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Comment by tbirdz | Hacker News Reader

This looks a little dangerous to me, because it makes the pedestrian take their mind off the road. Just last week, a car accidentally drove up on the side walk part of the crosswalk and would have hit me had I not been paying attention and jumped out of the way. From what I understand this is not an uncommon event either. It's not like the lip of the curve is really any protection against the cars, a car can easily drive over it.

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It is an uncommon event. If it were common, we would be protecting every street corner with large bollards or a concrete wall.

How many cars pass through an intersection on any given day. How many end up on the curb?

In parts of the world, bollards are much more common. But in New York City, they are much more rare: http://www.streetsblog.org/2005/10/14/making-nycs-streets-sa...

There have been a significant number of cases where cars end up sidewalks near where I live. It's not just drunk drivers; it's often distracted drivers who are texting or using an app.

Bollards are a great and fairly cheap solution, but many bureaucrats are pro-car and oppose them for the danger they might pose to drivers.

<< [O]ne of the downsides to bollards is that while protecting human beings, they can do damage to automobiles. John Kaehny, the former executive director of Transportation Alternatives was a big fan of bollards and often pushed the city to install them at dangerous locations. DOT traffic engineers consistently opposed his efforts telling him that bollards were no good because they did damage to cars or that bollards struck at high speed could "become dislodged and become dangerous projectiles that might kill or injure pedestrians." These are the kinds of stories that makes one think New York City traffic engineers empathize more with automobiles than people. >>

Wow. What a disgusting quote. As if a "high speed" car on the sidewalk isn't already a dangerous projectile :P

It may be unlikely but it does happen. I know someone who drove off the road (60mph single carriageway) at high speed and into a bollard. The bollard went through the air, smashed through a house window and caused the inhabitant to have a heart attack.

If someone hits a pedestrian at even 40 mph, it's 85% likely to result in a fatality: http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/04/27/waiting-for-raymond-de...

If that same accident happens at 20 mph, there's only a 5% chance of a fatality. That's a big reason why London lowered the speed limit in the heart of the city to 20 mph: http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/09/13/the-heart-of-london-ad...

New York is pushing for a similar change... hopefully if and when it happens, more bollards can be put in place without endangering others. http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/05/16/neighborhoods-across-n...

I don't know, I've witnessed it twice that I can recall and I don't even spend a lot of time walking around among traffic. I think the game might actually lower the risk profile since at least one pedestrian and possible observers would be inclined to stand behind the metal pole, rather than on the curb of the street. I would hope that the game were a little more engaging though, considering it would get old after the first time playing.

It's common enough that many crossings in the UK are protected with metal barriers. It's not at all uncommon to see those barriers bent and twisted where a car has hit them.

Sure thousands of cars can pass through a crossing every day with out on mounting the pavement. But road safety is all about improving the odds.

Definitely not dangerous (maybe in the USA), you're just waiting for your light to switch. Better than standing and tapping on your phone, it seems fun, it involves another person across the street that you get to meet, high fives and a lot of smiles. This is how the life should be. Wait.. in America a strange wouldn't give you a high five, that would be just weird, why would someone do that? What if they have cooties?

Hey! I live in America and I like it!

The risk of someone dying due to distraction and a failure to avoid an out of control car is dramatically less than the risk of someone dying due to getting bored and jaywalking into traffic.

Not sure how many countries have jaywalking type laws, but in every country I have lived in or or been to, bar the US and (after reading the below link) Singapore, it's just called 'crossing the road http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking

The legal situation isn't particularly relevant so much as whether or not people will decide to cross the street before the light tells them to, and whether that has a higher probability of accident.

It's not really any different to someone checking Twitter or FB ;)

You also shouldn't be checking Twitter or FB at a friggin crosswalk! You should be paying attention to traffic.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/17/cell-ph...

Usually I stand at a crosswalk and thus have little risk of walking off a bridge or into traffic. Also I see little point in always anticipating someone who drives into pedestrians. But if they do, I guess standing to the right of the traffic light gives me a slightly better chance of survival.

And while it routinely happens that motorists will ignore pedestrians or cyclists at corners or that they drive over red lights, I have yet to see someone accidentally driving on the sidewalk at a traffic light, endangering pedestrians there.

You should be glad it didn't happen to you, but unfortunately it happens to other people all the time.

http://news.ca.msn.com/local/montreal/pedestrian-killed-on-s...

http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/11/11/three-killed-by-curb-j...

http://www.myfoxny.com/story/19681198/car-drives-onto-sidewa...

http://gothamist.com/2013/11/11/two_pedestrians_killed_after...

http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20131226/san-bernardino-ma...

And these are just the first few links that show up on googling for "pedestrian killed on sidewalk" there are many, many, many more articles just like these.

I'm a bit hesitant to extrapolate a danger from anecdata. I might try finding actual data tonight. From experience so far I'd guess I'm much more likely to die when exercising my right of way as a cyclist.

News is news because it is a rare or uncommon event. I'd be very wary of extrapolating "there are news articles about this event" to "it happens all the time".

I would much prefer a link that provided me actual data in order to believe that this is an event that occurs all the time (such as the number deaths of pedestrians on sidewalks per capita).

For example, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration put out a 2008 report (I chose 2008 as it was the top result on Google) listing the average pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 people by state [1]. It seems to range from ~1 to ~3.

According to the CDC, there are 799.5 deaths per 100,000 population in the United States (2010 data) [2]. This means my chance of dying as a pedestrian, compared to other potential means of me dying are around 0.3%.

A few studies have found that between 80% and 90% of pedestrian fatalities are a result of the pedestrian being at fault (this comes from the Center for Problem Oriented Policing [3], which cites two sources for this information [4] [5]). This means, again as a percentage chance of all other forms of death, dying while standing on the sidewalk is somewhere in the ballpark of 0.06%.

[1] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810968.PDF (page 18, figure 2-4).

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

[3] http://www.popcenter.org/problems/pedestrian_injuries/

[4] Lee and Abdel-Aty (2005)

[5] Teanby, Gorman, and Boot (1993)

If you're speaking of the traffic light pole providing protection, that might not be the case. I'm sure it's not the same everywhere, but for my area the poles are made to snap off at the base in case of a car hitting it. I would imagine the thought is that it saves the occupants of the car from a more severe impact, especially with the big poles.

I wasn't too serious about that, but from what I've seen they don't seem to snap easily; at least here. I'm also not sure whether it's better to have a traffic light pole falling on an intersection instead of just having a car stop at the pole (the former sounds like there could be more injuries involved).

Most are designed to snap off when hit. There is actually a real LOT that goes into roadway sign engineering and we have learned that it is the safest option. It's called a breakaway feature.

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/policy_guide/road_ha...

>Roadside signs, utility poles, lighting structures, traffic signals, railroad warning devices, motorist-aid callboxes, mailboxes, and other rigid objects can become deadly roadside hazards if placed where run-off-the-road vehicles can strike them. While it is preferable to maintain obstacle-free roadside clear zones, this is not always a practical option. When rigid objects cannot be removed or relocated, potential crash impacts can be mitigated by specifying breakaway features, or by shielding the object with a longitudinal barrier or crash cushion.

And here's a video of a light pole breakaway feature being tested. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbg5NkbuN6I

I would call that "feature" a "bug" on a street corner where pedestrians are standing.

For this reason I tend to position myself behind the nearby traffic pole relative to traffic on my side of the road while waiting for the 'cross' light.

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