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Comment by Arainach | Hacker News Reader

So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious:

> But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic

No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional.

Meanwhile the average SUV driver is a homicidal maniac. I'll walk or bike a bus-only corridor any day.

US cities already are far too car-centric. Giving up what tiny progress we've made isn't the answer.

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As a cyclist, I couldn't agree more. Cars are crazy murder machines, pedestrians will jump out at you just for fun, and the worst of the bunch is other cyclists!

But a bus- with a bus you know where you stand. They're slow, they're predictable, you can see the coming a mile away- I've never felt unsafe around SF Muni.

I biked 3x weekly to work for a decade from NoPa. Muni busses repeatedly “tried” to kill me - so much so that going up McAllister, I’d hug the double yellows to keep buses from precariously passing me and then cutting me off every other block. The ass end of accordions in particular would rest half way into the other lane, leaving absolutely no where for me to go, and no ability to start from a stop in the middle of the road going up hill in the wrong gear (with other cars and buses soon to be wizzing by). I’d classify the overall behavior as between casual indifference to my safety (let alone me as a person) and outright contempt for my existence.

Mmm accordion buses definitely sound like extra danger

I'll give you that buses tend to be more predictable - they run fixed routes, you can guess where the stops are - but my biggest problem is whether they can see me or not. They are large so if they don't see me and start moving while I'm trying to pass it could end badly. Usually I try to only pass if they just stopped and I clearly have plenty of room and time.

Cars tend to scare me more as there are way too many impatient drivers who are all to happy to speed around me without much clearance and then cut me off. And they could easily misinterpret me weaving a little to avoid a bump as me scooting over it pulling over for them or starting a turn. And don't get me started on how many cars have tried to right turn on red arrows across bike lanes which have a green signal.

Other bicyclists and pedestrians often suck too, but worst case if I run into them is pain, not death.

I'm sure that bus drivers are safer, but it absolutely does not feel safe to bike on Market if you end up between two buses. Recently a woman died because her scooter (?) tire got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she got run over by a truck. It does not feel safe to walk or bike next to vehicles that heavy, and the street should be redesigned for better separation.

Is this responsible for the lack of pedestrians? Probably not - that's because of the lack of businesses and the homelessness problem, but the street being physically the same as when it carried cars is a big deal.

too bad they scrapped the original Better Market plans for protected bike lanes

I have a near total opposite view as a cyclist in France. Buses are extremely dangerous in cities, and are way louder than cars.

Per government data, San Francisco Muni bus pedestrian fatalities are roughly 2 per 100 million miles, while general motor vehicle pedestrian fatalities are a fraction of that, about 0.4 per 100 million miles.

Even if you limit strictly to surface streets, Muni buses remain 2-3x more likely to be involved in a pedestrian fatality per mile driven than general vehicles

How about by hour?

Cars are not causing a lot of pedestrian fatalities driving on the freeway between Nowhere and Flyover, but they rack up the miles there.

I provided the surface streets only metric, which eliminates freeways

What matters is not the number of miles.

What matters is the number of people killed.

A steady miles per fatality means more people die as more miles are driven.

And more miles driven is the trend.

They also tend to be carrying 5-25x more people than cars, so there are far fewer of them. They also tend to be driving in the city on the busiest streets, whereas arbitrary cars are more often driving on vacant streets and highways.

so try the comparison using (miles x flow) instead of miles if you're measuring safety, and if you're measuring worthwhile risk, multiply that by passenger-miles. If you're talking about pedestrian safety, you'll probably have to square the (miles x flow) because pedestrians are also less safe the busier a street is.

I was directly responding to a comment arguing that bus drivers were more adept at avoiding pedestrian killings than SUV drivers. Unfortunately extra training cannot change the physics of a 40,000 pound hunk of metal.

If you look at passenger-miles (pax in the bus) or some other metric the rate might be lower for buses but that’s not relevant to what I responding.

That makes sense, given that the median car mile probably isn’t in a dense urban core. The more accurate comparison would require us to know pedestrian fatalities per mile in urban areas.

This is for SF, so 100% urban for both bus and vehicle data

That’s fascinating; like others, I’d love to see the source data.

Buses are also more massive so more likely to cause serious injury in an accident. They can't stop as fast as a car/bike /etc. But that's also why they seem to move more slowly, takes them longer to accelerate, which one would think might give others an advantage to avoiding them.

Can you cite a source for that one? Of the 25 fatalities in sf in 2025 all but two were someone driving a car, truck, or van.

Of the two others, one was a scooter operator striking and elderly person, and then the other was an elderly person on a mobility device swerving out of the way of pedestrians crossing against the light. Zero bus accidents involving pedestrian fatalities.

I believe that their was one bus fatality this year, but of 12 total, I haven't looked up the causes of those accidents yet but I'd guess that the majority of them are going to be caused by drivers as well.

> bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional

Also speaking as a cyclist: do you even expect them to be responsive to your presence? I've learned to think of them like they're trains. Their path and timing isn't influenced by my presence in the slightest.

If a car driver changes lanes right at me, I think, that careless asshole! But if a bus comes over into a lane I'm riding in, or if it pulls away from a stop and forces me to hit my brakes or enter another lane, I don't even register it as a mistake anymore. It's just the way buses work and something I have to be ready to react to. Thankfully their lateral movements are slow and smooth.

Some muni busses definitely dngaf, I've gotten cut off by them, the bus driver just deciding it was going to switch lanes into me before making its stop. I had to slam the brakes and ended up pressing my hands behind the bus because I couldn't slow down in time.

I now record my rides.

I don’t disagree.

As a pedestrian, cyclists are a huge danger because cycling culture is built on aggression, ignoring traffic laws like stop signs and cross walks, and treating humans as street furniture.

Similarly, I’ve seen more than one accident caused by a pedestrian stepping into traffic without looking, taking out a cyclist in the process (from between vehicles, eyes on a phone). Nothing too serious, but only by luck. No one is overtly concerned by traffic laws in SF regardless of the mode of transit.

Replacing “cyclist” with “motorist” and then “pedestrian” with “cyclist” would make your sentiment outrageous.

Like I said, cycling culture is aggressive.

On the (literal) one side, two ton death machines trying to run you down and honking if you're not as far to the right as physically possible, safety be damned.

On the (literal) other side, people staring at their phones wandering out without paying attention calling you aggressive for existing.

What a world.

Share the road.

And use your brakes.

> cycling culture is built on aggression,

If it is, that's only because you scared away all the others, leaving behind only the ones that aren't scared of anything.

Look at cycling culture in Copenhagen or Amsterdam sometime. That's what cycling looks like when left undisturbed. Children, elderly, and few even wear helmets.

The Low Countries have their cycling culture because they are flat, small and temperate.

The US is always vast with extreme temperatures. It’s often mountainous or a desert or a desert with mountains.

No citation for your nonsense either so I actually went and looked. It turns out busses get into accidents more often per mile travelled [1]: "the number of bus accidents per million passenger miles (3.04) is comparable to the number of car accidents per million driven miles (3.21)" considering that a bus has more than 1 passenger on average it means their accident rate per mile travelled is way higher than a car.

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

Not called out in that study: fault i.e. is this buses causing accidents or drivers hitting buses

If you are implying that despite their superior driving skills and care for safety the bus drivers suffer from crazy drivers just ramming them due to being a big target then I'd advise you to compare accident rate on delivery trucks - they are roughly the same size as busses and drive the same streets in the same manner (with a lot of stops). I don't see any published study but it's easy to pull crash reports from the carriers, they are surprisingly similar at ~0.4 per 1M miles, much lower than cars.

> Giving up what tiny progress

I dunno man. Look at the chart, look at the graph, look at the progress, but I live on Market, and it sucks now. Cop cars parked at night with lights flashing since there’s such little traffic. Plus a lady had her head popped open a few weeks back by a pro driver.

I’d be more comfortable making it a Waymo superartery. I trust those things more than the furniture mart box trucks because one slip and you’re gone.

There’s evidence for the original comment likely being incorrect.

NYC turned a major street into a “busway”. So cars can enter, but they have to make the first right, so they don’t use it as a thruway.

Pedestrian traffic in that area has exploded.

Injuries and deaths have plummeted. As a pedestrian crossing the street is incredibly safer if there’s a massive bus driving at a steady speed (bus drivers won’t speed to catch a light, or jump a red), is significantly safer.

Seattle and SF did the same. The streets are now horror shows.

NYC is just an exception, because it has so much pre-concentrated urbanistic misery that adding a bit more is not noticeable.

> Seattle and SF did the same. The streets are now horror shows.

Citation very much needed. No Seattle street is a "horror show". My best guess is that you're referring to 3rd Ave. It isn't significantly less vibrant than other streets within a block or two (which is to say during the day there are things, and by 9pm it's empty until you get to Belltown, at which point there are people and bars open). Sure, there are more homeless people than some other locations, but across the city they congregate near major bus lines and stops so it's no shock that they're near the major bus corridors.

Yep. Look at 3rd Ave around Pine/Pike.

> Sure, there are more homeless people than some other locations, but across the city they congregate near major bus lines and stops so it's no shock that they're near the major bus corridors.

Thank you for demonstrating my point: "vibrant" streets that switched from productive car lanes to bus/bike lanes are nothing but crime magnets.

Want another example from Seattle? Look at the University Village, that is safely away from major transport hubs and bike routes, and the rich vibrant transit- and bike-lane-enabled downtown near Westlake.

Now tell me which one is thriving.

The key difference: there are no protected bike lanes or transit-only lanes taking productive traffic away from the University Village, but there is plenty of available parking and easy access routes.

> Thank you for demonstrating my point: "vibrant" streets that switched from productive car lanes to bus/bike lanes are nothing but crime magnets

You're intentionally misrepresenting my points. Bus stops on streets with cars are also areas where the homeless congregate.

3rd Ave became bus only in 2018. The 3rd and Pike "crackdonalds" was a meme before I came to Seattle in 2008. Your anecdotes don't line up.

> You're intentionally misrepresenting my points. Bus stops on streets with cars are also areas where the homeless congregate.

My point is that bus- and bike-only streets are especially bad. Bike lanes in particular are very efficient in destroying businesses (if you want to Kagi and quote studies about Portland bike lanes - I know them very well).

> 3rd Ave became bus only in 2018. The 3rd and Pike "crackdonalds" was a meme before I came to Seattle in 2008. Your anecdotes don't line up.

They do. The area around McStabby's has always been less-than-perfect, but it went downhill in 2019. Yes, even before COVID. I remember it well, my partner was living literally 2 blocks away from it at that time.

I agree overall. That said, there isn't really a difference between 14th Street and the other nearby numbered streets in Manhattan. Market Street connects 2 different grids and doesn't have a clean alternative.

>their income is tied to maintaining a license

So are car owners. Most jobs don't allow for remote work.

If a car owner loses their license, they keep driving without a license. It's also much harder to lose their license.

CDLs are much easier to lose and your employer knows if you have one or not, so it's directly tied to your income.

Then they get picked up by an ALPR scan and have their car impounded?

Seen it happen many times.

An ALPR doesn't know who's driving.

You don't need a valid drivers' license to renew a car registration in most areas.

In most US cities the cops won't even pull you over if you don't have a license plate, much less track you down and impound a vehicle.

If the registration is to someone without a license, they’ll definitely pull you over. Seen it happen in a couple cities now.

But sure, some cities won’t even do felony warrant service.

No they can't.

>A person may not drive a motor vehicle upon a highway, unless the person then holds a valid driver’s license issued under this code

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

Yeah I came here to post that, such a nonsensical statement

Noah Smith is like Gell-Mann amnesia personified. He's good at writing columns such that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, until he opines on something you happen to be familiar with, and you realize he's completely full of shit and that his main talent is the ability to rapidly pump out a Wikipedia-skim-tier opinion on whatever happened to draw his attention that day. Would strongly recommend putting him on your mental ignore list.

When you operate in the attention economy, you have to keep pumping out slop to keep visibility in the algorithm.

The Noah Smith/Nate Silver axis of opinion-politics writers are — literally — Stephen J Smith and Skip Bayless for people who think politics is sports. They're in the entertainment business.

What are you talking about. He's not talking about the skill of the driver vs a bus driver, he's talking about the fact that a car and a bus are both massive chunks of metal that can both kill a human easily.

So the argument is simply that even if most cars were removed, buses still run and still can contribute to the feeling of pedestrian unsafe-ness.

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