To Make Streets Safe, Make Them Dangerous

It is terrifying to me as a European how easy it is to get a driver's license in the US. Everything I hear from friends beggars belief. No wonder speed limits have to be kept annoyingly low everywhere. I recently drove on some mountain roads in Californias[1] where I could safely drive 2x above the posted speed limit most of the time. Driving as slowly as the rules wanted would be no fun at all.

And, naturally, I will never understand why people are allowed to operate 2 tonne death machines before they are allowed to look at tits.

[1] the speed limit was 35mph, in the Alps we'd have the speed limit set at 55mph and the road would be about half the width with cliffs on each side right next to the road (no shoulder, just railings or even just stone pillars every few meters). For example: http://irena.blog.siol.net/files/2009/02/cesta.jpg

And less automatic transmissions?

Reminds me of a situation in Brighton, where the council is forcing people to move bike sheds from their own front gardens, while allowing cars to continue to be parked willy-nilly. As a journalist writes [1]:

I suppose it depends on how you view a street scene. A small shed is, for me, considerably less intrusive than a parked car. And yet the residential streets of Withdean are full of cars. But that’s seen as normal. Bike stores are not.

More anomalous still is the fact that if you have a sufficiently big front garden and don’t live in a conservation area you can, in most circumstances, turn that garden into a driveway to leave your car, without the need for without planning permission. There are conditions on using water-permeable materials to avoid cumulative flood risks, but it’s fairly straightforward.

I don’t know about you, but when if comes to local impact I’d say a driveway containing a Humvee (or even something smaller) might be slightly more significant than a discreet bike shed.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/aug/01...

Commonsense dictates that you would have more people on foot rather than in their cars ( especially single-occupant driving cases ) if cities actually paid attention to the plight of persons on foot, on sidewalks.

It has to be said that I am uniquely referring to cities like SF known for their less than splendid sidewalk conditions. I am discounting the fact that SF is quite hilly and thus not very conducive for walking, unlike other flatter cities.

SF is notorious for its grubby, thrash-discharged, excrement-laden and generally deplorable sidewalks.

Just this week :

http://sfist.com/attachments/SFist_Jay/poop-map.jpg [1]

Anyone familiar with SF knows that whether you are on the sidewalks abutting the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society and right next to an upscale mall or in seedier parts of Inner/Outer Mission, you can never take a pleasant walk for granted.

Prominent sidewalks are openly defecated on.

Casual violence of vagrants and the professionally-homeless is quite common.

Entire sections of neighborhoods are poorly-lit, with dodgy surfaces to boot.

All this not even accounting for the unenthusiastically enforced sit-lie ordinances [2], a thriving homeless industrial complex supported by the city's SROs and rising crime in parts of the city [3]

This irks even otherwise civic minded, forward-thinking residents who have all but given up on the city's frowziness and its celebration of the unhygienic and unsanitary.

I think there is a strong Well that is SF for you. If you don't like it, go live in Marin ethos prevalent here (and in other cities like SF). And that is not one bit helpful.

[1] http://sfist.com/2014/09/03/photo_du_jour_poop_map.php

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sit-lie-law-primarily-enf...

[3] http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Duboce-Triangle-neighb...

edit:rewording

While I think your statement may be hyperbole, I do agree that bicycles would help. In particular, I'm very hopeful to see more electric bicycles on the streets soon.

The number one cause is the "left hook". This is when someone is turning left and doesn't notice pedestrians in the crosswalk moving across the street the driver is turning onto. Unless there is a dedicated left-arrow green, these pedestrians almost always have the right of way, but the driver doesn't notice them because they are too focused on the oncoming traffic or other hazards, and completely forget to check. I've attempted a crude ASCII diagram. C is a car with a green light, attempting to turn left, P is a pedestrian walking up

          | | |
          | | |
       ____   ____
       --P-   ----
       ‾‾‾‾   ‾‾‾‾
          | |C|
          | | |
          | | |

I think I'm a careful driver, and I (see other comment) recently drove into Manhattan from out of state. I almost killed several people. I don't live there, but my impression is that the expectations are so fine-tuned, that one small miscalculation and it's OH MY GOD MY LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER.

Edit: Most of the close calls were straight on, no turn. Some son-of-a-bee-biscuit suddenly decides he needs to stop his car right in front of you for some important business, you end up in the middle of an intersection. In your eagerness to get you and your family out of harm's way, you inch around the car in front, and the pedestrian pops out of nowhere. They thought you weren't moving when suddenly you realize you need to get the heck out of the middle of Madison Ave and accelerate like a mofo so you don't get rear-ended by that bus.

One thing of interest when we compare driving in NYC to elsewhere: in NYC you are not allowed to turn right on a red light. Same goes for Montreal. This definitely changes the car-pedestrian dynamic, but I have no idea how it might factor into safety issues etc.

I suspect it's only a small part of the big picture why driving in NYC is categorically different than suburbs.

I haven't seen anyone get hit, but all forms of traffic in NYC (especially midtown Manhattan) are very aggressive.

Pedestrians do regularly walk out in front of traffic against the light. Cars, especially taxis, will speed up to run yellow/red lights, even when there are crowds of pedestrians at the corner spilling onto the streets. Bikes often run lights and ride against traffic. Cars and pedestrians block bike lanes constantly.

It's remarkable so few accidents happen, really. I think part of it is, although NYC drivers can be annoying and aggressive, they are also skilled and attentive.

It's probably also due to near-gridlock at times which "forces" cars/trucks to force turns when they really shouldn't be--but if they really played by the rules they'd be stuck there. The last time I was in NYC I saw at least a couple of occasions of pedestrians almost being hit (with lots of shouting involved afterwards) for this reason.

It's also true that many NYC pedestrians tend to cut across streets whenever they perceive an opening.

1. tourists everywhere 2. tourists staring up at buildings (big no no) 3. NYPD has better things to do than go after speeders. everybody is flying 4. culture of impatience...people are in too much of a hurry to cross safely

I was walking up one of the avenues in Manhattan once, and came to the next intersection. The cross-street had the green light, and no traffic just them. But a van was parked on the corner, obstructing the view. I peered around, saw a car approaching at 30 mph, and shouted "Stop!" just in time to keep some people next to me from stepping out in front of it.

I cross against lights quite regularly, if I can see that it is safe. Some people drop the condition.

In addition to the many other reasons people have given, there actually is a fairly regular stream of news stories from NYC about drivers driving onto the sidewalk and/or into buildings and hurting/killing people walking on the sidewalk or even inside!

I don't own a car, so I don't know this, but does the privilege of right-of-way come in the glove compartment of new cars or something? In all honesty, what are we creating things for? People, or cars? Which one should we be optimizing out shared space for?

It's food for thought.

That's a good argument against cars, not against pedestrians.

"If you slow down the cars to compensate, doesn't that somewhat defeat the purpose of having cars in the first place?"

Hmm, well, requiring cars to give way means that they're less likely to kill someone. Which is kind of the point, outweighs slowing cars down a smidgen. Although pedestrians have right of way it's only an insane pedestrian who would rely on that to stay safe: whether they have right of way or not, pedestrians need to be fully aware of what cars are doing.

If somethings got to go, the obvious choice is cars. Indeed, that's what cities like London have aimed to do with initiatives like congestion pricing, which attach a prohibitively heavy cost to driving during the most congested times of day.

Rather, they attach an accurate price, forcing drivers to pay some of the costs that they generally impose on the public. I mean, the amount of space required per driver is wildly disproportionate with the demand on a public resource that every other form of transportation requires. Then there are the environmental costs, which include both noise and pollution. Again, these are way out of proportion in terms of the number of drivers vs. non drivers. They also do damage to commerce, in that pedestrian friendly zones are far more amenable to shopping, dining, etc. than streets that give preference to the needs of drivers. And of course, cars are basically lethal, whereas pedestrians, bikes, and even busses (especially when they have their own lanes) generally aren't.

Basically, cars are a bad deal for cities, and the 21st Century is going to see a sharp and concerted effort to push them out. Letting them in was a mistake. It's time to undo that error.

The very old common law precedent is that if you're benefiting from a practice that accidentally causes someone else harm, you're liable for any damages regardless of whether or not there's any negligence. For example, blasting at mines on occasion resulted in people many miles away getting hit with high speed pebbles that hurt them. The miners are liable for damages even if they took careful measures to reduce risk. There is zero reason to alter this concept for cars, trucks, or trains. If you want to speed around in two tons of steel because that's easier for you, then you should be fully liable for any consequences that flow from speeding around in two tons of steel. Trying to walk across the street is not an activity that creates the risk in the first place.

I was in Shanghai last summer and started crossing the cross-walk with cars approaching from both directions. Instead of slowing, the cars just started honking and racing towards me. Had to play some hardcore frogger to cross the street. Just goes to show that driver opinions really are different in China. Oh, and don't use the crosswalks.

When road utilization is high enough, if cars get right of way, it is simply not possible to cross the street because cars will just continue flowing through the intersection the whole time.

There are lots of old videos of people trying to cross busy roads in the early-to-mid 1900s and having difficulty doing so safely.

Is this because the accidents are avoided or turn non-fatal?

And then we have the other side of the argument which says that speed limits have a small impact on how people drive http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

This business about taking out the road signs and so on is called "naked streets", and is part of a broader "shared space" theory. It is far from settled that it is a helpful tool in any situations, let alone all situations.

We have to be very careful in interpreting the outcomes of experimental applications of naked streets (or other large interventions). Firstly, because of a Hawthorne effect - when a road is changed, drivers become more cautious because it's different, so safety improves, whether or not the change itself improves safety. Secondly, because it's a change that is very context-specific; naked streets seem to work well if the motor traffic level is intrinsically (or is engineered to be) low, but that doesn't mean they're a good way to handle a flow at a higher level.

The English example you may be thinking of was Exhibition Road, in Kensington, London. This rather long blog post takes a good look at it:

http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/lessons-...

It was only a very deliberate and expensive efforts that created car supremacy in America. Drivers who killed walkers were at first tried as murderers, as makes perfect sense. Of course people should be free to walk over public thoroughfares. Only well funded measures created the legal idea that a driver is not in all circumstances responsible for injuries and deaths.