossing signal illuminates, traffic going straight that squeezed in on the yellow finally clears the intersection, cars turning left finally get a chance to go, pedestrian can finally safely enter the intersection with approximately 10 seconds left to cross a four lane street, lights change again, cars start honking at the older person with mobility issues who could only get halfway across the intersection in the time they had available to safely do it, impatient driver from further back in the line who doesn't care to figure out why the person in front hasn't started moving even though the light has been green for five full seconds swerves into the right turn lane and guns it, narrowly missing the aforementioned older person with mobility issues as they blast through the intersection.

In the UK, if you're at all over the line when the lights change, you're considered "in the junction" and are expected to leave the junction -- the next phase should give you priority to do so. The only way to run a red light is to start crossing the line while the light is red -- although plenty of drivers will start to inch across while they're supposed to be waiting :P.

The most annoying scenario is where a driver has either stopped or inched forwards far enough that they can't actually see the lights any more and don't know when they've changed.

The way I learned this was "in legal, out legal," meaning that you are not allowed to be driving in the intersection while the light is red (aka you have to be finished transiting by the time the light changes).

Is this not the law in California?

I believe most states it is LEGAL to enter the intersection(normally marked by a white line) before the light turns red.

Cross traffic MUST wait for cars to clear the intersection.

In my state you are allowed to exit the intersection while the light is red but may only enter while it's green or yellow. In driver's ed they taught us to enter the intersection while waiting to make a left turn so that we could complete the turn after the light turned yellow/red and opposing traffic stopped.

It is the same in most US states.

My understanding is that California has two relevant laws for this discussion:

21453 (a) which prohibits crossing the stop line when the light is red [1]. And 22526 (a) which prohibits entering an intersection when the exit isn't clear. [2]

You have to be able to clear the intersection if you enter it, and you have to enter it on green or yellow (except for turn on red after a stop), but you don't have to clear the intersection before it goes red.

Common practice (which might not be 100% legal) for unprotected lefts on green (where space permits) is for the first car to fully enter the intersection and the second car to roll over the line a bit, then for both vehicles to clear the intersection when opposing traffic stops which may be in yellow or red. The driver that's only a bit in the intersection can make a judgement call and stay slightly encroaching rather than clear the intersection if clearing seems inadvisable because opposing traffic was slow to stop.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

[2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

Legality aside, is that not kind of the issue here? Lights in a high foot traffic area could incentivize people to speed up to make it before the red, which is less predictable and has cars traveling at faster speeds compared to a stop sign, which requires all cars to stop. Embellished yes, but point of the article showing that this intersection is now more dangerous to pedestrians stands imo.

Using stop lights to control this sort of high-traffic intersection is totally normal in the US. Stop signs are typically used for lower-traffic intersections. Subjectively speaking, I think drivers are more likely to obey a red light than a stop sign.

Perhaps the author of this article is upset that the neighborhood now has more traffic than it used to, but that's a different issue.

No, drivers in that neighborhood were used to stop at every stop while now a lot are passing through that intersection much faster to avoid the red light.

I'm not sure I've seen evidence that running stop signs is more likely, but even if that is the case which one is higher risk? I'd subjectively say running red lights is more dangerous as you have a higher chance of several pedestrians entering the cross walk all at once, or several cars going at once, since it causes people/cars to move in waves. I think its pretty clear that the author is upset that a stop light that increases risk for pedestrians, cost the school and city money, and provides minimal time advantage for cars was implemented.

Also, I'd like to point out that normal does not mean good, or best.

Both may be legal, but the first one is unclear and is definitely unsafe. Safety requirements dictate a slightly different understanding of yellow light than is commonly used by drivers. For safety, yellow must mean "begin controlled deceleration immediately". The first driver had plenty of time on yellow to not be just barely entering the intersection on red. They clearly were not decelerating and had very likely sped up to beat the light. This unquestionably is a thing that drivers do all the time, and it's dangerous.

Again, please be aware that the video does not show the entire intersection.

It seems like you're stuck on whether someone broke a red light law, but this isn't an article about the legality of dangerous behaviors. It's an article about making intersections more dangerous.

The first car isn't even through the crosswalk when the light turns red. Racing through a crosswalk to beat a light is the definition of dangerous driving.

Why is it dangerous? (Unless they're breaking the speed limit to make the light, obviously.) Just the risk that they might misjudge the timing and enter the intersection after the light turns red? But lights have a built in delay before turning green to account for that.

Because vehicles are often already traveling at or above the speed limit.

Just as the yellow light is intended as a "start slowing down" but is interpreted as "speed up to beat the light", the speed limit sign is intended as a "do not exceed this speed" but is interpreted as "you must be traveling this speed".

If we assumed that most vehicles are traveling the speed limit or faster, which is the case in my experience, then accelerating further is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

I think they question they were asking was: What is the fire upon which gasoline is being poured?

Given that, even if someone entered the intersection on yellow, they would be out of the intersection before perpendicular cars/bicycles/pedestrian signals turn green, how is it dangerous?

It seems the risk of collision is 0 as long as neither the driver nor the perpendicular cars/bicycles/pedestrians are illegally running red signals.

> yellow must mean "begin controlled deceleration immediately"

This is not true in the strong form you used. There is a regime where there is no possibility you will be able to stop the vehicle in time using reasonable deceleration. Slowing does no good. There is also a regime where slowing will cause you to enter the intersection during the red light, and not decelerating will not.

That's ok. We can hammer out the details together, but the principle is true if the light turns yellow before you reach the intersection. Note that I didn't say how rapidly you need to be decelerating, and if the light has turned red before the car even clears the crosswalk, as is the case for the first car, then the driver sped up instead of slowing down.

This is very much wrong.

When a driver sees a yellow light, they must make a call: do I have time to safely slow down and stop before reaching the stop location, or not? If I do, then I must start slowing down right away - that much we agree o. But if I don't, then I mustn't slow down, as that is more likely to leave me in the middle of the intersection while the lights turn green for through-traffic.

Freeze frame:

https://imgur.com/a/ASSeakh

> the stop lines are out of frame

Is the car in the freeze frame in a legal position given the red light? It would appear not.

There is another line before. We don't really see the entire intersection.

Yes, you are correct. That's why I specifically did not address the car's entry into the intersection.

Given the red light, is the car in a legal position in the freeze frame?

Yes. I do not understand why this is so misunderstood in the comments.

This picture is LEGAL in most US states as long as the car entered the intersection ON A GREEN OR YELLOW light.

At least one California law firm disagrees, hence my question:

https://www.wccbc.com/red-and-yellow-light-accidents/#:~:tex....

Some quick Googling shows that "it depends on where" appears to be the right answer. New Jersey appears to be a populated jurisdiction where this might not be legal.

As I said MOST US states.

I looked at the link and NO, they DO NOT DISAGREE. Read the language, drivers SPEEDING through a yellow light MAY be found negligent if they cause an injury to someone.

"California’s yellow light law permits drivers to enter an intersection during a yellow light. No violation exists unless any part of the car is over the stopping line when the light turns red. However, the law encourages drivers to slow down before reaching the intersection.

In California, the yellow light law provides that drivers are automatically “warned” by the light turning yellow that the traffic light is about to change to red. This means that a faulty driver cannot avoid responsibility for an accident simply by claiming that they didn’t see the yellow light.

It doesn’t matter if they saw it or not. Drivers speeding through a yellow light may be found negligent for not slowing down if their driving caused an accident or injured others."

I'm reading this differently than you are:

"No violation exists unless any part of the car is over the stopping line when the light turns red."

But I'm not a lawyer and this is interpreting an interpretation.

I agree with your interpretation of that site's text, but I don't believe that text is an accurate interpretation of California law. It would be a violation to cross the stopping line when the light is steady red unless for a turn on red after stopping when that's not prohibited by a sign at the intersection (as in this intersection) or by a red arrow (not all states prohibit turns on red arrow after stopping). But afaik, there's no prohibition of being over the line when the light turns red. Only for crossing while red, or entering without the exit being clear.

The author is pissed off about the design of the intersection. If you have to litigate bullshit like this, surely you see, well, the intersection is poorly designed.

You are also litigating whether or not it's legal. A lot of traditions of California driving are legal and really dangerous. My dude, CVC doesn't even apply in a private parking lot for example, so you can accidentally kill somebody in one and legally face no moving violations. "Legal" is not an interesting criteria at all, it's misleading.

On the other hand, whether the driver was legally or illegally passing through the intersection is also irrelevant for safety: the fact is that the video clearly shows that the driver didn't put anyone's lives at risk this time, neither themself, any pedestrians, nor any incoming cars.

My problem is that author doesn't seem to understand the traffic laws and wrongly says cars ran a red light. I'm not interested in his opinion after that.

If you are going to put something on the internet about bad design you should make sure you understand it first.

There's no way to know from a single frame. We would need to know the sequence of events.

It's not against California vehicle code to be in an intersection when the light is red. It's not even necessarily against vehicle code to be in an intersection when the light is red for you and green for perpindicular traffic (although it's an imminent hazard, so you better have a good reason).

To show a red light violation, you need a datestamped image showing the vehicle behind the stop line with a red light showing, and a near in time image of it in the intersection on red, and probably another one to show that it didn't make an allowed right on red. Really, you also need evidence that the red light was steady, and not a flashing red light which would indicate four way stop and the driver could proceed after stopping. Typically, you wouldn't see red showing on both directions at the same time in a flashing red situation, but cameras are fickle.

Adding on, the frame before clearly shows a legal entry.

https://imgur.com/a/z7ZSvtD

The vehicle entered the intersection, by crossing the first line of the pedestrian crossing which is out of frame, while the light is yellow. The exit was clear when the vehicle entered the intersection, so there's no violation there, and it may proceed through the intersection. Cross traffic doesn't enter the intersection for a few seconds after it clears; and there are no pedestrians engaged with the intersection either, so there's no safety concern. The next car that goes through the yellow is fully in the intersection on yellow, so there's no question of a violation there, although again they were in the intersection on red although I think that one cleared before the perpendicular traffic got a green, unlike the vehicle in the images.

I've sometimes wondered what the exact rule is with red lights. Presumably you're allowed to continue moving forwards if the front of your vehicle passed the stop line before the light turned red. But if you stopped with the stop line passing through your vehicle are you allowed to start moving forwards again while the light is red? (Whether that would be a sensible thing to do would depend on whether you're driving a long vehicle with just a tiny part of it behind the stop line, or a motorbike with just a tiny part of it in front of the stop line, but does the law distinguish those two cases?)

I don't think the law is so specific, but I suspect the right interpretation would be that you should pass through the intersection if the car is in a position where it would block other traffic the moment the light turns red; in any other circumstance, you should stop if the light is red, even if you passed the location where you'd normally wait.

For example, say you're entering the intersection on green/yellow, but the car in front suddenly stops while you're on the crosswalk, possibly not even seeing the light on the side of the road, but no part of your car is impeding the cross traffic. Well, even if the car in front now clears the intersection, if the light has turned red, you should almost certainly stop and wait for the next green light, rather than trying to clear the crosswalk: doing anything else is much more dangerous.

If your vehicle is ever fully stopped past the line, and the light is red, that would be considered a “blocking the box” traffic violation in most jurisdictions. You technically should not have entered the intersection at all without the ability to fully clear it.

In England, I thought it was only the "crossed out" intersections that you shouldn't enter unless the exit is clear. Rule 174 here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the-road-...

Except the article doesn’t claim what the drivers are doing is illegal.

The article says that the street design causes drivers to speed up and makes the intersections unsafe.

Instead of drivers always stopping, or at the very least slowing down, when approaching the intersection, the new street design leads to drivers speeding up when approaching the intersection.

This is bad design for pedestrians irrespective of whether the driver jumps a light, the pedestrians cross when they shouldn’t be, or neither of them are doing anything wrong.

It will increase the odds of collisions, injuries and possibly fatalities.

> Except the article doesn’t claim what the drivers are doing is illegal.

The article states “… and I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span.” I suppose “ripping through” can be left up to interpretation.

However, in the video the author says “that person just ran a stop… a red light right in the middle of me filming.” Then the other he says: “I bet this guy runs the light. Yup, see, this person ran the light, too.”

“Running” a red light is an illegal act.

I think in both cases the cars should have slowed down and had plenty of time to stop before entering the intersection. But, evidently that’s legal in California, while the author indicates otherwise.

I don't know if California has a different law, but at least in my state it is very much illegal to accelerate into a yellow light.

Enforcement is basically non-existent, but it's absolutely "running the light" and "breaking the law" to accelerate into yellow lights.

I don't know USA, but in other parts of the world yellow and red are different colors.

Just because 2 things are illegal they aren't the same, and it takes away all seriousness from the article for me.

Genuinely - why do you care?

His point is absolutely correct - the cars used to stop, and now instead they're accelerating to beat a light change.

I genuinely don't know if that's actually illegal in cali - but it definitely is in several states, and you'll get ticketed for failing to stop for a red light.

---

> but in other parts of the world yellow and red are different colors.

Yellow is the light that means "start stopping" and red is the one that means "absolutely stop". Neither damn color is the "go faster" color.

> but it definitely is in several states, and you'll get ticketed for failing to stop for a red light.

My state, which is one of the ones you are talking about, only will give you a ticket for going over the speed limit through a yellow light, not for accelerating up to the speed limit. If you proceed through a yellow without going above the speed limit (even if accelerating) and do so because you were in the intersection already (at or beyond the stop line) you will not receive a ticket (assuming you can prove it).

Accelerating through a yellow over the speed limit is just asking for a speeding ticket in just about any state.

> Genuinely - why do you care?

Because the article is clearly biased. If I wanted biased articles I could go anywhere else on internet.

California law does not address accelerating on a yellow. The driver's handbook (which is not the law) says

> A yellow traffic signal light means CAUTION. The light is about to turn red. When you see a yellow traffic signal light, stop, if you can do so safely. If you cannot stop safely, cautiously cross the intersection.

The bright line rule is not to enter the intersection on a red light, defined as crossing the stop line if present, crossing the first line of a pedestrian crossing if present, or actually entering the intersection if there are no lines.

> The article states “… and I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span.” I suppose “ripping through” can be left up to interpretation.

There really isn't enough information given to make a determination.

It looks like two of the vehicles traveling on Lemon "jump" due to a ridge in the middle of the intersection but that itself isn't an indication of speeding.

The video and article specifically said these cars “ran the red light”, which they absolutely did not do.

you're supposed to slow down at a yellow to prepare to stop, not speed up to get through it, increasing speed through an intersection is inherently dangerous

the author's point is valid and we're falling into pedantry

It depends on how far from the intersection you are. If you can’t stop before the intersection, you shouldn’t slow down because you need to get through the intersection in time.

Those cars didn’t have time to stop safely. They would have had to slam on the breaks, which is very dangerous because the car behind you might not stop in time. Speeding up to get through in time is the right decision if you are very close to the intersection when the light turns yellow.

Speeding up is only the right decision because it's a poorly designed intersection.

There is no intersection design that could avoid this. Some people are going to be too close to the intersection to stop in time when they see yellow no matter what you do.

That doesn't excuse speeding up, though – if the yellow light is long enough, you will always be able to either a) safely stop with a certain given maximum deceleration, or else b) continue at your current speed and enter the intersection before the light turns red.

That's rubbish, it's provable mathematically that given any speed limit it's possible to avoid an overlapping "dilemma zone" that requires speeding up

(v²) / (2a) ≤ (v × t_y) + L

v = vehicle speed (meters per second)

a = comfortable deceleration rate (meters per second squared)

t_y = yellow light duration (seconds)

L = length of the intersection (meters)

You can calculate the minimum yellow time for this using t_y ≥ (v / 2a) - (L / v)

This is rudimentary and doesn't account for reaction time, but a simple buffer would suffice.

The failure is largely in poor planning and poor human behavior.

I don't see why a re-design like this wouldn't have included both pedestrian and car infrastructure improvements. Tighten all the turn radii, add bump-outs to each corner, and you could have a signalized intersection that is better than it was before for both.

As a nearby Los Angeles resident, I can confirm that a significant percentage, say 30-40%, of drivers 1) don't stop at stop signs, and 2) routinely run red lights at intersections when few or no other vehicles are present. It's true that it's legal to enter an intersection when a light is yellow, but don't let this statement distract from the general traffic-lawlessness that prevails. Law enforcement is even less likely to follow the law (ignoring cases where lights and sirens are activated).

I think the defacto rule that many drivers follow is, 'if the intersection appears clear, I don't have to stop.' (I'm not advocating this rule, just saying what I think the rule is.) Cell phones and screens in cars have made this rule especially problematic because drivers aren't paying close enough attention to the road to ascertain whether intersections are clear.

This isn't a recent phenomenon in LA, but it seems to have increased during and since Covid. I'd love to find reliable data on traffic enforcement. The problem is cultural, but the apparent lack of enforcement seems to have expanded the population of scofflaw drivers.

There is local traffic culture in a lot of places. LA residents in particular don't like stopping at stop signs. Boston drivers turn left immediately when the light turns green even if other cars going the opposite direction have right of way. Texas drivers speed like madmen on freeways. New York drivers change lanes with reckless abandon.

Law enforcement officers in all these places never pull people over for this stuff.

Its only me, who think that 12 seconds of green light is just too small window. That's why every car try its best to pass through.

I had the same thought. I've been in places where the first one would supposedly get you a ticket, as you are intended to stop if safely able to do so. It looked like that might have been the case there, though it isn't clear at all.

The second wasn't even close to running the light.

This is a solved problem and it's astonishing the world hasn't just adopted the Dutch traffic engineering standards outright. It's FASTER for cars and safer for people.

The lack of adoption of best practices from other countries is generally baffling to me. When I first visited China grim Europe and saw traffic lights with countdowns (like in the US) I thought we did immediately adopt this in Europe. Cultural inertia and lack of looking outwards is really frustrating.

A countdown on a traffic signal seems like a fun way to encourage drag racing.

Though it's nice on pedestrian signals.

Another example of "this is why we can't have nice things".

Crazy idea that would be next to politically impossible in North America: Have every traffic light with a countdown also be a speed camera.

It'd eliminate the incentive to drag race, would give drivers more information earlier allowing better driving, and would generally make speeds limits actually a limit on roads with traffic lights.

First you have to deal with the issue of cities selling camera data to third parties and using it for license plate tracking and face ID

That's a solved problem in responsible cities, say New York. The cameras only take a picture if they see someone speeding [1], and once they see someone speeding a citation is issued and that's a matter of public record [2] so there is no data to sell.

But like I said, politically impossible, there's a very strong constituency and lobby of people who like cars and like speeding and will come up with excuses for why it couldn't work. For instance New York State restricts New York City to only putting speed cameras in school zones because of that group of people.

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/speed-camera-faq....

[2] https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Open-Parking-a...

Is it a countdown until it turns green, or a countdown until it turns red? I think it's unlikely the latter would encourage drag racing.

I'd like to see both so that I can avoid coming to a full stop when it's red and on the other side of it avoid having to slam on the breaks.

The driver can usually see the countdown on the pedestrian signal anyway. It's not obvious that this would be worse.

How are countdown signal better ?

I know if I still have time to try to cross or not. Especially on wider roads it's nice not to have to worry about being in the middle when it goes red.

Research on countdown traffic lights is inconclusive with regards to their safety [0]. They can not realistically be described as best practice.

[0] https://www.maxapress.com/data/article/dts/preview/pdf/DTS-2...

Countdown signals don't work with adaptive signalling where phases are dynamically lengthened or shortened (or sometimes entirely skipped) in response to traffic flows. They especially don't work with public transport priority.

Which standards are you referring to?

They are literally referring to the "Dutch traffic engineering standards" when they say "Dutch traffic engineering standards"

What standards specifically? What is the solution to the problem that Dutch standards provide? Duh

It’s an entire book length of material, but in short, for built up areas drivers are forced through street to design to be higher alert to their surroundings. EX: chicanes in the road, speed tables, brick roads, narrow streets, small/tight turn radius, no turn on red, etc. These all work together to make a system that is amongst the safest in the world for pedestrians, and by happenstance has the happiest drivers.

Also, bike traffic and vehicle through traffic are separated on different networks, so a conflicts are minimized.

Which requires a long and detailed answer that can be found by simply googling "Dutch traffic engineering standards" which leads you to an entire wealth of information.

https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/principles-safe-road-network (national institute for road safety research)

https://crowplatform.com/product/design-manual-for-bicycle-t... (non-profit advisor to the ministry of transport)

To clarify, aren't these standards mostly relevant where heavy bicycle traffic exists? Do they still apply in areas with little to no bicycle traffic? I'm assuming you're mostly referring to this famous manual: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROW_Design_Manual_for_Bicycle...

There is no bicycle traffic because there are no bicycle roads. It's incorrect to claim that we shouldn't build bicycle roads because there's no bicycle traffic :)

A similar concept would be to only build airports where there's lots of planes landing.

Or arguing that a bridge shouldn't be built because people don't regularly swim across.

The hard problem isn’t figuring out what to do. Its to get people on board with shifting from a like for like infrastructure development model where the roads and built environment look more or less the same for decades, to a potential status quo changing model of infrastructure development. If you can solve that fundamental issue, traffic is just a footnote of the long list of problems you also solve on our planet.

HA! I was about to tell my story and checked the article. My story is ONE block away from this intersection.

I used to work a few blocks from this intersection and would walk daily to the train. Crossing the street was daunting, especially when we time changed and it was dark. I started carrying reflective labels on my backback and I wore a strobe light when crossing.

I _still_ had people flipping me off, swerving around me, honking, etc for my audacity to use a crosswalk. Going to remote work probably saved my life.

> Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?

The author knows the answer as well as most readers do: because the intersection is being designed with cars in mind, not human beings.

I'm about 99% sure that was a rhetorical question so you can ask yourself why we put cars before people.

People are in cars too.

I think we should give priority to the people who are no inside multi-ton metal boxes, pollute less, can get on average healthier due to walking etc etc... At least inside our cities.

Usually a crossing will instantly switch when the pedestrian button is pressed, if enough time has passed since the last "walk" cycle. Having a stage where walk is enabled when there's no pedestrians around wouldn't much help pedestrians, and would introduce inefficiency in throughput. And obviously, drivers can't press a button, so it makes more sense for controls to be accessible to the pedestrians.

> Having a stage where walk is enabled when there's no pedestrians around wouldn't much help pedestrians, and would introduce inefficiency in throughput

It forces drivers to reduce speed and come to a full stop; dramatically decreasing the likelihood of collisions with pedestrians they did not notice.

Instantly? You're definitely not in North America. Many intersections around me, if you missed pressing the crossing button before parallel street had a green light, you missed your opportunity to walk for the next minute.

*five minutes.

> designed with cars in mind, not human beings

This is a bad faith framing. The cars are driven by humans. Or in the case of autonomous driving, are driving humans around.

I've come up to plenty of lights that had the pedestrian signal lit even though there were no pedestrians. This happens during the day and at night, and is frustrating. Just happened the other day when I was driving around midnight. Not a pedestrian in sight!

If the designers were truly considering the well-being of the occupants of the vehicles then they would be designing cities to minimize the time spent in vehicles; which means more than saving a few seconds at a stop light, it means getting them out of their cars entirely.

That might fly in temperate parts of California, but it sure doesn't work in places with less pedestrian-friendly weather.

There are plenty of examples of walkable neighbourhoods in places with cold and/or wet weather.

Yes, there are some places that people can walk, nearly everywhere. But GP suggested "getting them out of their cars entirely". That is not a nuanced proposal that acknowledges tradeoffs and seeks to find a balanced approach. It's saying that people should not be in cars. Tell that to a parent with 4 bags of groceries and 3 kids and see what the reaction is.

If we want better cities and towns, zealotry won't get us very far. It will get us laughed at. And I say this as someone who walks all the time and is about to do so right now.

There are also plenty of examples of countries that lack reliable running water. That doesn’t make it a preferable standard of living.

It is working great in New York City: traffic is down 11-60% with just a $9 fee.

Do you think people who previously drove into NYC are now walking from NJ? Or are they working remote? The photos of carless streets I've seen don't seem to be packed with pedestrians.

Minneapolis, Chicago, a lot of less temperate cities have protected walking tunnels, either underground or protected by buildings.

Forcing people into a 19th century standard of living is not good for their well being.

"Walking" is not some outdated concept. Lordy.

To the vast majority of Americans it unfortunately is.

No but living in a world without automobiles absolutely is. I’m sick and tired of this deranged notion that it’s somehow virtuous to deliberately impoverish ourselves by giving up things like cars that, empirically, human beings from every culture rich enough to afford them prefer to use.

Let's not ignore the negative externalities of cars.

Separately: In a small town, it's objectively nicer to have certain areas that are walkable without navigating traffic.

> In a small town, it's objectively nicer to have certain areas that are walkable without navigating traffic.

Sure, I don't have a problem with that.

Drivers are on average richer than pedestrians.

In America, with our current wealth disparity, that leaves their interests wildly over-represented in policy and infrastructure.

More like voters are on average more likely to be drivers than pedestrians, so politicians favor drivers. In my experience this is even more true for poor voters as they generally can’t afford to live in walkable areas.

It's too bad they didn't put a roundabout here, there's one in the middle of old town Orange and it works pretty well. Terrible waste of money to make the intersection worse like they did.

It also says something that the behavior of the cars here isn't even illegal in California. Entering an intersection on yellow and exiting on red is fine. Right turn on red is also allowed, and many people combine that with a California stop (though that last part isn't legal). All of the above are extremely hazardous for pedestrians and encourage speeding.

Knew before I clicked: it's a flat 4-way intersection of two large-ish streets where there is ample space for something else. Hint: draw a small circle in the middle of the intersection and take down the damn stop signs.

Are you talking about roundabouts? Those are a nightmare for pedestrians

With heavy mixed traffic it's a nightmare for everyone. If pedestrians have the right of way (as they should) and there are a lot of them the whole thing would likely become a permanent traffic jam with almost always one car waiting to turn blocking most of the circle.

here in italy at certain roundabouts we have traffic lights that only work when a pedestrian called them. otherwise, the traffic lights flash a flashing yellow light and as a car you can use the roundabout as if the traffic lights didn't exist.

it's quite useful, if you ask me, it combines the best of both solutions. of course the traffic light has a countdown so if someone presses it immediately after having worked, it will wait for 30sec/1 min before being red again

That fixes the issue for cars but it sounds no better for pedestrians than the intersection in the article, right?

Partially true, given the huge congestion that there is, pedestrian have to wait for the green light even if cars aren't moving due to traffic. However, it is situated in quite an important node of traffic going in/out of the city. in smaller roundabouts we just have zebra crossing without lights, while in more dangerous and big ones (eg more lanes or often has heavy traffic) we have traffic lights

Roundabouts aren't perfect but they greatly reduce the speed of traffic at the crossing point (while increasing the overall throughput of the intersection).

Without looking up statistics (and I'd love to be proven wrong here), I'd be willing to guess that roundabouts may result in some marginal increase in minor accidents but massively reduces fatalities or accidents that leave the pedestrian in the ICU.

Additionally with a roundabout the crossing can be moved a few cars down the street away from the roundabout itself so that cars can have line of sight to safely approach the crossing and pedestrians have time to react to incoming vehicles. On top of that proper placement of crossings allows a normal zebra crossing to be upgraded to a pelican, puffin, or toucan crossing without impeding flow of traffic within the roundabout.

1-lane roundabouts are OK

More than 1-lane and they're a disaster waiting to happen

A disaster for cars, at a slower speed and similar direction than the comparable intersection (and no racing to/from from a light psychology).

So a disaster with significantly better outcomes than a red light runner (with a high speed side swipe or head collision)

Nah, 2 lanes are pretty manageable. Even for a pedestrian. You still only have traffic coming from one direction which makes it easy to see when you can cross.

From a car perspective, it's just a matter of getting in the right lane for the exit you want.

For pedestrians, roundabouts also eliminate left turn lanes, saving ~9' of stroad width to cross and mean only looking one, predictable, direction at a time.

At high traffic times, they can make a pedestrian wait longer. Not so fun when it's cold out.

But otherwise somewhat easier to navigate.

With roundabouts drivers only look to the left and don't come to a complete stop. If you're on foot trying to cross from the other direction good luck.

Yep. Hence the appeal of turning the intersection into a roundabout and pulling the stoplights 3-5 cars from the roundabout and only stopping traffic when pedestrians are present (i.e. puffin and pelican crossing style). It gives cars enough time to turn and then halt with a bright red stop light to catch their attention.

Roundabout + pedestrian stoplight is probably fine. I don't think I've ever seen one and I live not too far from where the article is written.

Seems like it's still worse for pedestrians as they have to wait for the beg button.

Here's a link to the Massachusetts Dept of Transportation's guide on designing/building roundabouts:

https://www.mass.gov/doc/massdot-guidelines-for-the-planning...

It provides solid guidance on how roundabouts should approach crossings to minimize risk of accidents or collisions without impeding traffic.

Probably the best graphic is on page 45, figure 5-13

Crosswalks before the entry to the roundabout, where drivers need to stop anyway; bonus points for a gentle speed hump. Am I missing something?

What kind of roundabout has a "stop anyway"?

Some do have stop signs before you enter, but they should always have at least an implicit yield. Vehicles entering should be prepared to stop in case there's not room to enter the roundabout yet. The real issue with their suggestion is that only being able to cross "before the entry" wouldn't get you anywhere, you have to also cross where cars exit it!

Normally they are for pedestrian crossings. The stop for the incoming traffic will be near where the vehicles yield prior to entering the roundabout but the stop for outgoing traffic is several cars away to allow cars to continue moving in the roundabout.

And because they are pedestrian crossings, they only go red when someone is walking across them and for a few seconds before and after. Which means in most cases they are green 90-95% of the time and only go red for less than a minute at a time.

I'm not against circles in general, but (along with pedestrians) they aren't exactly bike friendly either.

How so?

Both as a pedestrian and driver I prefer roundabouts as they force drivers to slow down to non-lethal speeds and there's typically a one car length of road between the turn and pedestrian crossing, so the cars are already going straight when they cross it.

The only road users who don't mix well with roundabouts are cyclists on cycling lanes, as they get in and out of view too fast.

Drivers also slow down at stop signs.

The issue with roundabouts is that drivers never look to the right while entering. We have a few around me in Long Beach and when you're on foot you may as well be invisible.

Yes. The crossings aren’t solved by the roundabout. But speeds are lowered going into the intersections. The crossings work the same (but may need to move away slightly from the roundabout).

We should aim at better drivers rather than better intersections, but bad drivers are everywhere.

Years ago I worked in a building on the side of a long straight road. The road ended with a blind curve to the right and 100m before the blind curve there was a pedestrian crossing.

Even though all drivers knew they would need to brake for the blind curve (it was visible and there were signs) the majority of them used to drive very fast and basically did not let people cross the road, only to push very hard on the brakes 10 meters beyond the pedestrian crossing.

The road design is what causes bad or good driving. The road you describe should narrow before the blind curve so the drivers would (often enough unconsciously) slow down before it. For the pedestrian crossing, small islands that separate the lanes and give pedestrians a safe space will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc

The bright side of roundabouts and (curbs) annd curves is that they create better (more cautious, observing) drivers, with minor consequences (like hitting a curb).

For lowering the high speed, we can also stack roundabouts, curbs (ie diverge and coverage the road).

The other positive of raised curbs is that we can add shrubbery as a natural traffic barrier, and there are some nice safety impacts from this too, such as reduced road runoff / flash flooding - and environmental factors like shade and cooling.

Better: define one street as the thru street and put a stop or yield on the cross-street.

Yes any two streets crossing should ideally either be tiny (like small residential streets where no lights or signs are needed) or only one should be an obvious through street and the other(s) connecting streets. The key is to never have ”grids” of through streets.

zoom out on the map. There is a big roundabout a couple blocks away. It is called "The Circle In Orange."

Aside from the debate, 600k seems insanely high for this intersection. No wonder this country's infrastructure is crumbling when it takes over half a million dollars to put in a few lights.

This sort of work usually costs 3x what is should, because the firm doing the work has to pay state minimum wage and/or hire union labor.

Would it be better if they hired non-union labor at $5/hour (1/3 the minimum wage)? Would you apply for that job?

Obviously that would be better. If no one applied for the job you raise rates until someone does.

You don't artificially start unnecessarily high.

If you do you are basically stealing from taxpayers to give gifts to unions.

Fortunately for the workers, paying below minimum wage is illegal. (And for what it’s worth, it’s really hard to hire even at minimum wage these days. McDonald’s pays well above $15 in most metro areas - including in states which use the federal minimum.)

The actual scenario at hand is paying 3x wages "just because".

You said 1/3 minimum wage as a strawman. Not to mention minimum wages aren't necessary anyway - like you said "it’s really hard to hire even at minimum wage these days".

Pay market wages, without external forces driving wages higher. Because, higher wages means higher costs, and if you are government that's essentially theft from your taxpayers.

Minimum wage in California seems to be $16 an hour. I doubt this intersection took 37 500 man-hours to finish, so I don't think the cost is explained by wages. Also, $200K would still seem like a gigantic amount of money for adding stop lights to a single intersection.

You probably need an engineer. A couple. They might have to run traffic studies beforehand to estimate the design requirements and light timing. They might have to consider other network nodes beyond this in their modeling. They might have to also run studies afterward to retime the lights to meet realized demand.

I’m surprised its not a $6m project honestly.

There's a proposal to redo a playground in San Mateo's central park—bids have come in around $16M.

https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/4142/Central-Park-Playground-...

It's a nice playground design for sure, but it's kind of amazing to consider what could be built privately for the same amount. You could literally build a palace on a giant estate with fancy landscaping, a swimming pool, tennis courts, movie theater, etc.

Of course there are reasons why public projects are more expensive, but it does seem pretty crazy on the surface.

the issue is the prevailing wage requirement (3x+ minimum wage). it would be easy to complete this cheaply with just minimum wage labor

You've got the capital costs of having the several lights, built for 24/7 operation, plus the traffic controller. Then you've got to wire that up, and get an electrical connection for the controller box. Plus all the cuts in the pavement for vehicle detectors. Additionally the pedestrian intend to cross buttons and accessibility indicators for pedestrians. And you may need to resurface before or after, and redraw the lines. Likely you'll need signs. Possibly any other curb work that had been neglected, but needs to be done on a new project.

Plus it costs money to do the traffic survey and analysis to decide if you wanted to build the thing in the first place, and to determine the cycle timings. If you need to run an environmental impact report, that's more money on analysis.

Here's some estimates for component prices https://wbt.dot.state.fl.us/ois/tsmo/TrafficSignalBudgetingC... which I don't think includes installation. Probably $50k to $100k for the hardware, but there's a lot of labor, and engineering time.

This is an annoying change, but the cars in the video weren't actually running any red lights. Doesn't help the case to exaggerate.

It's a 34 second video. One enters the intersection after the light has turned red (pause the video, you can see it). The other is half way through the intersection before the light turns red, definitely speeds up to make the light, which is what they're talking about.

Green state is very short. 15 seconds is barely enough for 2-3 cars. My guess this force drivers to speedup.

https://imgur.com/a/ASSeakh

think it’s just on the margin - they’re in the intersection in this shot and it’s not illegal (at least where i’m from) to be in the intersection when the light turns red

That triangle doesn't mark the stop line though, it's further back. If cars stopped at the triangle they would block pedestrians crossing the street.

Pedestrian "annoyed" by driver, funeral details to follow

"pedestrians have to press the beg button, wait for the light to cycle through its routine, and then walk across the street"

Quite often what happens is

- Pedestrian presses button

- Light doesn't change for 30 seconds and there are no cars in sight

- Pedestrian goes "fuck it" and crosses

- Light changes red, after pedestrian is done crossing

- Car comes along and gets stopped at red light for 30 seconds

I wonder why these buttons don't immediately allow pedestrians to cross (maybe with some rate limiting to avoid abuse).

That, or even use sensors to detect pedestrians coming along that are likely to want to cross, estimate their crossing time based on their walking speed, and make their light turn "go" as soon as they hit the intersection.

Some intersections have exactly this for cars already.

It's very strange to complain that cars run red lights, but somehow not stop signs. I expect that if the intersection were as empty as it was when he was filming, you'd easily find people driving at a similar speed regardless of the stop signs too.

I know it as the "California Roll" - to slow down but continue to cruise through stop signs.

That's old fashioned, the current "California roll" is to just continue at full speed through stop signs or red lights.

I am more familiar with (and more partial to) a California Roll consisting of 'crab' sticks, avocado, and cucumber, wrapped in seaweed and then rice.

In my own country, where stop signs are relatively rare anyway, this behavior is so common that it doesn't even have a name. I think it's much more unexpected here to see anyone truly stop at a stop sign on an empty street than it is to see them slow down and then continue on. And I would bet police would not bat an eye 99% of the time if they saw someone do it.

My experience has been that cars will happily roll through stop signs, but at nowhere near full speed like they're doing here.

The county where I live recently (within the last couple of years) redid a two-way stop along the road I take to work. It used to be east-west that had the stop signs, but for some reason they switched them to north-south. Even more baffling, they didn't repaint the stop lines so east-west still had those and north-south didn't. It effectively turned the intersection into a four-way stop with extra confusion, frustration, and danger.

They eventually turned it into an actual four-way, thankfully. I think everyone would have been happier if they just hadn't messed with it in the first place.

should've been a roundabout with 0 stops

Roundabouts aren't great for pedestrians. You need to trust the drivers' signals.

Where I'm from it's exactly the opposite - straight road means you can't trust drivers to slow down, but any obstacle like a big mound with a road in a circle around it makes them pay attention

They look at the mound, not the people trying to cross.

They slow down to look at the mound, turns out it helps noticing pedestrians

People slow down at stop signs to

I would love it if roundabouts caught on in the states, at least the single-lane ones. Multi-lane and the huge ones with traffic lights always scared me when driving in the UK.

Very generally, if it is a busy place I actually prefer a highly controlled intersection with clear lights and signs vs 4 way stops.

I've had way more problems at 4 way stops than intersections controlled by lights.

Cars run stop signs too. They also speed. That’s an enforcement opportunity.

Claiming this makes the intersection less safe despite the engineering studies that were conducted is a claim made without evidence. Pedestrians not having permanent right of way isn’t a safety issue, as the author admits, it’s a convenience issue.

It seems like the author is against cars in principle and uses that bias to complain about something that makes it easier for cars despite having no demonstrable impact on safety.

I live near Barcelona and in the city, stop signs are very rare. Its signals everywhere aside from little low-traffic back streets — and Barcelona is perfectly walkable. Cars are more likely to roll through a four way stop than a red traffic light — especially if they don’t see any conflicting traffic. And at night, stop signs are less safe because you might be pulling out and a pedestrian walks out in front of you — while with traffic signals, it’s clear whose turn it is. Cyclists also seem more prone to ignoring 4-way stops than traffic lights.

Here’s a study from Montreal that, among its other conclusions, showed that signals had no impact on pedestrian-vehicle interactions.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...

“… the models were unable to demonstrate a significant relationship between stop signs and vehicle–pedestrian interactions. Therefore, drawing conclusions regarding pedestrian safety is difficult.”

> With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign. Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?

Where I live, this doesn't happen because there's not enough pedestrians to justify it. When I drive in Seattle, the lights never idle, but pedestrian cycles are always included.

With a non-scramble intersection, not including pedestrians by default allows for faster cycling, including for pedestrians that want to cross the alternate way. With a scramble intersection, I'd bet if a pedestrian shows up and pushes the button, an idle green will go yellow immediately. Yes, it's a longer wait than crossing immediately as you would at an idle intersection, but now you can cross diagonally, so that may be a win.

It's worth checking with the traffic engineer to see how they would decide to always include a pedestrian cycle, perhaps during times of high pedestrian use like during hours where students are likely to cross the street between classes.

Too late to edit, but another option which may be too late for this intersection would be to add intend to cross buttons (or other ways of detecting pedestrian intent) farther from the intersection. Many intersections have vehicle detectors farther from the intersection which allows the traffic controller to reduce waiting by lengthening or reducing cycle times in anticipation of traffic that will arrive soon. For example: if there is a dominate traffic direction, the controller can idle at green, and traffic in that direction will often not have to wait. With detectors only at the light, traffic in the opposite direction would need to wait when it arrives; with further back sensors, traffic in the opposite direction can initiate a cycle change earlier and may not need to come to a stop at all. Or cycles in one direction can be lengthened if there is traffic detected at the light and at the further back sensor, which indicates potentially high demand in that direction, especially if the further back sensor stays active which could indicate vehicles are backed up all the way to that sensor. That's less applicable for a pedestrian detector, pedestrian backups are uncommon unless there's an event, at which point it's common to use police/traffic officers to direct traffic or a specialized event mode enabled by a physical control supervised by an officer; but indicators of more pedestrians does justify increasing the pedestrian cycle time.

So he is saying that people are running the red lights but were not running the stop signs. I would bet good money that the people willing to run the red lights would be more likely to run the stop signs than not, especially if they know there are stop signs on the other road.

People usually slow down to run stop signs, but speed up to run red lights.

I don't understand how anyone that actually walks and/or drives in north america can come to that conclusion.

When a driver is speeding up to "make" a yellow light their attention turns to nothing but the yellow light or even worse the state of the next intersection/light beyond the one they are speeding through. The existence of the green/yellow light gives drivers carte blanche to not need to think about the current state of the crossing because "the light tells me there should be nothing there anyways".

Where as a driver slowing down to "roll" a stop sign has their attention set to basically the opposite. They are generally focused on things like, is there a car I'm going to hit? is there a pedestrian crossing? is there a cop down the street waiting to give me a ticket?

Interesting thing here is blinking red for pedestrians before it turns solid red, indicating that you should finish crossing.

In Poland blinking green has the same meaning.

In Berlin and Sydney green for pedestrians is very short and basically lets you enter the crossing. But red doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the crossing. You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing. It feels way better from pedestrian perspective when compared to Polish system where green means you are safe, blinking green means you need to run for your life and red means that drivers can legally run you over and you are about die (they can't but that's how it feels).

> You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing.

Well, up to a certain extent at least. Behind the scenes, German traffic lights for example usually assume you continue walking at 1.2 m/s – if you start crossing at the last possible moment and are slower than that, you will still run into the case where crossing traffic will potentially get a green signal with you still on the road.

Thanks for clarification.

Sure, but as a pedestrian you have no way of telling if you took too long so the burden of not hitting you is firmly placed on the drivers.

In Poland it's bit more muddy in drivers' minds. If they hit a pedestrian who was still crossing the road while the light for him was red they think it's partially pedestrian's fault because he shouldn't be there.

I'm not a traffic engineer, but I think making this junction more 'European' would mean one or more of:

- Forbidding on-street parking close to the junction, improving pedestrian visibility.

- Removing the sweeping curves and replacing them with sharp curves, which reduces the speed drivers can turn, and reduces the distance (thus time) pedestrians are in the road.

- Adjusting road priorities

But maybe it's a lost cause. What's described as a "walkable center" in the article seems to be a multi-lane traffic circle with some landscaping surrounded by excessively wide roads and lots of parked cars. I don't see a single pedestrian-only street.

Could someone explain why we always put pedestrian crossings at intersections?

I've always felt like that is the most unsafe place for a crossing. In my city, there are a few pedestrian crossings with lights recessed from intersections. The lights turn on only when someone bumps the crossing button (which isn't super common) and only 2 ways of traffic need to stop/watch out.

My city has those too, and drivers ignore them. Unless you mean one with a proper traffic signal that turns red, ours just turn on yellow flashing lights.

We have both. I agree the yellow flashing ones don't do shit. Even as a driver it can be hard to even see when those lights are flashing which makes them pointless.

The overhead red, though, works great.

because drivers generally actually stop at red lights? pedestrian crossings in the middle of the road are typically much less safe in my experience because a considerably proportion of drivers do not yield. i think driving norms in other countries around yielding to crosswalks also seem to be different aka non-existent

1) it makes the travel of a pedestrian going straight become a zig zag where you have to weave into streets that you don't care about. You end up minimizing distance for cars but maximizing distance for pedestrians. It should be the other way around

2) HAWK signals, which are pedestrian buttons affecting lights on pedestrian crossings away from intersections (usually on stroads) have been shown to be worse than nothing because drivers don't really notice them nor the pedestrians (in drivers heads "intersection" equals "watch out for cross traffic, everywhere else it's "go forward and pay attention to the car in front of you"), and pulls some pedestrians to an unwarranted sense of safety.

3) "which isn't super common" tells me that this a very car dependent place. There's a mid block pedestrian light on mission between 1st and 2nd in SF, and there's always someone waiting on it to change. Part of the reason it's there is because there's a straight pedestrian route that allows you to get from Market Street to the terminal.

The street grid is also where the sidewalks are. Moving crossings away from intersections would mean anyone walking in a straight line has to do a 500ft+ detour every block. They make sense in some specific situations but don't work as a general solution.

That’s where the stop lights are.

I think the real reason this happened is staring the author in the face. He noted the necessary engineering and construction work, and some of the price tags for that and the maintenance. I think this has less to do with any car-friendly ideology, conscious or unconscious, and it's just a boondoggle for engineering, construction, and maintenance firms.

Example of an insideously unsafe intersection that was changed to make it safer (for bike riders):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU

How it was fixed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpgpE6wjF30

As someone who lives in The Netherlands I basically just don't understand anything about traffic/pedestrian engineering in the USA. I travel to the USA quite frequently and I never quite know what the rules are as a pedestrian.

I've learned to look both ways and move quickly, but I don't have the confidence or assertiveness that I do at home.

Saving seconds for cars is important. It adds up across all the intersections they cross, and makes travel time shorter. These safetyism arguments are tired because they never honestly consider the tradeoffs, particularly that cars have lots of benefits.

This is my take in a nutshell. Instead of trying to force pedestrians and bikers to share with cars, we could go one level better and fully remove pedestrians and bikers from these roads until a city fund for building them a proper bike-only lane has fully matured. The only reason we force them to share public roads is because it seems logical, but the physics and logistics just doesn't work well.

> and fully remove pedestrians and bikers from these roads until a city fund for building them a proper bike-only lane has fully matured.

And what do the pedestrians get?

They get a concrete maturation date on funding the bike-only lane construction, and also get to die another way than being hit by a truck.

So your proposal is to ban bicycles temporarily and walking forever?

Saying walking is banned is ridiculous. However, if one needs to go from A to B in the USA, road funding will always come first. Whatever comes second should be up to the local voters, and each mode of transport should have separate lanes and be funded separately, as the laws of physics always trump any laws of man.

Driver and pedestrian are not immutable characteristics. A driver you slow down in one intersection becomes a pedestrian you made more safe and saved time for in another. I agree that analyzing the tradeoffs are important but the broader picture is that in the US' dense urban environments, many of the benefits of cars are that they allow you to avoid pedestrian hostile infrastructure.

The wheel and spokes of a road network should prioritize cars and most urbanists will concede that, but hubs have a wildly different set of constraints. Picking a one-size-fits-all cost to slowing down drivers completely ignores that reality to the detriment of pedestrians and drivers.

I hate the idea of crosswalks at intersections. I know it's tradition, and why they exist.

But wouldn't it make more sense to have crosswalks in between the intersections? ie: a few hundred feet away from where vehicles are intersecting with each other?

Drivers would have to stop more and they have far more political power than pedestrians so this won’t happen. Many large cities have crosswalks away from intersections and drivers tend to ignore them

That'd only make sense if your pedestrian network is completely independent from the road network, so pedestrians only need to cross roads, but otherwise never interact with them.

However the usual case is that pedestrians have to walk along the road because there's no separate independent pedestrian network, and in that case not providing crosswalks at intersections forces detours on everybody wanting to walk straight on ahead.

We have the technology to cheaply enforce most driving laws. IMO we should do it.

"With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign"

I used to encounter an infuriating version of this during my commute through SF Mission Bay. There were several lights that clearly were on a timer but wouldn't show the walk signal for pedestrians unless you had pressed the button before the current cycle. In practice this meant that I'd arrive at the intersection that had one or two cars waiting at a red light. This was clearly when I could have gotten a walk signal with no other changes required. However, without the signal I had no idea when it would switch and couldn't walk in front the waiting cars. So I typically ended up waiting till the light turned green for the cars, they drove off and I then crossed as a pedestrian while cars clearly had a green signal but they were gone. I would have had to wait another minute or so for the proper right of way to come around again. Totally bonkers outcome to have to wait for the cars to get a green signal. This would never happen the other way around.

It seems like instead of trying to accommodate cars better, they could have made it worse, so they would avoid that intersection all together, promoting other routes todestinations.

I don't know enough about this particular situation, but I wonder if they considered raised pedestrian curb level roundabouts. They can be much better for things like this.

>The story focuses on a redesign of one intersection in this town. The case highlights how we’ve elevated the value of moving cars quickly at the expense of everything else, even in highly walkable areas.

We should all expect this kind of regressing in walking. Pedestrians and cyclists don't seem to understand how this always will be a car-by-default country due to lifestyle. Yes, there are several cities bucking the trend with exceptions, but those exceptions are either economically able to buck that car-first engineering trend and build massive bike and walking infra or they have exceptional transportation alternatives (train, bus, and subway).

You think pedestrians and cyclists don't realize how car dominant we are?

Correct. They expect safe walking and biking infra to fall from the sky and complain online when it does not.

this is a very uncharitable characterization of communities' desires for safe, quiet, and walkable/bikeable neighborhoods

It does sometimes seem that they think they should be able to walk/bike without concern for their own safety. I see pedestrians step into traffic and bicycles blow traffic signals and stop signs all the time. Safety and situational awareness is everyone's responsibility.

I guess I kind feel like yeah the person operating the heavy machinery at high speed does bear more responsibility for the damage they cause rather than their victims

You uncharitably speak for all pedestrians.

Pedestrians rightfully expect safe walking and biking infrastructure.

Not everyone can drive. Most of those who can't drive also cannot afford a taxi or rideshare. Many of them also do not have friends or family who can get them where they need to go, and reliance on others is extremely demoralizing to independence.

That says nothing of the carbon cost in fuel, the microparticle cost in tire and brake dust, or other inflated pollutants.

The U.S.'s car-dominant infrastructure is a tragedy.

I agree with everything you said except your first sentence. Why should people rightfully expect walking and biking infra to be paid for when it contributes so little to their economy?

Because human beings care about things that aren't the economy. Do you actually evaluate all public spending on this sole metric, or just the things you don't personally desire?

Can you provide an example where road budget spending was overridden by public outcry and was completed to those expectations?

For a start because building infrastructure for cyclists brings more return of investment, happiness and health than infrastructure for cars.

Cul-de-sac style suburbs, stroads and other related development patterns are a net drain on the local economy. It’s not a sustainable pattern long term when infrastructure needs to be replaced or upgraded.

And besides it’s really depressing to be so isolated and only get around in a little metal box.

For the same reason that people expect car infrastructure to be paid for: whether they are walking, biking, or driving, they are frequently traveling to some place where they will contribute to the economy.

Walking is not merely some sort of hobby. It is transportation, a means of getting from one place to another -- often the most convenient and pleasant means. And transportation infrastructure certainly falls under the purview of local governments.

> Not everyone can drive

Not everyone can afford to live in an area of the city where they don't have to drive places, either.

Which is exactly why we should build and design communities to have good transit.

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Heck yeah, I'm all for building and designing communities to have good transit. I love it when I can get where I want to go without driving. Let's do it, teammate!

In the meantime, until that's done and everybody lives where they can easily take public transit from their home to where they want to go, we'll continue to be in the situation I described, and will have to compromise with our fellow humans who have different locomotion options and choices.

All people are equal, regardless of transportation, so this intersection seems like a fair compromise which doesn't preference one person over another.

> Pedestrians rightfully expect safe walking and biking infrastructure.

Cyclists and pedestrians should be considered two separate groups. Most biking infrastructure doesn't benefit me at all as a pedestrian (but it's okay, because the cyclists will still ride on sidewalk instead of the bike lane).

> the cyclists will still ride on sidewalk instead of the bike lane

A lot of cyclists feel safer on the sidewalk because cars do not respect cyclists. It unfortunately does make it more dangerous for pedestrians.

> Cyclists and pedestrians should be considered two separate groups.

Yes, and they both rightfully expect safe infrastructure even if it is separate.

> A lot of cyclists feel safer on the sidewalk because cars do not respect cyclists. It unfortunately does make it more dangerous for pedestrians.

It's like the food chain, except cyclists don't seem to respect either pedestrians or motorists.

"Car-centrism" isn't some immutable property given to the US at the dawn of time. Infrastructure is built according to people's opinions, and in a democracy you change those people's opinions (or replace them altogether) by complaining.

And I don't think pedestrian infrastructure advocates expect it to "fall from the sky". They expect it to be built by municipalities over time, just like everyone else.

I fully disagree. Road infra is engineered to move goods quickly, and never to public opinion unless that public opinion brings loads of cash to help. Again, there are major exceptions to this default. Complaining about it helps, but does not bring cash to the table when it's time to build or rebuild road infra. As municipalities change over time, a city will always regress to car-first. Cars are simply the easiest path for it to move goods quickly.

If road infrastructure is designed solely to move goods quickly, it's only because people made a choice to prioritise that. Not The People, but indivial bureaucrats.

At least here in the Czech Republic, moving goods isn't on anyone's radar when designing municipal infrastructure. Delivery vehicles need to physically fit, sure, but any economic benefit they bring will only be felt as a very slight n-th order effect by the municipality. Complaining residents, be they pro-pedestrian or pro-car, are immediate and much more likely to be heard.

>If road infrastructure is designed solely to move goods quickly, it's only because people made a choice to prioritise that.

This argument simply does not work for the majortiy of USA.

Is the USA driven by abstract economic argumenents instead of the decisions of elected representatives?

I thougt the US had a fairly standard "town council" arrangement, with the councilors having large autonomy and being beholden primarily to voters.

The autonomy breaks down here. People will vote for building more roads or for less road spending, because only those options are present.

Nonsense, the money spent on safer roads is an investment on human lives. Infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every few decades and with good planning roads that are being resurfaced anyways can be altered at little extra cost. Finally, let's not ignore that suburban sprawl is economically not viable for cities as the cost per household is higher in sprawl compared to a denser populated area. Changing the last point is obviously the toughest.

https://cayimby.org/blog/sprawl-costs-the-u-s-1-trillion-eve... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmQomKCfYZY

I'm literally just trying to stop drivers from killing my kids when they bike to school.

Some "lifestyle".

"Whether car, scooter, bike, or feet, look both ways before crossing a street"

The way you make your kids safe bikers:

1. NEVER RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK. Cars on the street cannot see you due to other parked cars and WILL make right or left turn on you. Additionaly, cars coming out of parking lots won't see you on the sidewalk.

2. NEVER RIDE ON OPPOSITE SIDE. Ride on the same direction as cars, make yourself visible.

3. INDICATE ALL TURNS WITH HAND SIGNALS. Be predictable. Don't just turn or otherwise behave unpredictably. Indicate turns, make eye contact and then turn.

4. (Obvious) ACT LIKE A CAR AND DON'T RUN LIGHTS.

> 1. NEVER RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK. Cars on the street cannot see you due to other parked cars and WILL make right or left turn on you. Additionaly, cars coming out of parking lots won't see you on the sidewalk.

How about to avoid hitting people walking? It's not always safe for pedestrians to jump into the street to avoid a guy on a bike.

> 3. INDICATE ALL TURNS WITH HAND SIGNALS. Be predictable. Don't just turn or otherwise behave unpredictably. Indicate turns, make eye contact and then turn.

You should also explain to them that 99% of drivers will not understand the typical bike hand signals. Making eye contact will help a lot, but mostly it makes sure they're watching you.

Do you really think the answer is for my 5 year old to ride her pink bike with a basket and flowers in the same street as a Dodge Ram 3500 piloted by someone staring at their phone?

1. Your 5 year old kid with her pink bike should not be on the street alone. This is just a matter of judgement, independent from other motorists. You should be behind her watching for cars. 2. If you want to ignore point 1, my argument still stands. The chances of a Dodge Ram 3500 ramming into her is far higher if she is on the sidewalk as opposed to on the street. A 5 year old doesn't understand traffic rules good enough to be riding on the side walk and watching for cars. Her best chances are to make herself as visible as possible (ie. by being on the road in a bright bike and protective gear).

Huh, is that a diagonal crosswalk? I've never seen that before... does that actually cause a 4 way stop for all cars for pedestrians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble

The placement of the traffic lights behind the intersection, and not in front of it, is just hilariously incompetent.

It never ceases to amaze me how many (fatal or serious) accidents (of all types in all circumstances) occur due to wanting to save seconds -- not minutes, hours, days, or weeks -- but seconds.

Eh, batching is pretty efficient, whether the traffic is people/cars or digital. I wonder if the other safety issue about running red lights has a baseline for comparison with people running stop signs. I see both happening near me.

As a frequent pedestrian, the question of traffic light vs four-way stop sign depends on the details. Here are some factors:

- In NYC, for example, right turn on red is illegal within the five boroughs (you can always spot NJ drivers you don't know this or don't care). Right turning on red is incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, way more than traffic lights vs four-way stop signs;

- How often the light changes is a HUGE factor. I've read that there are some pedestrian crossings in LA at lights that take up to 10 minutes to change. Ridiculous. But in NYC, or at least Manhattan, light changes are quick. I suspect it's designed so a pedestrian never has to wait more than ~45 seconds;

- One way streets are better than two-way streets. There are less variables to be concerned with. Drivers may not like one-way streets. They're demonstrably better for traffic flow, pedestrians and cyclists however;

- Having an island in the middle of a two-way road is HUGELY helpful to both cyclists and pedestrians. The ability to cross halfway in relative safety makes an incredible difference;

- Having separate walk lights for each direction when there is an island is the absolute worst. This typically hugely increases the time to cross as they aren't coordinated;

- The speed limit matters. If the speed limit is under 25, cars rarely go too fast to be a problem. I've had Google Maps street directions that were basically "just make a run for it" across a highway with a speed limit of 45. There are places that say a road has a cycle path that is basically the hard shoulder on an interstate. Drivers will weave through those at 70+ to overtake 1 car. People have died that way;

- Traffic lights can decrease safety because drivers will speed up to make a yellow light. Usually I don't even have to look at a traffic light to tell when it turns yellow. I'll hear the engines revving up. I've nearly been killed this way when a driver accelerated to make what was a red light and they sped through a pedestrian crossing that had signalled pedestrians had right of way. This doesn't tend to happen at four-way stops.

- As a cyclist, I tend to find drivers give you deference at four-way stops but this may depend on the area and if it has a lot of cyclists and pedestrians. I actually prefer to give drivers the right-of-way when they have it. For example, a driver may stop at a four-way stop seeing me coming when they got there first and should just go. And I know I wasn't going fast enough to interfere with them anyway. This forces me to ride in front of them when they have right of way. I never like doing that.

So it's hard for me to judge this particular intersection without knowing the full context.

> pedestrians have to press the beg button

Please. This is the most drama-queen characterisation of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing I've ever seen. In fact it's the first time I've seen anyone grinding their teeth at the injustice of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing.

Hopefully it's not the last. We need to flip the script on cars vs pedestrians, especially since there has been a long history of anti-pedestrian propaganda funded by the automobile industry.

Meanwhile, car-centric environments contribute to air pollution and sedentary lifestyles. They limit public spaces, reducing community interactions and fostering loneliness, while also exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities by obstructing access to jobs and essential services for those unwilling or unable to burn cash on these inefficient, extravagant rolling idols of conspicuous consumption.

Their environmental impact, I shouldn't have to remind you, doesn't end with urban sprawl leading to inefficient land use and loss of green spaces, but includes, of course, plant-rocking CO2 emissions.

So, yeah, I think it's pretty debased that we featherless bypeds have to press a single goddamn button to tread a single square foot of earth in deference to cars.

I'm a pedestrian, and a car driver, and a cyclist and I think this is a reasonable way to control an intersection. Anti-car urbanism is sliding into being a bit of a pseudo-religion for cranks IMO.

I want to confirm that it's a religion for me. I'm not a spandex-wearing hobbyist; I ride my bike or take public transit because it is practical and inexpensive. I do not bike for fun.

The structure of the built environment which accommodates automobiles is hostile to human life. It has been—in the short run—convenient for the growth of a certain type of economy which is also hostile—in the long run—to human life.

As Ben Franklin might say, we have paid too dearly in blood, turf, and CO2 for this strip mall whistle.

If anything is worth the reverence of worship—and perhaps nothing, in your philosophy, is—few candidates can compete with the human life, community, and sustainable industry which a car-centric environment precludes.

Edit: Oh, except maybe the natural world it threatens.

I see decisions of the same type being made in the suburbs around here all the time, and the prioritization is identical. I think the issue is suburbanites and small-town folks generally have not experienced a walkable environment and don't understand how pleasant it can be. They are usually ensconced in cars and go isolated from one destination to another without actually touching the community at all.

I was trying to advocate for bike lanes and no-through traffic for a few streets near our small town's historic center a few months ago, and I'm sorry to say, to the community, I think I sounded like a weird European hippy. Even though I'm totally not a hippy and I'm American-born. I'm as capitalist as you can get. But I still think if the state is going to make design decisions on our streets, we should make decisions that make our neighborhoods better and ultimately more inviting and valuable.

The main opposition to what I was proposing was coming from neighborhoods that must commute from further beyond the city center to get to the highway that connects our town to the nearest major city. We have other, faster, wider roads to get to the highway from all parts of our town, but there are people that are adamant that during rush hour, they must be allowed to potentially commute through the historic downtown, and residential neighborhoods, to avoid traffic jams.

I was trying to explain that the bottlenecks are always the main streets that have the highway on-ramps, but to no avail. People like having many potential, fast routes to the highway, and they are deeply uncomfortable with you removing some routes even if they rarely use those routes themselves.

In other words, occasional car use is more important than daily, frequent pedestrian use.

And where were the pedestrians during this town-hall? For whatever reason there were none. Or if there were, they were silent. I was trying to understand why nobody else was speaking up when there are so many bikers, kids, parents with strollers, walkers with dogs, etc., using these streets that will be impacted by bad decision-making, and my conclusion is that young active people, and those with kids, have no time to go to town-halls. And the kinds of people that do go to town-halls are weirdos with design fetishes, like me, and extremely ornery and conservative people who see any change in their town as an assault on the AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE by perverted European-hippy Democratic Degenerates (into which category I have unfortunately been slotted it seems, though I'm embarrassingly capitalist and libertarian).

I would not suggest this will be the median experience in America. My town has a fair number of MAGA lawn signs, American flags, lifted trucks, Punisher stickers, etc., in addition to the tech community. So its a very specific kind of mix. I'm sure those of you in Berkeley or San Francisco will have much better luck.

My community has some of the strangest dynamics you have ever seen.

I think you’re actually describing a pretty normal experience of who goes to those sorts of meetings (people with lots of time on their hands)

It sounds like you’ve possibly already headed down a similar line of reasoning (or possibly read it already) but I’d recommend you check out the book “Strong Towns”. It’s got a ton of overlap with the ideas you’ve brought up.

> Drivers now do not want to get stuck at the light, so they are consistently running red lights

Police stopped enforcing red lights all over California after covid. And getting cameras installed is a Herculean task.

The Texas government decided that red light cameras can't enforce the law. That's how car-brained we are.

Muh privacy or something.

Ironically, the right to privacy was questioned by Alito when he helped nullify Roe v Wade. It will be "interesting" to see what other things we consider private aren't private in the eyes of this court. And even more "interesting" to see the converse.

We have a joke over here in Germany that if you want to commit a crime, be sure to do it in a car - keeps you out of prison.

Interesting.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-....

The core issue is those red light cameras create a persistent database of who is where, which is then sold at a marginal cost to whoever wants it to advertise to/manipulate/track a population. Adding cameras everywhere invites a dystopian nightmare vs better urban design and occasional traffic police would solve the same problem.

i grew up somewhere that had red light cameras, the idea that they are selling the data is BS justification for diminished state capacity to enforce something really important.

e: for those downvoting, please point me to a single case of a municipality selling red light violation data if this is such a real concern

Write the legislation so data is not retained/sold. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

"occasional traffic police" have proven ineffective at enforcing the law.

And biased humans deciding who to pull over is a lot more of a "dystopian nightmare" than cameras which eliminate those problems entirely https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2402547121

Police stopped enforcing in my city too. And 10% of drivers know this. People will keeping chipping away at the safety margins until people start dying. Then maybe police will do their job and those 10% of drivers will start worrying about manslaughter charges.

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