8 ms·

Lately my (foot) commute has come to involve a whole lot of people blasting down residential streets at 40mph while staring at their phones and only barely slow

Lately my (foot) commute has come to involve a whole lot of people blasting down residential streets at 40mph while staring at their phones and only barely slowing down in acknowledgement of stop signs. My current belief is that the single most effective pedestrian safety feature that car manufacturers could possibly implement is some mechanism for preventing Waze from working.

Spooky23 7y ago
Totally agree. Waze is increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use it. My block ended up being selected as a detour around an intersection that gets gummed up by a poorly programmed traffic light. After a few near misses, a couple of the neighbors got together to basically double park with blinkers on in such a way that the traffic slows down.
- mjevans 7y ago
  The correct reaction is to fix the root cause of the problem. Have the various GPS navigation services generate flow-through rate reports for every intersection at different times of the day and use those as a sample to actually program light cycles for traffic volume. Also while we're at it, make it so that the lights actually sync up and so that out of flow merges (lefts/rights/etc) only need to speed up a little to hit the next light wave.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    Have the various GPS navigation services generate flow-through rate reports for every intersection at different times of the day and use those as a sample to actually program light cycles for traffic volume. Don't the traffic lights already know the flow rate through their intersections?
    - Piskvorrr 7y ago
      No. For the most part, they're programmed in a fixed cycle from static estimates (usually made once and unchanged since who-knows-when); the more advanced types allow for skipping through phases if there's no (car) traffic detected for them. Actual traffic measuring and dynamic control is rare.
      - Johnny555 7y ago
        Then those lights aren't going to take a feed from Waze to adjust themselves anyway. My point is that if analyzing traffic flows would let cities adjust light cycles to manage traffic, they could already do it -- they don't need a data feed from Waze.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Waze's new revenue stream will be shaking down neighborhoods for detour exemptions. "Nice street you got here... it'd be a shame if some assholes in BMWs started speeding through."
  - petre 7y ago
    Curiously enough, speeding assholes are almost always driving BMWs. It's almost as if those cars are a gateway drug to reckless driving.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Yeah, if you want to know about BMWs, ask a cyclist. We all have an opinion.
    - trhway 7y ago
      Well if not for them it could have been us, good guys driving Priuses at mere 90, yet thanks to the ones like that Corvette guy who just passed at 120+ and a minute later got tagged we are able to continue uninterrupted as result of his sacrifice.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    Put your car out in front of the street, put the blinker on and watch the traffic go around... takes about 20 minutes for a single lane two way to be removed out of waze completely.
- lm28469 7y ago
  > Waze is increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use it. Roads are increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use them.
unsignedchar 7y ago
Maybe we should all start carrying oversized fluorescent umbrellas when walking
- llukas 7y ago
  How does this help if driver is looking at their phone?
  - nullc 7y ago
    Since the umbrella is so visible, they may see it from further away during one of their brief glances at the road.
    - llukas 7y ago
      How do you know if you're seen when carrying umbrella? Eye contact is not enough (info you can find in pretty much any driving handbook).
      - nullc 7y ago
        You don't, but it's almost certain that you'd be safer with it than without.
  - btrettel 7y ago
    Cyclist here. In my experience a horn works best if the driver is distracted. This is one major reason I have an air horn on my bike.
  - unsignedchar 7y ago
    The umbrella is for the AI. For drivers there’s always eye contact
    - usrusr 7y ago
      Eye contact is only meaningful between drivers. When you are asymmetrically squishy (as a pedestrian or cyclist), some drivers will take eye contact as "good, they have seen me, they will know to stay out of my way".
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I see that a lot during my morning dog walks. I have made it a habit to step into the car’s path to freak out people and make it really clear that I am there. You just have to get ready to jump quickly...
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
>a whole lot of people blasting down residential streets at 40mph while staring at their phones and only barely slowing down in acknowledgement of stop signs. Same where I live in Europe. When I commute by car, over 50% of drivers I look at are on their phones and another 25% are doing another semi-distracting activity(eating, smoking, fiddling with stuff). Maybe on the highway it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm talking about city streets that are full of cyclists and people running to catch their bus. It's one of the reason I'm super afraid of biking on some streets, thinking that one day someone's gonna run me down since he was texting his wife and didn't see me(had some near misses already). Anecdotally, a friend of mine was hit on a zebra crossing by a texting driver while he was with me. Broke his collar bone and definitely left both of us with some mental scars that will not heal too soon. It got me to feel like smartphones are a huge issue for traffic safety as some drivers simply can't leave it alone during their commute.
- salawat 7y ago
  >Anecdotally, a friend of mine was hit on a zebra crossing by a texting driver while he was with me. It definitely left both of us with some mental scars that will not heal too soon. Wait, was your friend crossing the street riding on a zebra with you, or walking across a street at a marked zebra crossing? Or was your friend a zebra, which you were crossing the street with, so you figured the zebra crossing was the most appropriate place to do it? I need details. This is very important. I need to make sure to file this in the proper "things I never thought I'd hear, but happened anyway" drawer. I hope everything turned out okay for all involved though, regardless!
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Zebra crossing(or just zebra where I'm from) is a popular European/international term. In the US it's called pedestrian crossing or crosswalk. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing
    - salawat 7y ago
      Well I'll be. Today I learned. Little bit of international enlightenment never hurts. And jeez people, lighten up. Not everybody is guaranteed to be aware of your vernacular. To me it quite literally had a touch of incedulity to it. You try to accept that another human being could miss someone with a bloody zebra walking by with them anywhere because they were staring at a smartphone! I wasn't trying to be snide or clever. I just honestly thought he was describing the most unlikely scenario I could ever imagine running into happening to him because someone was that damned intent on checking their feed!
adrianN 7y ago
I think the single most effective measure car manufacturers could take is having the car know the speed limit and preventing speeding.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  And after that, the second thing I'd love is for all cars to force safe driving distance. I'm sick of people driving 1 meter from my bumper when we're all going 100km/h.

Spooky23 7y ago

Totally agree. Waze is increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use it. My block ended up being selected as a detour around an intersection that gets gummed up by a poorly programmed traffic light. After a few near misses, a couple of the neighbors got together to basically double park with blinkers on in such a way that the traffic slows down.

mjevans 7y ago
The correct reaction is to fix the root cause of the problem. Have the various GPS navigation services generate flow-through rate reports for every intersection at different times of the day and use those as a sample to actually program light cycles for traffic volume. Also while we're at it, make it so that the lights actually sync up and so that out of flow merges (lefts/rights/etc) only need to speed up a little to hit the next light wave.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  Have the various GPS navigation services generate flow-through rate reports for every intersection at different times of the day and use those as a sample to actually program light cycles for traffic volume. Don't the traffic lights already know the flow rate through their intersections?
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    No. For the most part, they're programmed in a fixed cycle from static estimates (usually made once and unchanged since who-knows-when); the more advanced types allow for skipping through phases if there's no (car) traffic detected for them. Actual traffic measuring and dynamic control is rare.
    - Johnny555 7y ago
      Then those lights aren't going to take a feed from Waze to adjust themselves anyway. My point is that if analyzing traffic flows would let cities adjust light cycles to manage traffic, they could already do it -- they don't need a data feed from Waze.
jessaustin 7y ago
Waze's new revenue stream will be shaking down neighborhoods for detour exemptions. "Nice street you got here... it'd be a shame if some assholes in BMWs started speeding through."
- petre 7y ago
  Curiously enough, speeding assholes are almost always driving BMWs. It's almost as if those cars are a gateway drug to reckless driving.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Yeah, if you want to know about BMWs, ask a cyclist. We all have an opinion.
  - trhway 7y ago
    Well if not for them it could have been us, good guys driving Priuses at mere 90, yet thanks to the ones like that Corvette guy who just passed at 120+ and a minute later got tagged we are able to continue uninterrupted as result of his sacrifice.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Put your car out in front of the street, put the blinker on and watch the traffic go around... takes about 20 minutes for a single lane two way to be removed out of waze completely.
lm28469 7y ago
> Waze is increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use it. Roads are increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use them.

unsignedchar 7y ago

Maybe we should all start carrying oversized fluorescent umbrellas when walking

llukas 7y ago
How does this help if driver is looking at their phone?
- nullc 7y ago
  Since the umbrella is so visible, they may see it from further away during one of their brief glances at the road.
  - llukas 7y ago
    How do you know if you're seen when carrying umbrella? Eye contact is not enough (info you can find in pretty much any driving handbook).
    - nullc 7y ago
      You don't, but it's almost certain that you'd be safer with it than without.
- btrettel 7y ago
  Cyclist here. In my experience a horn works best if the driver is distracted. This is one major reason I have an air horn on my bike.
- unsignedchar 7y ago
  The umbrella is for the AI. For drivers there’s always eye contact
  - usrusr 7y ago
    Eye contact is only meaningful between drivers. When you are asymmetrically squishy (as a pedestrian or cyclist), some drivers will take eye contact as "good, they have seen me, they will know to stay out of my way".

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I see that a lot during my morning dog walks. I have made it a habit to step into the car’s path to freak out people and make it really clear that I am there. You just have to get ready to jump quickly...

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

>a whole lot of people blasting down residential streets at 40mph while staring at their phones and only barely slowing down in acknowledgement of stop signs. Same where I live in Europe. When I commute by car, over 50% of drivers I look at are on their phones and another 25% are doing another semi-distracting activity(eating, smoking, fiddling with stuff). Maybe on the highway it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm talking about city streets that are full of cyclists and people running to catch their bus. It's one of the reason I'm super afraid of biking on some streets, thinking that one day someone's gonna run me down since he was texting his wife and didn't see me(had some near misses already). Anecdotally, a friend of mine was hit on a zebra crossing by a texting driver while he was with me. Broke his collar bone and definitely left both of us with some mental scars that will not heal too soon. It got me to feel like smartphones are a huge issue for traffic safety as some drivers simply can't leave it alone during their commute.

salawat 7y ago
>Anecdotally, a friend of mine was hit on a zebra crossing by a texting driver while he was with me. It definitely left both of us with some mental scars that will not heal too soon. Wait, was your friend crossing the street riding on a zebra with you, or walking across a street at a marked zebra crossing? Or was your friend a zebra, which you were crossing the street with, so you figured the zebra crossing was the most appropriate place to do it? I need details. This is very important. I need to make sure to file this in the proper "things I never thought I'd hear, but happened anyway" drawer. I hope everything turned out okay for all involved though, regardless!
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Zebra crossing(or just zebra where I'm from) is a popular European/international term. In the US it's called pedestrian crossing or crosswalk. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing
  - salawat 7y ago
    Well I'll be. Today I learned. Little bit of international enlightenment never hurts. And jeez people, lighten up. Not everybody is guaranteed to be aware of your vernacular. To me it quite literally had a touch of incedulity to it. You try to accept that another human being could miss someone with a bloody zebra walking by with them anywhere because they were staring at a smartphone! I wasn't trying to be snide or clever. I just honestly thought he was describing the most unlikely scenario I could ever imagine running into happening to him because someone was that damned intent on checking their feed!

adrianN 7y ago

I think the single most effective measure car manufacturers could take is having the car know the speed limit and preventing speeding.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
And after that, the second thing I'd love is for all cars to force safe driving distance. I'm sick of people driving 1 meter from my bumper when we're all going 100km/h.