Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US? | Hacker News Reader

Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?

construction-physics.com

149 pointsthelastgallon255 comments

This morning while jogging in the US I came to an intersection. Green lights and walk on in my direction. A car approaching from my left had a red light, the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path. I expected this of course, so avoided being run over. If I wasn't watching for this, it likely would be a different outcome.

So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.

Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing...

This is exactly why this turn is illegal in nearly every country in the world except the US and Canada. [1]

If you are in the UK, this turn is illegal always and everywhere, so it basically never happens.

I grew up in the US with right turn on red, so I was used to it and accepted it as normal. But after living the UK for 6 years, I'm now physically shocked when visiting the US at how dangerous it is to walk around even very dense urban US areas like Chicago's north loop. Cars are constantly trying to run you over by turning across active crosswalks. It's totally absurd to experience once you've lived somewhere else where that would result in you immediately losing your license. US culture in general has no respect for pedestrians (although of course some individuals do).

This isn't some utopian dream of ultimate walkability achieved through pro-pedestrian urban redesign. This is the most basic laws that govern cities actively making it dangerous to walk around because it saved a bit of gas during the 1970s oil crisis.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red

In Sweden you are not allowed to turn on red, but the crossroad on the right and left are often aligned to be green at the same time as the cars has green. As such, both the car lane and crossroads are active at the same time, and drivers are expected to turn across active crosswalks. Pedestrian has priority, and there is usually a short period between green -> yellow -> red, where the crosswalk will be red, which allow for around 2-3 cars to pass if the crossroad has people on them during the full active duration.

I think the major difference lies elsewhere. A major one could be that teaching drivers to ignore red is just a very bad idea. An other aspect I find quite different when I visited the states was that the transition time was extremely long compared to Sweden. Here it is not uncommon to see green to be only active for a handful cars worth of traffic before changing, or about the estimated time that it takes for a person to cross the road. It not designed to drive fast and do a quick turn.

I'm convinced this is a big cause as well. Reduced visibility greatly exacerbates this (as a driver looking for visibility while in the turning lane) trying to see if walkers or cars are coming over the very high hoods of other vehicles. Multiple lanes, signs and etc. all vying for attention all cause a drain on focus which wouldn't exist if the turn was outlawed in the first place.

I'll also say, it's not only pedestrians affected by this, anecdotally just this morning a car turned right on red directly into my path, while the driver was making eye contact with me as I was turning left through a green arrow.

From your link, emphasis mine:

> permits the operator of a motor vehicle to turn such vehicle right at a red stop light after stopping

Quoting GP, emphasis again mine:

> the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path

The driver turned without stopping. That is explicitly and clearly illegal throughout the US.

This is one of those rules drivers are supposed to be trained on (and tested on) before being given a license, but it doesn't seem to stick.

The Wikipedia article notes that allowing turn-on-red became widespread in response to fuel scarcity. Fuel efficiency is dramatically higher in modern vehicles. Maybe it's time to repeal it after all.

If only there was public interest in public safety...

While it's true that this particular driver probably violated existing law, it's also true that this particular maneuver is inherently mistake-prone. The driver still has to look three ways - across the intersection (for left turners), at the crosswalk, and behind them for cyclists (or fast pedestrians). It's too easy to miss one while checking for another, even for a diligent driver following all laws. The statistics on "right hooks" and the pedestrian equivalent don't lie. Right on red is just a bad idea.

any time there is a right turn you can still end up in this same situation, whether it's right turn on red or not, if the driver does not look to their right: there have been plenty of times I have been nearly ran over when a car turning right on green did not notice that the same direction pedestrian crossing light was green also and I was about to cross.

Same thing for cars turning right in front of me riding my bike in the bike lane, it's just par for the course, so pedestrians should ALWAYS make eye contact with the driver before crossing, and cyclists should NEVER be side-by-side with a car when approaching an intersection.

If the light stays red while the "walk" sign is active (usually the case) it's a whole lot less likely that there will actually be a pedestrian there during the turn. There's also a bit more time (while waiting for the light) to see a bike approaching. Yes, all parties still violate the law and accidents can still happen, but they become less likely.

https://www.codot.gov/safety/shift-into-safe-news/2025/march...

Agreed. Right on red is similar to a stop sign. Driver has to come to a complete stop, not roll through the intersection. Most folks I talk to don't even know this. In other words, it's not that they admit they are breaking the rules, but say everyone else does it. They don't even know they are violating the law. Also, many drivers roll through while essentially cutting off oncoming traffic, instead of realizing they don't have the right of way.

> This is exactly why this turn is illegal in nearly every country in the world except the US and Canada.

I think variations of this are pretty common in Europe. Your link says this actually. Details vary, but as the GP post says, it is not uncommon that the pedestrian has a green light and the car can still turn right across it. UK, indeed, does not have it. But frankly I find it frustrating, both as a driver and a pedestrian, as I feel waiting time on junctions is always infinitely long.

I'm not familiar with how it works in the US, but in Europe pedestrians have priority in such cases, and it's fairly well respected.

The light will be either green or flashing yellow, and drivers turning right KNOW to look for a pedestrian (or even a bicycle passing them on the right). In the US the combination of a large vehicle and car-prioritising culture makes this much more dangerous.

NYC very sensibly does not allow right turns on red. Our streets are chaotic enough as is.

The reason drivers are able to drive like that is the design of the streets themselves. Things like raised crosswalks[1] and corner extensions[2] slow cars down and force them to pay attention. A lot of intersections in my area are the opposite, where they lower the whole curb to road level so cars can cut onto the curb to make the turn faster. There are lots of ways that the US builds infrastructure in ways that make it much more dangerous for pedestrians and bikers.

[0] https://highways.dot.gov/safety/speed-management/traffic-cal... [1] 3.14 Raised Crosswalk section of [0] [2] 3.16 Corner Extension/Bulbout section of [0]

This comment makes it seem like people are built differently in the US than they are in the rest of the world, but that obviously isn't true. The roads (particularly intersections, where crashes tend to happen) are in fact built differently though. Urbanist resources like NotJustBikes and Oh The Urbanity! YouTube channels do a great job of highlighting the differences, and how they force drivers to pay attention through the laws of physics rather than the laws of signage.

No, the US has a culture of not giving a single shit about anyone but yourself. A frighteningly large fraction of drivers will do anything they can get away with. Here in the land of the free, rules are for other people, not for me.

Pedestrians are the same people: I often see a person nonchalantly crossing a six lane street in the middle of a block to get into a parked car on the other side. If someone decides to post on Instagram while driving at that time then it's another innocent pedestrian taken out by evil drivers but a few minutes later the same person could be posting on the Instagram while running over another.

I don't think it's a culture though, it's just people genuinely not being punished/rewarded for putting themselves in danger and avoiding danger when growing up.

American exceptionalism, even when used as a negative, is a stereotype, and often a fable.

but there are policy differences

american cars are measurably bigger/taller/heavier than in EU/JP. and they drive measurably faster than in EU/JP. and the walking infrastructure (crossroads/pavements) is measurably worse.

also anecdotally it's way easier to get a driving license in the US than in France or Japan (I don't know for the other EU countries) so i suspect there is a higher number of bad drivers on the road, but i have no proof for that.

that said, i went to my license renewal training session in japan last month and they informed us that the most accident-prone situation is similar to the op's one. (left-turn but on green, since turn on red is illegal and we drive on the left). when those happen generally there is a big rework of the spot to avoid repeat accident. and we have a lot of old drivers too...

Yeah, but I dont see how your people can get away of ignoring laws of physics, as this is what the parent comment by "Zambyte" mentioned.

Why not both?

Some amount is likely cultural too.

German drivers are objectively WORSE than MOST American drivers, speaking from experience driving thousands of km/mi in both. German drivers completely unnecessarily accelerate very strongly, take corners quickly, and slam on the brakes when stopping much more so than in the USA. The main difference I can attribute fewer deaths to by observation and critical thinking, is that Europeans have to be far more vigilant of random stuff appearing on the side, since many streets can have cars randomly coming from the right side because of what qualifies as a secondary road, and in some cases, you must yield to them, so the paranoia is much higher in towns. Of course, there are way more stops and crosswalks, cyclists, and pedestrians in most European towns, also elevating ones alertness. Finally, speed limits in European towns are much lower than anything in equivalent US towns because everything is more compact. Also of note is truck speed limits in Europe are generally 80 KILOMETERS/H whereas American truckers frequently drive north of 80 MILES/H. Cattle haulers are known for going 90-100 MILES/H on I-10.

That would train higher reflexes in the drivers. I drove in Rome, Italy, for 8 years and another 7 years in Canada. While Rome is far more dangerous because of the stuff that happens on the road, the drivers are way more ready to avoid incidents. I have no idea if this is better or worse,just giving my perspective.

I find driving in Canada very relaxing,but it often puts all my senses to sleep,which is scary.

Also nobody shoulder check left when turning left in Canada (Vancouver). That's a 100% kill of a scooter in Rome,because the swirvle between the cars.

Not driving like a grandma is not a big security issue if drivers are accordingly trained and expect it. Not looking for other participants, especially pedestrians, is one.

Citation needed. Maybe, but maybe "some" is essentially zero.

Considering driving and road rules is entirely learned behavior that requires tens / a hundred hours of training before they let you do it unattended, it seems pretty reasonable that the environment you learned in plays a pretty big impact on how you drive.

Right turns are really dangerous for pedestrians. A lot of localities started banning right-on-red because cars look left only.

There's an intersection here where the crosswalk button lights up a "no right turn" light hanging next to the usual stoplights.

That's brilliant. I just wish the crosswalk button could pop up some bollards too.

The problem is that even if they look back and fourth and know you're there the "go" condition (no incoming cross traffic) is the same for both parties so it's a ready made "two idiots trying to pass each other in the hallway" situation.

I think it speaks volumes that the discussion is anchored around whether cars look or not despite the fact that the underlying algorithm will produce conflicts even if they do.

The algorithm (if followed) does not produce collisions. Pedestrians have the priority, and in many countries (inlcuding Poland where I live) cars have to stop even if nobody's on the pedestrian crossing yet - it's enough that pedestrians are approaching the crossing.

This has changed in the last 10 years in Poland, and there have been numerous angry debates. It was introduced anyway, and the safety improved.

It's only a problem if we let drivers get away with making it a problem. The inherent asymmetry in the driver-pedestrian relationship must be taken into account by the law and road design.

>The algorithm (if followed) does not produce collisions. Pedestrians have the priority,

Yes, in magical textbook land sure. In reality there are signaled crosswalks and most pedestrians abide by them so it's not clear if any given pedestrian wants to cross at that time and the pedestrian is also looking for traffic coming from the right if they're crossing against the signal (perfectly legal, but ill advised in the face of social norms) it's a recipe for confusion. Multiply by a nation of hundreds of millions and you get a lot of near misses and accidents.

>It's only a problem if we let drivers get away with making it a problem. The inherent asymmetry in the driver-pedestrian relationship must be taken into account by the law and road design.

I propose a 3 step solution to this "problem":

1)ignore anyone who talks like that from any side of the issue because they're probably gonna make it worse and not better and piss everyone off in the process and make the problem harder to solve.

2) Slap up "no right on red" signs and adjust signals accordingly

3) Measure results and address gaps.

> In reality there are signaled crosswalks

On signaled crosswalks, it obviously only applies when the light is green for pedestrians. Somebody's near the crosswalk and they have green light = you stop. It doesn't matter if they want to cross. Simple as that.

> Multiply by a nation of hundreds of millions and you get a lot of near misses and accidents.

Nation size doesn't matter for this. Poland based this law on experience from Lithuania which is 20 times smaller than us. It worked for Lithuania and it worked for us. Why would it suddenly be worse for 350 million people if it worked for 2 million and 40 million?

> ignore anyone who talks like that from any side of the issue because they're probably gonna make it worse and not better and piss everyone off in the process and make the problem harder to solve

When they teach you to optimize polynomials at school, they tell you to look for zeroes of the derivative and check which one is the global maximum. But they also tell you to look at the edges of the domain, because the highest peak might be outside the domain altogether.

I'd argue that the US is so car-centric that any effective solution will be outside of the perceived "practical" domain.

Cars don't look at all.

Cars (or more precisely, drivers in cars - that false equivalence is part of the problem) look for other cars. They do not look for pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcycles, they assume that if there's not another 5000 lbs shiny steel box in the lane that they're clear to go.

Last weekend after my son's elementary school soccer game, someone wasn't interested in trying to join the line of cars exiting the parking lot, and tried to pull forward over a grass patch that separated the parking area from the driveway by the field. Except there was a 2000 lbs boulder, 3' tall, just in front of their car... which they entirely forgot about after walking past it. Their head was on a swivel looking for a gap in the line of cars on the driveway, but not for anything else. They destroyed their bumper, probably damaged their radiator or suspension, and got the left front tire partially up on the rock.

I was just glad it wasn't one of the multitude of 3' tall kids at the game.

I've done my fair share of screaming "HEY!!!" as they pull out

Quite a few modern cars do.

Drivers often don't, so it might be an improvement.

One thing I always do is say a car is stopped at an intersection and is making a right turn while I'm in the crosswalk, I always look at the driver and where they are looking. Often times what I see is the driver will just look to see that the road is clear and never looks to see that the sidewalk is clear and just goes. I can count maybe 2-3 occasions where had I not done this I would have been run over.

This was one thing not talked about in the article: drivers in the US are not used to pedestrians outside of major cities like Boston, NYC, etc. I've seen drivers blow past me while I was in the crosswalk to rush and make a right turn and were bewildered that someone was actually using the crosswalk.

I was just in Montpelier, VT yesterday, which has a population of just 8000 people, but as the state capital enjoys a busy downtown with a lot of activity. The moment a pedestrian approaches a non-signal crosswalk, traffic in both directions immediately stops to allow them to cross.

Not sure why the people in Vermont have all worked this out, but they do.

Drivers in Hawaii have taken this to an extreme level and will stop in the middle of the road to let pedestrians or other cars go ahead of them even when they have the right of way. And they throw the shaka when they do it.

> So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.

You think that isn't the same everywhere? I've got some news: in every country there are parents distracted by kids fighting in the back seat, and in every country pedestrians walking into light poles while on the phone is a running joke. Also: the USA has managed to export it's love for large cars to most countries. Here in Australia we call large SUV's shopping trolleys.

Despite this, if you look at the graphs in the article, you will see most countries have managed to drive down pedestrian deaths. Except the US, where the curve trends up. The reason is pretty straight forward, and has nothing to do with the cars, the attitudes of drives or pedestrians. Hell, you can even ask an AI what it is, and you will get a reasonable answer:

    [Countries] have historically managed to drive down pedestrian deaths due to motor vehicle accidents primarily by adopting the Safe System approach, which includes elements of Vision Zero, a long-term goal of zero road fatalities and serious injuries.

    This approach focuses on creating a road system that is safe for all users, particularly vulnerable ones like pedestrians, by managing speed, designing safer infrastructure, and ensuring safe vehicles and road user behavior.

The AI drones on and on, listing the many changes to road design and rules that caused the drop. This is not rocket science. Everybody can do it, and it's trivial to find out what needs to be done. What the USA lacks is a political system that can deliver it.

Yes one of the hardest things is to train a toddler for the hostile road conditions when she's biking, walking or scootering to school from the train station. Obviously I'm with her, but it's hard to explain the art of making eye contact to make sure the motorists acknowledge us at a crosswalk or stop sign

>> The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.

If that is the cause, why did the number of drivers not looking for pedestrians suddenly start increasing around 2010?

>> Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing

"If the increase of size and frequency of trucks and SUVs was behind the increase in pedestrian deaths, we wouldn’t expect to see an increase in the frequency of pedestrians killed by sedans or compact cars. However, if we look at pedestrian deaths by model of car, we see that pedestrian deaths involving popular sedans have increased as well. Pedestrian deaths involving Honda Civics and Accords, Toyota Corollas and Camrys, and Nissan Altimas have all increased substantially"

To me the reason is the right-on-red rule. I still find it insane, and I have been in Canada for 9 years.

In my driving classes, I have been clearly explained that a right-on-red must be treated like a stop sign and that to turn, there needs to be two lanes free of cars: the one you are getting into and the next one (if one lane is available,this doesn't apply).

Many,many drivers treat the red light like a green light for turning right and that's the root of the issue.

Looks like most of these comments aren't reading the article. Most of the pedestrian deaths are not at intersections. Likely it's a combo of big vehicles, distracted pedestrians and distracted drivers. One thing I've noticed in other countries is people are much more likely to jaywalk. I wonder if that is becoming more common as our share of immigrants increases.

I think it's also that driver skill in the US is on average very low. Anyone with a pulse can get a driver license

The more I look, the more I see a cultural mindset of “someone else’s problem; someone else’s fault.”

I see that in both 1, and 2, and the lawyer ads everywhere necessary to make the consequences also someone else’s problem and fault.

Pedestrians pay with their lives so that we can have butch looking trucks in the US. Seriously. It's for the vanity of pavement queens. And it's measurable. Quantifiable. Regulators are unwilling to take on this problem because they'd be called woke.

The "pavement queens" have been convinced they need larger by companies that sell trucks, because larger trucks have lower legal requirements for fuel efficiency.

Of course it is always someone else’s fault.

Not sure why you're so doomerist about it. Tax laws are way more straightforward to fix than cultural behavior.

The article examines that idea and finds the evidence is against it.

FTA:

""" The strongest evidence seems to be for the “Big SUV hypothesis” — it’s hard to see what else could be causing the increase in deadliness of pedestrian accidents, and not cause a similar increase in other things. The Big SUV hypothesis also seems like something that could be limited to the US. But this on its own isn’t completely satisfying: if its big SUVs, why are pedestrian deaths for sedans increasing too? Why aren’t deaths increasing on rural roads? There are still unanswered questions here. """

As others on this thread have pointed out there's a methodology problem

Here is what IIHS says in their study: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...

Even when they do see you they have an air of entitlement and/or don't know any of the right-of-way rules. I've had drivers honk and yell at me when they want to cross a sidewalk driveway I'm currently moving through.

Except this seems to differ from the article in that the article notes that the vast majority of fatalities are the fault of the pedestrian. What you describe would be the drivers fault.

>> vast majority of fatalities are the fault of the pedestrian

>> This doesn’t necessarily mean the pedestrian was at fault — it could simply indicate that in a pedestrian death we only get one side of the story, which makes it hard to charge the driver with a crime.

But I have to say, I agree with both of you there. I lived in a country where car drivers are explicitly required by law to avoid killing people, and therefore are always at fault, even if pedestrian was crossing illegally. Law even requires drivers to speed down if they reasonably couldn't see a pedestrian. Basically, if you can't not hit people, you might as well abandon you car.

Just the fact that the pedestrian could be at fault for their own killing, I think, makes the chances of that happening way way higher. It's insane that "well my car weights 8 ton and cant stop in time even when im under speed limit" is even an argument for an innocence, and not a jail ticket that has "didn't care enough about not killing people" written on it.

Pedestrians are hit by cars in the USA because the roads are not designed for non-car users. This is exacerbated by distracted driving, drunk driving, and recent car design changes like higher hood heights but the root of it is poorly designed roads which don’t consider pedestrians’ needs.

A huge part of poorly designed roads is wider lanes (and parking spaces) that allow/encourage huge cars. Its been proven that narrower lanes correlate strongly with lower crash and fatality rates (e.g. [0] below) yet lane widths are under pressure to increase with larger vehicles, and every time this happens the vehicles get larger again.

[0] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-stree...

I heard the fire department wants wide lanes so they can drive around in those huge behemoths they love.

People living in buildings that are currently aflame tend to be fans of those behemoths. Speaking from experience.

In Europe they're smaller. I don't know if the fires are also smaller.

Surely that's not THE determining factor behind American transportation system.

Because if it is - seems easy and cheap to fix.

But they can easily use more than one lane, why should they care about lane width?

It is part of it. Notjustbikes did a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ

Higher speeds, too.

Someone didn't read the article.

The article that fails to consider that the sedans have changed in shape and size over the past 20 years?

The article that has all the cool plots, and no relevant information like the actual vehicles being discussed?

The article that doesn't even bother putting a 2000 Camry side-by-side with a 2025 Camry to make it blatantly obvious that it's not just SUVs?

That article?

>Someone didn't read the article.

Someone doesn't understand that any article that's drawing conclusions based on a workflow that involves putting a Chevy Suburban (functionally a chevy pickup from the B pillar forward) and a Honda HRV into the same category is sus at best and anyone uncritically accepting said conclusions is also sus at best.

If one wanted to be honest they'd look at GVW or some other metric that tracks size far more closely than a fairly arbitrary categorization that is highly gamed for regulatory reasons.

We're all just so sick of these shallow analysis. Shitting numbers and graphs onto them doesn't make them not shallow. Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?[1]?

[1] https://xkcd.com/1138/

Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.

>Suburbans are on truck chassis and are SUVs. HRVs are on car chassis and are crossovers. The bucket is called "trucks and SUVs" to make this less ambiguous.

TFA does not use data broken down in that way.

TFA cites "sales by body type" which puts a 'Burb (functionally a pickup for this discussion) into the same category as a 2002 Forester (which is an SUV on paper, but obviously a car).

As an adamant enthusiast of both cars and infrastructure design, if someone puts a crossover in the trucks and SUVs category, I am dubious of anything that follows. Crossovers are basically just cars with higher rollover risk. They're lighter, they have smaller engines, they can stop more quickly, and overall have much, much better safety characteristics.

Like I'm sorry but if you put crossovers and SUVs in the same bucket for a discussion anywhere, but especially in the realm of safety, I'm not taking your opinions seriously.

>Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?

It does give slightly more insight than the map of US state population per capita[1].

[1] https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=710896291698831&id...

It's more the trend in cars than the roads because the roads didn't change starting in 2009.

And drivers. Readers should ask themselves when they first got a smartphone and if it was around 2009.

You should ask yourself whether smartphones are a US-only phenomenon. From the article:

> Other countries haven’t seen this increase in pedestrian deaths: in every other high-income country, rates are flat or declining. Whatever’s causing the problem seems to be limited to the US.

It reminds me of Americans blaming school shootings on video games as if nobody else in the world had them :)

Smartphones + US culture is limited to the US.

That's a deeply silly assertion.

Culture is one of our major and most successful exports. Afghan tribesmen have seen The Simpsons. Osama Bin Laden played Half-Life and showed his kids Pixar films. https://www.history.com/articles/bin-laden-compound-abbottab...

And the US isn't under Sharia Law. Saying that The Simpsons in syndication is the reason why two cultures behaves the same is the sillier of the two statements.

> And the US isn't under Sharia Law.

We have our moments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_county

> Saying that The Simpsons in syndication is the reason why two cultures behaves the same is the sillier of the two statements.

American culture is influential. Americans and Afghans aren't the same, but they've absolutely picked up on bits of it. And Afghanistan is an extreme example; you'll find even more American cultural influx in, say, England.

As compared to the European roads that are half the width of US roads?

Yes, european roads are not as wide, since they make place for proper sidewalks and bike lanes. Another advantage is that narrower roads make drivers drive more carefully and slowly, reducing accidents even further.

In Japan many neighborhood roads (even in cities) are narrow and have no sidewalk to speak of. But I feel safe walking down them because drivers expect to go slow and look out for pedestrians and cyclists.

If you want to blow through an area fast, there are other roads for that with lighted crossings and sidewalks, and often slower mixed-use parallel roads for pulling in and out of businesses.

I wish people would stop assuming that an area with 500M people, more than 20 countries and far more cultures are one addressable block.

Some places are, others are absolutely awful.

> Another advantage is that narrower roads make drivers drive more carefully and slowly,

In some places, in others people go absolutely hell for leather because the roads are pretty fun.

This varies city to city.

I've no doubt it varies, but they're all doing something differently that seems to work versus the US.

> Other countries haven’t seen this increase in pedestrian deaths: in every other high-income country, rates are flat or declining. Whatever’s causing the problem seems to be limited to the US.

I don't have an issue with that, or the article, it's the comments about "ah but in Europe they do X" like every road looks like Amsterdam.

Then we shouldn't really be talking about the US, which has similar size and population stats, but instead individual cities and states. Denying that US states are correlated and European city construction are correlated is to ignore the history of how they were made.

Not in my experience. The road widths were set hundreds of years ago and the buildings have not changed. Walking around European and UK towns I find myself much closer to cars than walking around in the US. This is a factor in keeping car speed low, which likely affects how often and severe pedestrian collisions are.

You seem to agree with the parent comment

I do agree that European roads are safer, but not because they have made large segregated sidewalks (which is what I disagree with as reality and the root cause).

Ah. Ditto.

On small village roads with little traffic you don't even need pavements (not to mention bike paths) as long as the road is narrow and winding with good visibility. Cars drive slowly and rarely, it's perfectly fine to walk there.

Yeah. Halving the width halves the time to cross and also causes drivers to slow down in proportion even if the speed limit is significantly higher. Narrowing and placing “obstacles” is the only effective way of showing traffic permanently.

There are lots of narrow roads in America, like the one I currently live on, which is about 1.75 lanes wide. If I come up against a large truck, one of us has to pull to the side.

Most people prefer not to drive on roads like that.

people drive slower on narrower roads — some traffic calming efforts in the US include making right turns at lights narrower so people slow down while potentially turning into a crosswalk

Yes. Wider roads are worse for safety.

I was amazed when I travelled to the US at just how pedestrian hostile it is. I was travelling to a conference in San Diego and it was just impossible to walk safely between where I was staying and where I was going to because this was the road: https://maps.app.goo.gl/G2PeVbEzQyqbgDTN9

Only because you chose to walk through the port instead of through town. Google Maps' walking route is shorter than the route that goes through that road, entirely on sidewalks, and only requires crossing one road wider than one car lane per direction (and said road has a signalized crosswalk). There is also a pedestrian bridge across that road that could be used instead, but Google didn't pick it, likely because it connects with "private" property (the convention center's path).

https://maps.app.goo.gl/asfGrRLkLmtpqnps5

It has a lot to do with many Americans relationships to cities, and dare I say, wanting to be away from "those people" in the cities.

Some Americans can be hostile to increasing city density, arguing it will increase car traffic. Yet the whole point of dense cities is to help people avoid driving as you live next to everything.

Meanwhile development out in the hinterlands continues unabated, and the only way to get to the city if you live there is with a car.

When you ask the same Americans why they like visiting a resort or European city, they will talk about being able to walk around without a car to get everything they need.

> When you ask the same Americans why they like visiting a resort or European city, they will talk about being able to walk around without a car to get everything they need.

To be fair, you're looking for different things at a resort than you are at home. At a resort, you're not looking to do weekly food shopping, or buy supplies to do work around the house, or etc, etc. That's not to say things can't be organized to make doing so more reasonable, but living in an area where you drive to get everything and wanting to _visit_ (but not live in) an area where you can walk to everything (because you don't need major things) is not unreasonable.

They like walking around without a car AND without homeless addicts screaming at you for change.

Hahah I got stopped by cops twice for walking to a food court in San José ten years ago :D

They thought I was crazy for walking basically. After reassuring them I knew who and where I was, they let me walk off.

Much of America seems very car-centric (to a European like myself).

I was at a conference years ago in Burbank, wanted to walk during lunch break as I was tired from all the sitting and was stopped by the cops also. They were super friendly, offered me a ride but couldn't understand why I'm walking (especially without some destination). It's a really different mindset from Europe.

This is basically what seems to have prompted Bradbury to write The Pedestrian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pedestrian

There’s a great audio version (I think from the BBC) too.

Yup, never ceases to amaze me when I'm over there how difficult they seem to find the idea of putting in a proper footpath.

Where I live they will randomly build a bike path for a mile on the side of the road. But then it just ends. There's not a sense of how it could be built to connect people to the places they need to go. It's random and ad-hoc. Then people say "its pointless to build bike / ped infrastructure, nobody uses it!"

Around here, there seems to be an unwritten rule that every place a trail crosses the road there must be a row of 20’ tall shrub blocking the entire line of visibility in both directions.

My favorite feature of bicycle lanes in San Jose is that cars cross them diagonally to get onto highway access ramps.

Nothing screams "safety" like an SUV coming at you from behind and left while accelerating to highway speeds.

I’ve lived in places where they’ll add the bike path during scheduled road work, as it’s cheaper to get it done while there’s a crew already onsite. It can be a bit stochastic at first like you mention, but over a while I’ve seen the corridor eventually fill out, making the most of a shoestring budget.

Perhaps something similar where you live?

This is a huge problem where I live too. The thing is, technically, everyone is equally connected, because people have a legal right of way on all roads using any means of transport (apart from motorways, but these are always redundant links). But practically, most routes are unsafe and just downright unpleasant to use in anything but a motorvehicle.

I don't know what metrics they are using to assess walking or cycling infrastructure, but it seems like it's just raw miles of pavement/tarmac. This is a useless metric. You can have 10 miles of pristine cycle path but if it goes nowhere it's not useful and nobody will use it.

The metrics need to be based on graph completeness. Important places are the nodes. You get to draw an edge if there's a reasonable route that is less than, say, 150% of the crow flies distance (or some more clever formula taking into account gradients etc., ie. it's allowed to be longer if it means not including a 25% gradient). Then your score is simply number of edges divided by number of edges in the complete graph (or 2E/(N^2*N) where E is number of edges and N number of places).

I had a suspicion that there were more idiots on the road after and during covid. good to see this reflected in the data, but sad to know that it's actually true. no matter where I go in the USA I see people speeding easily 50% over the limit, running red lights, blowing through stop signs. it's ridiculous.

given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyota safety sense are pretty effective - you can check on youtube. people will place random dummys in front of the car and it stops pretty accurately.

I’d like someone to do a deep dive in the data; I suspect that almost all of the fatalities involve some variation of “not following the laws” simply because nobody does.

We need crosswalks enforced by spikes that pop up from the ground or something similarly draconian to get people to wake up.

The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.

A similar nation-wide campaign is needed around auto safety.

>The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.

They also changed bus routing best practice to alter the sorts of stops that were causing the bulk of the passing. Like for example right side stops on roads divided by any sort of median are avoided where possible these days.

That also had the side effect of moving the stops to side streets; rarely if ever are the “commuting roads” stopped by schoolbusses anymore. Which makes it nicer tot drive, too.

The side streets are a better place for kids/parents to be waiting around too.

> there were more idiots on the road after and during covid

I don't think the data really supports this, because pedestrian deaths have been rising continuously since 2008 instead of abruptly after 2019; there is at least a bunch of other factors at play.

Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.

Personally, I think that "more distracted pedestrians" (from smartphones) is also an interesting theory which could possibly explain the huge increase in Sedan-lethality.

> Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.

I'd be cautious of reading _too_ much into that, because in that time period the US has largely legalised a popular drug. You'd expect this rate to rise just because a cop asking "were you using cannabis" in the US is now a very different threat level than it was 20 years ago.

Not just the US, my village in Germany has a limit of 30 kph, people drive through with 60.

We're 30mph through my village but because it is a 'cut through' the local government deem it to be important and the speed cannot be reduced. Even though we had two cars go round a sharp bend into a tree within a month of each other, in dry conditions.

Not Germany here but I witnessed buses of the bus company of my former city driving at 50 or more in a 30 km/h area. Some of those areas have a 30 limit because of a good reason, some probably only to add up kilometers and make the city council look good.

Have the village start adding some wicked speed bumps.

Speed bumps work but putting big flower pots in the way is even better. It forces people to slow down without giving them the feeling that they get slowed down for no reason.

We humans are so easy to trick.

Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be. One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place). I see jwalking pretty much every day. I see people walking when the signal says to stay put. I see people darting out from between parked cars. I see this every day. Sure they have priority. But a car doing 55 does not care. Keep your head on a swivel. I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.

But most of these issues are highlighting road/driver issues, not pedestrian ones.

People jaywalk because the lights are timed more for the convenience of the drivers. People dart out between parked cars because the nearest crosswalk is a long way away. People cross the interstate because otherwise their 5 minute walk becomes an hour. Drivers shouldn't be going 55 in spots where someone can be obscured by a row of parked cars. etc.

A lot of this is parked cars right beside a 55mph highway. Or stretches of stroad that are a mile long with no pedestrian crossings. In the US we love to zone that 'business over here' and 'residentials over there' which means you have to cross high traffic areas to do anything. And if you're without car you're rightly screwed.

There's a LOT going on with what you said. Im going to separate it for logical discussion and not the order you said it in.

> I see jwalking pretty much every day.

Jaywalking was a created crime by the early car companies to try to take away blame from distracted drivers. https://www.grunge.com/721704/the-truth-about-how-jaywalking... says it better than I.

> One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place).

That IS a problem. However, what is the locality doing to fixing an obvious problem of 'nowhere to safely cross a high speed road'? Aside "fuckit, cross halfway when it looks safe" is basically the only sane response. WALKING up or down an interstate or major highway to get to a light or some crossing way would take 1+ hours to do.

> Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be.

Are they actually obstructing, or just crossing and you don't like that?

> I see people walking when the signal says to stay put.

So in my liberal-ish city in a republican state, we have basically terrible cargo-cult traffic control. They do shit like "dont turn on pedestrian lights when nobody presses the button", no right-turn on reds even if theres no ped crossing, arbitrary bad speed control, stuff like that.

On the city square, its routine to see no cars cause the lights are anti-timed to impede cars. BUT the light will be green allowing all those cars (NONE!) to continue. So yeah, we look the 1 way - its a 1 way road - and we will cross when we're not supposed to.

Again, this is what happens when you mix blaming pedestrians, poor traffic handling, and cargo cult liberal ideas all together. Makes a terrible situation for everyone.

> I see people darting out from between parked cars.

Again, goes back to car companies criminalizing "jaywalking", in order to steer the blame to humans rather than humans driving a 1 ton slab of metal and plastic.

> But a car doing 55 does not care.

Ah hah! And there's the gotcha. You're not talking about downtown and slower streets, like city residential or the city square. You're talking about Stroads, this bastardized terrible mix between a street (slow, humans everywhere) and a road (high speed, no humans, limited entry/exit). Not Just Bikes talks extensively about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

Yes, Stroads kill. And Stroads are EVERYWHERE in the USA. This US-centric anti-pattern is best seen with a state highway going 55MPH, maybe dropping to 40-45MPH with a town built AROUND this bisecting nigh-uncrossable stroad. They are some of the most anti-human infrastructure we have seen.

> I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.

Thats the problem with stroads and the highways that bifurcate towns and cities. There's FEW places to cross, and the lights themselves are almost never set up to actually allow pedestrian traffic. And you're lucky to even get a sidewalk. And if you do, your door prize is face full of vehicles fumes and super loud vehicles.

The USA has sold off and demolished pedestrian infrastructure for implicitly requiring everyone have a motor vehicle, unless you're lucky enough to live in a rare city with great public infra. (And no, bus lines that share the road with regular vehicles will take you 2 hours to get where your car can take you 20 minutes.)

What's the vehicle window tint situation outside of the US?

Window tint is a pet peeve of mine - as a long-time small car driver I'm used to being around taller vehicles that I can't necessarily see through or around. But the situation has gotten worse and worse.

The law hasn't changed AFAIK - there's a longstanding regulation that cars are generally not allowed to have dark tint from the factory but trucks, SUVs and vans can have dark tint from the second row back.

So you used to see older "standard" pickup trucks, the ones with a single row of seats, and there'd be no tint - you could see through the truck. Now the typical pickup has 2 rows, and dark tint in the back.

A lot of cars have become SUVs as well - now your Subaru Outback or even Crosstrek are technically categorized as SUVs and come with dark rear tint in most configurations.

As a result, when I sit at a traffic light, I can see much less of what is happening beyond the neighboring vehicles than in years past.

Sure, everywhere with roads has some large, opaque vehicles like delivery vans, etc. But the percentage of my field of view that is blocked by neighboring vehicles certainly seems higher than ever.

ive had to resort to heavy tint myself literally just to not be blinded by headlights constantly. i know its not legal but ill take the ticket to not have my retinas seared every 10 seconds at night

I don’t buy the distraction numbers. I see people on their phones constantly while driving, despite laws against it. It’s also impossible to really prove anything after the fact, as the article touches on. The graph shows a massive increase in “distraction not reported,” which to me just sounds like the driver didn’t choose to incriminate themself.

The spike started in 2010, which is when 4G was rolling out, Instagram launched, Facebook was already big, and social media in your pocket was becoming an addictive reality. Before this, there wasn’t a lot to do on a smartphone while driving.

Any attempt to blame it primarily on phones has to wrangle with the fact that those phones are available and in use everywhere on the planet, not just the USA.

I was thinking the same, but many other countries have drivers and pedestrians more separated, to while the distraction, from either the driver or the pedestrians is still a problem, it's mitigated by the greater distance between the two.

Still the "on drug or drunk" for the pedestrians is wild.

My only critique of this is that maybe the countries they compared started to invested in safer urban driving infrastructure during the Lehman shock, and its counteracting the universal growth in distractedness

If it was phone-related, you'd expect it to have risen everywhere, but in fact it has generally fallen modestly in most OECD countries, and risen massively in the US.

>Relatedly, in the majority of pedestrian deaths, the pedestrian is blamed for the accident. In 66% of cases, pedestrians are described as “failing to yield right of way,” “jaywalking,” or “in roadway improperly.” In 87% of cases, the driver is not charged with anything following the accident

It's insane that society has come to accept that some parts of the public space are deadly, and it's your fault if you're not cautious and get killed on them. Just to have more cars.

Now kids can't go to school by themselves

As an enthusiast of traffic engineering, the most surprising thing in US is how hard is for the engineers to handle so distinct zoning laws according to it's county/city/state, and urbanistic planning in several big/medium cities is more centered on _giving preference to the cars_ instead of _keep the cadency and flow of the cars_.

Not saying it's good or bad, but for instance, in some counties it's way simpler to have a parking lot without any traffic buffer area at the entrance than to get an approval for a roundabout to reduce electronic traffic coordination in feeder roads.

Even simple things like pedestrian passages that do not have any contact with the road (elevated passages or underground passages) are very hard to find in the US.

I really would like to know one day what kind of design philosophy the traffic engineering field follows with so much compromises.

Why do so many drivers kill pedestrians?

Passive voice and saying that they are killed by cars is part oft the problem: https://visionzeroreporting.com/

Did the passive voice suddenly start being used in 2009? Because otherwise, it does nothing to explain the increase in accidental deaths of pedestrians.

What's even sadder is seeing how many pedestrians are killed _even as far fewer people_, especially kids, are actually walking. It's like watching drownings increase even as fewer people take up swimming.

I walked to school in the 90's and even then the curtain-twitchers scolded my mom for letting me. It has only worsened since, as every destination is ages away and involves crossing multiple 45MPH stroads with monster trucks with 5 foot high hoods roaring down them.

I believe this has a lot to do with the problem in my area. We have a bunch of disconnected sidewalks almost everywhere. They've started connecting them. There's more pedestrian traffic at some lights at some times of the day but it's nowhere near consistent.

Driving, especially during commute, becomes an exercise of muscle memory for most of us. We are used to what we see. All year long I might encounter a pedestrian at my most commonly encountered intersections once a year. Most drivers are on auto-pilot, they're used to looking for cars, if people aren't abundantly obvious, they're missed.

They've started connecting sidewalks around me. Foot traffic has tripled as a result. Still, that means I encounter a pedestrian three times a year? That's not going to improve exposure enough to make anyone specifically look any more frequently. It's going to just create more opportunities for people to get hit. And that's what's happened.

Very true - I honestly was a bad driver when I lived in suburban California (Sacramento, etc.). I generally just followed lights and didn't look for pedestrians. Then I moved somewhere people can just walk across the street anywhere (Dublin, Ireland) and got used to watching for pedestrians (sometimes kids!) like a hawk while driving.

As a result it really freaks me out when I visit home and friends and relatives will drive 25, 35, 45 mph right next to a row of parked cars where a person could walk in front of them at any moment, and not even consider the possibility of a pedestrian. It's a complete mindset shift.

Maybe, at least some places, it's a vicious cycle. I don't like that phrase generally, but it seems to fit here. More people driving means more vehicle vs. pedestrian contention and accidents, which means fewer people walking, which means more people driving, 'round and 'round we go. I do see this playing out at a couple of schools near me. The number of people driving their middle-school kids less than half a mile is insane, and it's not just at the school either. Any street that has a convenient cut-through to the school grounds effectively becomes a second pick-up line at 2-4pm. Walking or running near there has become noticeably less safe since we moved to this neighborhood five years ago, from the increase in traffic alone even before other factors are accounted for.

Also if you look at they way the cars are designed in the US compared to Europe, the hoods of the cars are much higher, and not designed to prevent injury in the event of a car -> pedestraion incident

In the article, it talks about the big suv hypothesis and also points out that pedestrian deaths are up for sedans too.

Are US sedans hood designs different than in Europe?

If you look at sedans from the early 90s, their front bumpers (and especially the bumper extensions that used to exist on most sedans, and which would be the first part to hit) would hit someone my height at or below the knee. Current sedans would hit me on the low to mid-thigh. That makes a meaningful difference in whether the pedestrian goes over or under the hood after being struck and has a massive impact (pun unintended) on injury severity, likelihood of head injuries, etc.

One other thing that’s changed for both SUVs and sedans is that for the sake of occupant safety, the pillars are MUCH wider than they were in cars built 35 years ago. The impact on visibility is massive, and those pillars are generally placed to directly obstruct the view of pedestrians in or waiting to enter a crosswalk when the driver wants to turn through it.

I think it is more common to have larger cars in the US versus europe, I saw a dodge ram for the first time in my life yesterday and me and my colleagues were shocked at how big it was - it did not fit in a regular parking space and took a whole handicap spot. I don't think us sedan design is different from european, but just the car culture as a whole.

I’m from Spain and have lived in the U.S. for 11 years. I 100 percent feel less punished here than in Spain while driving.

Just yesterday while taking my daughter to school, I was looking at my phone, the light turned green, and the car behind me had to wait a few seconds, it was a police car. He clearly saw me, and absolutely nothing happened. The police back home in Catalonia would have roasted me for that.

And I have seen wild things here in US besides tons of people using phones like brushing teeth or eating with a plate and a fork.

> or eating with a plate and a for

... Like, the _driver_?

Yes

Besides the many other factors mentioned by commenters here, I'll add one other: drivers in the US rarely face consequences for killing pedestrians or, for that matter, other drivers, even when it's the result of willfully negligent or reckless behavior. It's such a longstanding trend that it's become a meme: if you want to get away with murder, make sure to kill your victim with a car. "I didn't see them/I made mistake" works so well that authorities just don't bring charges, because juries are so willing to accept this excuse. Perhaps because so many of them can see themselves doing the same thing.

See: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-u-s-so-good-at-k...

I wish they wouldn't just focus on deaths. The difference between being killed and having your body wrecked is pretty small. I'm curious to know what the numbers look like if we considered some less extreme interpretation of taking someone's life.

The answer is so simple.

We really really really really like our cars/trucks/SUVs in the US and have agreed that about 30,000 to 40,000 people a year will die so that we can keep driving the way we do.

It’s the price we pay for the way we choose to live.

It's funny because when I see people who really, really like something their faces are filled with joy. They talk about what they love and it's always positive.

When I see car people I see anger, frustration, furrowed brows everywhere, oh and did you hear about that asshole on the road yesterday?

From the outside this "love" looks more like an abusive relationship or Stockholm syndrome or something.

>When I see car people I see anger, frustration, furrowed brows everywhere, oh and did you hear about that asshole on the road yesterday?

If you actually pay attention when driving you'll see a ton of sub par behavior. Ignorance is bliss and they're not ignorant.

I'm biased because I'm 45 and have never driven a car in my life. I grew up in a very rural area in Florida, went to a big state college, and then moved to Portland, OR because it was a decent place to live without a car.

I knew from a very young age that driving a car seemed like a dumb way to live and so wondered why everyone did it and why nobody decided to try something different?

My view is that if people really hated driving they would change their lives to do it less! Instead they make excuses about how they have to drive. I judge people's actions and the way most people choose to live tells me that they love driving!

People stay in abusive relationships all the time. If they really hated it they'd just leave, right?

People leave abusive relationships all the time, too.

my impression was not that most people like their SUVs, they're just don't trust other people and don't follow the conventions. While on the micro level Americans follow the conventions much more seriously than Europeans (starting from tips and down to formal office rules) and love spending time discussing those conventions, on the higher level, with risk or high stakes involved, all the conventions go out of window, and the people fall back to guns, litigators, SUVs, suburban houses in the middle of nowhere, and other ways of self-isolation and atomization.

Soccer vs american football is another visible example.

I like how your comment is downvoted even though this hypothesis is directly supported by the data from the article.

Fat cars getting fatter, pedestrian-hostile streets becoming faster, city infrastructure requiring people to drive everywhere.

Hmmmm, what could be the reason.

> city infrastructure requiring people to drive everywhere

I really really really disagree with this.

A huge number of people could design a car-free or less car dependent life for themselves if that was something they valued highly.

People just don't value it as highly as they claim they do.

>People just don't value it as highly as they claim they do.

Whatever.

Change it to "city infrastructure heavily incentivizing people to drive everywhere by heavily penalizing all other modes of transportation and prioritizing automobiles and accommodating the needs of car drivers above everything else".

When the cities are designed for cars with everything else being an afterthought, people are going to driver everywhere.

> When the cities are designed for cars with everything else being an afterthought, people are going to driver everywhere.

Not if they really hate driving and want to live differently!

You can say you're a victim of circumstance or you can say I care a lot about something and have more control over your life.

I knew from a very young age that driving a car seemed like a dumb way to live and so wondered why everyone did it and why nobody decided to try something different?

>You can say you're a victim of circumstance or you can say I care a lot about something and have more control over your life.

>I'm biased because I'm 45 and have never driven a car in my life.

I learned to drive when I was 24-25, after moving to Texas for graduate school, and cycling everywhere for a year.

I cycled ~3 miles for groceries.

I hauled an upright vacuum cleaner ~4 miles on a bicycle. And a bar stool.

You really can't blame me for not trying hard to avoid driving.

You can't blame me for, say, wanting to go to a movie theater, which was less than a mile away... by highway frontage, where cars would go 60mph.

You can't blame me for wanting to see places other than College Station, TX, when I was living there (despite the name, there isn't a station there, and hasn't been for the past 100 years or so).

And you can't blame for wanting to fucking live, after a good friend of mine was mauled down by an SUV when he, a non-driver, got out into the street in Long Island on roller blades.

Several were hit by cars while cycling (non-lethally, thankfully). At least one by a driver who was looking left (into the oncoming traffic) while making a right turn, and ignored what's literally in front of his car.

> then moved to Portland, OR because it was a decent place to live without a car.

My friend, not everyone has the choice to move to a handful of metro areas in the US where living without a car isn't a pain.

I'm glad you have the means and the resources.

I didn't, and still don't; Silicon Valley is where the jobs are for me. And it's not a great place to be at without a vehicle - and I say that even as I do use an e-bike for short runs.

After all is said and done, my quality of life has gone up tremendously after getting a car.

And that's why it's not a me-problem.

> You really can't blame me for not trying hard to avoid driving.

This isn’t about “blame” (a word I never used). This is simply about what people choose to do.

> not everyone has the choice to move to a handful of metro areas in the US where living without a car isn't a pain. I'm glad you have the means and the resources.

I never earned more than $35,000 a year until I was into my 30s. I knew my life was going to be different if I wanted not drive so I made different decisions (some would call these sacrifices but I do not). I lived in a low-income studio apartment in Portland, for example. My life is not a life that everyone wants! But it is a lifestyle in which not driving is accessible to more people than those with what you believe to be “means and resources.”

All I did was think driving was really really stupid and made decisions to avoid it. This shows that it mattered a lot to me. It not mattering as much to other people is not a bad thing or a thing to “blame” someone for. I just won’t take anyone seriously who says they want to drive less or who says they hate driving but then proceeds to change their behavior not at all.

> my quality of life has gone up tremendously after getting a car

Fantastic! So then why would you care about driving less (or not at all). It seems like you’re saying that if you drove less (or not at all) your life would get worse?

I’m not sure what your point is or why you’d take such offense at my comment if you ended up making a decision that you believe made your life better?

Being able to afford to move somewhere isn't only about the money. Family, friends, support networks, availability of employment, and a million other factors apply.

Glad you had the opportunity. For me, moving to a walkable neighborhood would've amounted to ditching graduate school (where I spent 7-8 years of my life).

For my friend who divorced and had shared custody of his son, it would amount to giving up his child.

Put simply, your solution doesn't scale, and it's not about how much someone cares about not driving.

Moving is simply not an option for everyone, period. Might as well say "don't like driving? Just immigrate to Europe".

My point here is that I want to be able to not drive where I live.

My point is that I'm sad that my quality of life would drop if I were to give up driving.

My point is that it's not about me, or how much I care. I can think that driving is stupid, but if it means I'm spending 1 hour on daily commute instead of 4 in the metro area where I ended up living, you bet I'll do the stupid thing, as will everyone else.

My point here is that making the entirety of the 340 million Americans care about not driving, and making them think it's stupid won't change a thing because objectively it is the only viable option for surviving in most of this country.

My point here is that shifting the attention from what is very clearly an infrastructure problem to people who are the victims of the decisions made by governments (like subsidizing highways but not public transportation and urban rail) is a distraction, a red herring, and is helping to perpetuate the problem, not solve it.

And I care about reliance on driving for a million reasons that aren't about me, from social to environment concerns and to the goddamn subject of this discussion — pedestrian fatalities.

A friend of mine was killed by an SUV driver, so it's also personal for me, but I cared before that too — and I'd hope that people could have basic empathy and care even if it does not apply to them personally.

So yes, the choice to drive in the US was a great one for me. Just like doing what a person with a gun tells you to do would be a very sensible choice.

Glad you were able to run away from the problem. This does not solve it.

> Family, friends, support networks, availability of employment, and a million other factors apply.

You’re just adding excuse on excuse here which is totally fine. People love thinking that a million factors are holding them back when the only thing actually holding them back is themselves.

You made an impressive list of 2 people who simply couldn’t move!

Fine, whatever those people absolutely couldn’t move or do anything to drive less or not drive at all. You really think this applies to all the people who claim to wish they could drive less or not at all? And you really think moving is the only way to drive less? And that the decision to move is one that can’t be made throughout one’s lifetime?

Grad school ends. Kids grow up.

But I’m sure there’ll just be another excuse at that time.

And again, there is nothing wrong with that. It just shows that if a person continues to claim to value something and does nothing to live that value (besides make excuses and blame others), I do not believe that person actually values that thing.

> but if it means I'm spending 1 hour on daily commute instead of 4 in the metro area where I ended up living, you bet I'll do the stupid thing, as will everyone else

I did not!

Additionally you did not end up living anywhere. You chose to live there.

> people who are the victims of the decisions made by governments

If you see people as victims that’s how you perpetuate the problem. If a person says that they wish they could drive less or not at all tell them, “Change your life! Or admit that you don’t value that as much as you think!”

> Put simply, your solution doesn't scale

It obviously doesn’t have to scale. Anyone can make choices that they think will allow them to lead the life they value. If someone believes they value driving less or not at all, those choices are available to them!

They shouldn’t say, “Boy I’ll continue to dislike my life because the solution I see doesn’t scale.”

Additionally it obviously does scale because most people will do anything to avoid changing their life. The solution is right there for the people who actually want it.

Interesting. Are you a programmer? This is just like the classic programmer obtuse binary thinking, but dialed up to 11. Complete inability to understand that there's more to a choice than "physically possible" and "physically impossible".

Anyways, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmPtfy9P714.

> Are you a programmer?

No.

It is binary thinking because there’s 2 choices: take action or don’t.

If you don’t take action then it’s just wishful thinking of how you’re imagining how you’d like your life to be. Which again, is a totally fine way to live! But it is different from saying that the imaginary life actually matters to you.

My point throughout these comments is that we can easily see how much someone values something (relative to other values) through their actions. Do you believe this to be false?

> there's more to a choice than "physically possible" and "physically impossible".

Do your best to articulate the “more” in such a way that it isn’t just a subset of one of the other two states.

You will end up sounding like Kramer on Seinfeld, “Bets off. I don’t want to do the levels.” Jerry replies, “The bet was whether you’d do the levels not whether you wanted to do them.”

>I like how your comment is downvoted even though this hypothesis is directly supported by the data from the article.

I like (by which I mean I think it indicates a lack of moral character) that you say this despite the articles conclusion basically being "the data is all over the place, I see no strong trends <sigh> I guess it's the SUVs, ugh, maybe"

Like yeah, it probably is the SUVs to an extent but the data only indirectly supports this at best and there's probably confounding factors (in particular road design which has been discussed at length and people all over these commands are bringing up).

>I like (by which I mean I think it indicates a lack of moral character)

This isn't coherent, sorry.

>that you say this despite the articles conclusion being...

Notice that I said that the hypothesis is supported by the data presented in the article, not by the lackluster analysis (or the conclusion, which, nevertheless, does point to SUVs as the only hypothesis they find plausible).

>the data is all over the place, I see no strong trends <sigh> I guess it's the SUVs, ugh, maybe"

This is a bad and misleading summary of the article.

>Like yeah, it probably is the SUVs to an extent but the data only indirectly supports this at best and there's probably confounding factors (in particular road design which has been discussed at length and people all over these commands are bringing up).

You missed the entire point of the article, which is trying to understand why the rate of pedestrian fatalities spiked after 2009 in the US (but not in the EU).

Road design, BY ITSELF, isn't the cause of the spike, since IT DID NOT CHANGE.

The speed limits did go up in many places in the US, something that I brought up in another comment (and something that was glossed over by the article). That may be a factor.

But the primary factor is the elephant in the room - cars getting bigger, heavier, taller, and more hostile to pedestrians.

It's the goddamn obvious conclusion, and all the data out there supports it:

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/14/1212737005/cars-trucks-pedest...

I'd love more of this kind of frank discourse because I'm tired of decades of political pearl clutching "even just one death is a tragedy"

One possibility might be a combination of the "mostly urban" and "big SUV" factors. To put it another way: where are people driving those larger vehicles. I don't have numbers, but it does seem like vehicles that were once common mostly in suburban/exurban/rural environments are now more common in cities as well. Poor visibility plus higher pedestrian density seems like a powerfully bad combination.

Mostly, though, drivers have just gotten worse. Corner-cutting is one of my pet peeves, and a good example here. I used to see someone cutting a corner across opposing traffic - usually someone turning off an arterial vs. someone trying to come out of the side street - less than once a week. Now, even though I drive less, it seems to be everyone all the time. If they're not cutting the corner, they're swinging wide to the same effect. Ditto for running red lights. Where I used to see one person running it by half a second, I now see three running it by multiple seconds. Turning where there's a "no turn on red" same way. I've stood at a rotary and counted how many cars were not using it properly, endangering others. Yeah, I know, get a life, but the fact remains that drivers are worse.

The only real question IMO is why drivers are worse. I have more theories, of course. Breakdown of the social contract, people under more time pressure, phones (though that was already examined), etc. But those kind of aren't essential to my point so I'll leave them aside for now.

> if its big SUVs, why are pedestrian deaths for sedans increasing too?

The article is well researched but doesn't seem to account for the increase in weight and size of the sedans it mentions as a counter to the rise of SUVs being a leading factor.

I'd be interested in the data on a small that remained the same size and/or got smaller in the window: the Mazda Miata.

| Model | Year | Length (in) | Width (in) | Height (in) | Curb Weight (lbs) | |----------------------|-------|--------------|------------|-------------|-------------------| | Honda Civic | 2009 | ~177.3 | ~69.0 | ~56.5 | ~2,600 - 2,700 | | Honda Civic | 2023 | ~184.0 | ~70.8 | ~55.7 | 2,877 - 2,935 | | Honda Accord | 2009 | 194.1 | 72.7 | 58.1 | ~3,193 | | Honda Accord | 2023 | ~192.2 | ~73.3 | ~57.1 | 3,239 - 3,280 | | Toyota Corolla | 2009 | ~179.7 | ~70.1 | ~57.7 | ~2,358 - 2,623 | | Toyota Corolla | 2023 | ~182.3 | ~70.5 | ~56.5 | 2,955 - 3,150 | | Toyota Camry | 2009 | ~192.1 | ~72.4 | ~58.1 | ~3,193 | | Toyota Camry | 2023 | ~192.1 | ~72.4 | ~56.9 | 3,244 - 3,280 | | Nissan Altima | 2009 | ~191.1 | ~72.0 | ~57.0 | ~3,192 | | Nissan Altima | 2023 | ~192.9 | ~72.0 | ~56.9 | 3,244 - 3,053 | | Mazda MX-5 (NC) | 2009 | ~157.5 - 158.3| ~67.7 | ~48.8 - 49.4| ~2,450 - 2,542 | | Mazda MX-5 (ND) | 2023 | ~154.1 | ~68.1 | ~48.6 | ~2,183 |

I don't understand how the bigger vehicle theory tracks when pedestrian deaths were dropping from 1990-2010, a period that saw vehicles in general get larger and the same trend towards buying SUVs instead of cars.

https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/us-vehicle-sales-by-...

Something that seems to be absent here is a discussion of turn-right-on-red laws. In conjunction with the SUV hypothesis of increasingly deadly vehicles (in conjunction with the trend of modern cars having increasingly huge A-pillars which inhibit visibility), the existence of such laws could explain the US as an outlier, the urban/rural difference, and the anomaly of NYC, where right-on-red has been banned since 1977.

Road and street design is the main difference with Europe. A lot of work has been put to make streets safer for everybody.

That fact alone acts as a multiplier for everything else. The cars are bigger in the USA? The bad streets make it way worse. People are distracted at the phone? The bad street design makes it more deathly.

Fix USA's streets and towns and all kinds of deaths will be decreased. It is the most important factor.

This blows my mind considering most North American streets were designed for cars, whereas the same cannot be said for Europe. Maybe it's the reason: streets can be so narrow and winding in Europe that you have to pay attention?

Yea, I read an article on here a few years ago (which I can't seem to find anymore), that a lot more cars in the US crash into buildings compared to the EU and the main takeaway point was that it is probably because of the long and straight roads in the US, since you go faster and aren't as focused.

An interesting read.

This kind of problem is exactly what statistics is designed to do, and it makes me a bit sad that we are left with a bit of a shoulder shrug. It's absolutely possible to do a much better job at disentangling possible causes here with something as simple as a multilevel regression. (Although ok, proper causal inference would be more work).

I have no doubt that most of the blame here is on drivers. Way too often I see cars running red lights, barely paying attention, turning the wrong way on a one way, etc etc.

That being said, (and to be clear I say this as someone that does not own a car). I also have been seeing more and more people not paying attention and just walking while staring at their phone. No walk symbol or anything. I have frustratingly had to grab my partner multiple times doing exactly this and almost walking into a car that was following the rules.

Seriously if your walking (especially in a car centric area) you don't need to be doom scrolling through Instagram or whatever other crap your looking at. Quickly changing music, sending a text, whatever is one thing but I don't understand needing to look at Instagram while walking.

And not just so you don't get killed by cars, the number of times these people almost walk into other people is insane...

Since 1930, 30K or more people have been killed every year in car accidents in the US.

That's over 3_000_000 people in the past 100 years.

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

(corrected, thanks!)

30000*100 != 30 000 000

are you sure you haven't thrown a zero somewhere when multiplying.

Um, 3 million, perhaps? Technically over 300k, I guess.

> We also can’t rule out that increased recklessness or distractedness on the part of pedestrians is playing a role.

Or a raw increase in pedestrians on urban roads? Maybe people are more willing to go on a walk at night in the city these days?

Anecdotal, but I've been in some cities where pedestrians don't even look, they just walk right into the road. Yes, I would be at fault if I hit them (in many cases) but I'm also not perfect, and also don't expect them to charge right in front of me.)

Living in Boston 30-something years ago, I found this was required as a pedestrian, because drivers would try to intimidate you from entering a crosswalk by accelerating at you. So... you had to explicitly look away and still be aware of their presence.

(Not just Boston, I've seen this in some other cities since.)

This is how it works everywhere I’ve been.

One of the reasons to force slower speeds in city streets, more time for reacting to adverse events, less damage in case you hit a pedestrian at 30km/h than 60km/h.

The tendency to compare the US to Europe in the comments here baffles me: Not only are there major differences with regards to roads and road safety between the countries of Europe, but there are also major differences within Europe when it comes to driving style, aggression, risk-taking, etc. If I, as a Dane, go to e.g. southern France, I'll see a completely different style of driving than in Denmark.

In the comments here you'll see people saying that European roads are much better suited for pedestrians. If you ask me that is definitely not the case in e.g. Spain.

> In the comments here you'll see people saying that European roads are much better suited for pedestrians. If you ask me that is definitely not the case in e.g. Spain.

Having been in both Spain (a few regions) and the US, Spanish roads (at least what I saw of them) are immeasurably better for pedestrians than US ones.

> The tendency to compare the US to Europe in the comments here baffles me

Context is that the US is a huge outlier in road deaths. No European country comes close.

They don't have a Vision Zero? (Plan for 0 deaths).

Norway has ~100 persons killed in traffic per year, but is not satisfied with that:

https://www.tryggtrafikk.no/content/uploads/2024/03/Nasjonal...

Helsinki, Finland just had a year without a pedestrian death, too. https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/ne...

Wonder if it may have something to do with longer commute times, which is not discussed in the article, i.e. a trip that used to take n minutes a few years ago may now take double due to congestion, leading to more impatient drivers. At least in my city (Miami) all people talk about is how untenable the commute times have become.

From the many years of running in a very poorly traffic-controlled country, you learn to look at cars and also to look if drivers notice you.

It was actually uncomfortable watching people not look, but cars always stopping when I lived in Germany.

having moved to us after 30 yrs of European experiences I would walk a lot in small and big East Cost cities. In the first year I was barely hit at least 3 times - once on the right turn with no lights (the driver only checked the left), once on the right turn red light (lack of my information so it's allowed in US), and once just when somebody went out of underground parking while talking to their phone. After that I learned never cross a road without making the eye contact with the upcoming driver.

Nevertheless, there had been a few episodes in the following years.

I'm back in Europe after more than two decades in the US and I can't say I feel much safer as a pedestrian here.

i'm back too and i definitely do

Maybe this all depends a lot on where one lived in the US and where one lived in Europe, then, rather than some binary US vs EU thing?

ever-bigger cars, tiny sidewalks, wide roads that take a minute to cross, the legality of turning left/right on a red light, few bike paths, mostly merged with fast highway lanes?

I don't know, feels like a recipe for roadkill

At its core it comes from the infrastructure paying zero respect to non-drivers.

Great analysis - though I can't help but notice that 2009 is right when smartphones really took off (iPhone in 2007, Android in 2008, then mass adoption). The data showing accidents getting more deadly rather than more frequent actually makes sense if you combine two factors: phones causing more distracted driving incidents, plus our bigger American vehicles turning what would be injuries elsewhere into deaths. That could explain why it's US-specific - other countries probably have the same phone distraction problem, but their smaller cars mean less fatal outcomes. The distraction data might be weak simply because people don't admit they were on their phone after killing someone, but sometimes the obvious answer deserves more weight than we give it.

You do see the “not reported “ category trend up significantly on the graph which suggests you may be right. I might report that I wasn’t distracted, but I would not report if I was distracted because I might end up in jail.

American drivers are terrible and rules are barely enforced. License is cheap/free/no training so that's what we get.

With people on their phones, roads will have to become obstacle courses with speed bumps and undulating curve to force people to pay attention.

Philadelphia's solution to speeding has been speed bumps. Sounds great until you realize there are no specs for this, and some of them are so high that nearly every 10th car going over now makes an extremely loud scraping sound. Now imagine living in front of that!

I ride a motorcycle most times and I am always at very high attention when riding. I see people scrolling TikTok not only at lights, but flying through town. I see they didn't find a cause there, but it seems so prevalent and dangerous that it has to have caused an uptick in accidents as well as deaths. That data feels very fishy for it to be so different between regions (there is not a different culture in different areas for phone use).

I also wonder if there are a few confounders, covid, number of cars on road, safety of cars, and local code rules on what constitutes a registered vehicle (this is more variable than you think). In some places, if it rolls, you can register it. NJ has mandatory 2y state inspection.

At least we have Roosevelt Boulevard, the most dangerous roadway in the entire US! We're #1! (It is literally called: The Corridor of DEATH) https://whyy.org/articles/philly-roosevelt-blvd-rising-traff... I think it goes up to 12 lanes wide at some point WITH a pedestrian crossing.

One obvious direction not explored in the article: looking not just at the type on the vehicle involved in the deadly collision, but also the actual model and its geometry.

It's not just that SUVs are deadlier than sedans.

It's also that the sedans are becoming taller, wider, heavier — and deadlier.

The article says that blunt fronts are what makes a collision more likely to result in a death. Well compare a 2000 Camry to a 2025 one then on that metric.

To test this hypothesis, we need to look at all accidents where a pedestrian was hit — and see a breakdown on whether it resulted in a fatality, by vehicle and road type.

Another thing the article doesn't consider is that the speed limits have increased across the US, and where they haven't, the enforcement is not necessarily there (cough Bay Area cough).

Solutions like lane diet (or engineering cities for anything other than automobiles) never became popular.

The outcome is inevitable.

_____

TL;DR: bigger, fatter cars going faster kill more people.

This is another important point. A pillars are two or three times the size. That’s twice the amount of metal in your field of view where you would be looking for a pedestrian.

They forgot to check if it correlates with shark attacks

They checked so many things I'm surprised it didn't match something just by accident (it's still a fun exercise :)) mostly just teasing)

At first I thought maybe the number of pedestrian journeys have gone up, but that appears to be declining (leading to even more concern as to why deaths have gone up).

Because (darkly) there's one fewer pedestrians time one of them gets killed?

Sorry, I'll show myself out.

There's many more pedestrians who start to think twice about walking anywhere after someone they know is hit by a vehicle.

in other countries at an intersection with a stoplight... is it normal for the light to turn green (allowing for a right turn) while a crosswalk also simultaneously activates to cross that path?

this always feels strange to me in some US cities... why would you give a car a green light to turn into an active crosswalk? I've been honked at by drivers like I'm doing something wrong while having a cross signal

That's the standard way stoplights work in Italy. Cars have to yield to pedestrians so it's common to see cars start the right turn and then wait in a line until all pedestrians have crossed the street.

We may get a macabre opportunity to test the idea that this is related to very large vehicles, since Europe has been importing these incredibly large trucks (which, incidentally, do not meet EU safety standards, but are imported under a loophole). There are over 20,000 Dodge Rams in Europe (sometimes it feels like they're all here in the Netherlands) - see https://www.transportenvironment.org/uploads/files/2024-07-0... - and 20% more were imported in 2023 than 2022.

Worryingly, Von Der Leyen, in addition to capitulating to Trump on tariffs, apparently agreed to allow more of these things to be imported. https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/eu-cave-in-on-...

Pedestrians are quite squishy.

Does this count suicides? Does this count fault?

Anecdotally, on my few visits to the US (NY and Colorado), the driving I saw was absolutely atrocious compared to Europe. People were swerving and failing to stay in their lanes on Interstates, everyone was speeding well above the limit (everyone speeds on Motorways, but it seems it's taken to another level in the US). Then you have turn right on red meaning drivers just don't care and turn regardless. Then you have everyone driving massive fucking trucks where you can't see anything from inside.

It seemed every morning I got up and turned on the hotel TV, there was another news about some crash on the Interstate that morning

A difference I haven't seen mentioned here is: the police.

In the US there's a melange of different police forces in any area. Only one of them (Highway Patrol) cares about driving. And in my experience they don't care much about anything pre-accident (except for revenue-raising efforts like speed tickets for 10mph over the limit).

E.g. in the US you'll see countless vehicles with one headlight not working. In the UK (at least when I last lived there) you'd be pulled over and fined for even headlights that aren't correctly aimed.

Totally agree. When someone in my family got their license in the US they had to drive around a parking lot, parallel park and pull into a normal parking lot. That’s it. This was during COVID so the tester wasn’t allowed inside the car. It absolutely reflects in the quality of drivers today.

I often drive in Europe for business and cry a little on the inside when I’m back on New York streets.

It's a pretty good way to inflate GDP.

It is literally 20 times as many people killed every year as are killed in mass shootings but you can't get anyone to care at all about it. Blame the victim, did you see what they were wearing?

Even moreso than guns, the automobile industry has been waging an incredibly successful propaganda campaign for over a century now equating the ownership and use of a personal automobile with freedom.

This is true, people having a complete meltdown to the idea of walkable cities was very telling

It's because it's being peddled by the same "oh, I know how we'll use government to fix this problem that isn't top 10 on anyone's list" types who's in previous generations gave us unwalkable cities, unaffordable housing, and the modern urban-suburban hellscape.

While individual points are supported or resisted individually and by individuals, when you sum it up on a population level it's like a gut reaction against listening to someone who's lead you astray before.

Basically the people pushing changes lack the political and cultural capital to see them through because the capital was wasted for naught in decades past.

Have you tried to move around US w/o it? As propaganda goes, it is pretty spot on.

Only because the car companies made it that way through lobbying and stifling mass transit efforts.

I live in Chicagoland. Nothing is stifling it except state government itself. I don't want to get on my high horse, but I actually have a choice and it is bad enough now that I opt to drive on a highway. And that is the 'good' mass transit example.

FWIW, I originally came from an old EU country. Mass transit was the way to move around and let me assure you that the government is not better there. The issue is more cultural than anything else.

I would argue that it's cultural specifically due to the decades of lobbying and back-room deals. Yeah, the government isn't helping things because it's beyond their ability now. It would take a similar decades-long approach to shift course, and cost gobs of money.

What is cause and what is effect, and which of those do people can control?

Eh, I guess I am talking to militant anti-SUV people.

Allow me to rephrase:

- Your environment imposes restrictions upon you - Even if you can control your actions, optimal choice is to move within those restrictions - Doing things that attempt to move outside those restrictions are not optimal - Some people choose the optimal path - Some people are upset that the optimal path is chosen

Good grief, why am I bothering with nonsense so early?

> Doing things that attempt to move outside those restrictions are not optimal. Some people choose the optimal path.

Optimal for what?

> Some people are upset that the optimal path is chosen.

Person A chooses the "optimal path" (according to whatever definition of "optimal" A has) for their benefit. Their "optimal path" puts person B at risk and forces them to deal with unwanted costs and changes their environment. Do you think that person B is wrong to be upset about the choice of person A or not?

<< Optimal for what?

Optimal for the environment I am living in.

<< Do you think that person B is wrong to be upset about the choice of person A or not?

Oh boy. I am not responsible for you. By this tirade, you only demonstrate to me you are willing to make suboptimal choices so that you can feel better about yourself. That is cool, but don't drag me down with you.

By your logic, each time you breathe out CO2, it forces me to deal with unwanted costs and a change to my environment. Can you hear how ridiculous that argument is at its core?

Can you hear yourself and realize how ridiculous your reduction ad absurdum is?

Let me help you: taking your analogy to the other extreme, and it seems like you shouldn't be mad at anyone if they decide to light up a cigarette in an elevator.

I am not mad. At best, I am disappointed as I let the someone go by themselves as I don't get on the elevator. For every choice, a consequence. It is absurd that you think your response was a reduction at all.. Honestly, if you are on my side, please stop. You are explicitly not helping.

> disappointed as I let the someone go by themselves as I don't get on the elevator.

Ok, so you think that people are expected to just step down and be quiet about it. Others would certainly complain and rightly so.

Also, while you might feel okay about taking another elevator, we can not tell people "if don't like your pedestrian-hostile and accident-prone environment just go move away, or stop being a pedestrian".

<< we can not tell people

Allow me to restate what you are saying:

"we can not tell people:" <something I don't like> we can force people to: <do anything I like>

No dice.

I say "people are justified about being upset, because they end up facing the consequences and bearing the risks of the choices made by others" and you somehow imply am I saying this is an argument about "forcing" anything?

That is a seriously bizarre conversation. Peace out.

Funnily enough just like guns the reactions in this thread seem to more or less be "no way to stop this says only nation where this happens regularly".

The reason it is hard to get people to care is the obvious intent difference. People don't tend to get behind the wheel with the conscious intent of killing people, even if they make poor decisions that lead to that. Drivers killing people is much more relatable to the average person, so it's hard to get the average person to have a rational conversation about it.

The situation is the same with drunk driving. Most people can relate to just wanting to get home after having a couple drinks. There was little enforcement of existing laws. Yet the USA was able to turn things around, the culture has changed, fatalities have been slowly dropping, and even police chiefs can no longer talk their way out of going to jail when caught.

We care about control. Mass shootings are random and scary and totally out of victim’s control. People say “that car crash wouldn’t have happened to me I’m a better driver and I pay attention”. Which is true to some degree. Same reason why flying is scary because you can’t even see what’s coming.

My theory is its because what we respond to is _not_ number of deaths but instead "number of deaths in excess of what we've priced in". In the standard american mental model we assume there are going to be lots of road deaths so nobody really responds to it

Wow - I think the problem there is that it is ONLY 20 times the number killed in mass shootings.

Dysfunctional public transport.

One thing that isn’t mentioned in the article is that driver’s education in US is a fucking sad joke, and the driving tests even more so.

Many mention rules about yielding, and having to stop when turning right on red: most of the drivers only know a fraction of the rules. They never learned most of them.

I’m not sure about this, but my understanding is that some states don’t even require a license if you are older.

a couple of weeks ago, i was walking my 3 year old daughter and her friend to the beach, pushing them along in a wagon.

I was crossing the street (a busy thoroughfare) in a marked crosswalk, that did not have a yield/stop sign or streetlight. A middle aged man in an SUV floored it in front of me. As he drove by he shouted 'FUCK YOUUU', as if I was in the wrong for walking in the crosswalk.

Anyways, there's no reason i'm sharing this anecdote.

Culture.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. While car size and roads play a part in this problem, so does culture. And while the US culture is diverse and mixed, culture - in this case people's approach to driving - does play a part in this.

Probably because I was brief. And here I thought it proved I'm not an LLM ha ha.

Because cars there are fucking landships with a radiator so tall it will likely hit any vital organ between the neck and the pelvis.

Or if you’re not tall, just slam straight into your head.

Pedestrians on phones, not drivers on phones.

There are a multitude of issues:

  - poor visibility in modern cars due to rollover protection

  - touch screens and touch controls in cars

  - general proliferation of controls in cars

  - smart phones & smart phone addictions

  - higher vehicle belt lines are better for vehicle --> vehicle impacts but worse for vehicle --> pedestrian impacts

  - poor pedestrian infrastructure, sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.

But why only in the USA? Cars and phones are the same in all the countries listed in the OP and it's not SUVs vs sedans. So are we left with your last point, different infrastructure?

Different people.

I hung onto a Blackberry way longer than I should have simply because I wanted physical keys. I'm trying to hang onto cars with physical controls as well. It seems like automakers are finally get the hint that people want physical controls again.

How have touchscreens had such a free pass compared to mobile phones?!

Just kidding I know the answer is lobbying

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