19 ms·

pedestrians do cross the street when it's red for them You have to think what pedestrian lights are for. They exist solely to improve the flow of car traffic.

• raverbashing 7y ago
  All other vehicles have lights for them, either for them to stop or have other vehicles stop for them (in the case of trains) It's natural that a locking mechanism would evolve for all cases. It's not a matter of being a car-centric monster, it's a matter of organizing traffic. > Without lights, pedestrians would always have first priority on a crosswalk Not all pedestrians cross in a crosswalk or look at what they're doing when they cross. Sure, let me stop abruptly for the pedestrian crossing right in front of me. Or in some situations pedestrians are always crossing (city-center) This works (mostly) for slow streets or very low pedestrian traffic (and car) ones. > hus, it is no wonder that any sensible person wouldn't cross the street on red if there are no cars coming. Completely agree
  • jMyles 7y ago
    > Sure, let me stop abruptly for the pedestrian crossing right in front of me. Or in some situations pedestrians are always crossing (city-center) This is the price you pay for deciding to drive a car in a city. If you choose a less lethal (to others) form of transportation, you'll have to yield less frequently. The general principle of yielding downward (in terms of size of the conveyance) is hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old, and is more sensible today than ever.
    • raverbashing 7y ago
      The problem is not yielding, the problem is yielding with too short of a notice to people who think cars have zero inertia. Physics doesn't care who's right or wrong. Edit: I'm not talking about crosswalks, I'm talking about people crossing outside of them
      • vegardx 7y ago
        People would argue that you were driving too fast if you're unable to stop in a safe manner in front of a crosswalk. I tend to agree.
      • ehnto 7y ago
        If it's so dangerous, maybe we should get the cars out of the places where people are walking around a lot. Since the primary purpose of a city is for people to get business and life done, and not to move cars from one side of it to the other. People should be able to cross outside of crosswalks, because the cars should be driving fast somewhere else, or driving at a safe speed in the city. That safe speed is far, far slower than I expect Americans or Australians are comfortable with. We are talking walking pace or slower. The benefit of slowing cars down that much in a CBD is it makes it very obvious and intuitive that cars are the lower priority in the CBD. It makes it so cumbersome to drive through city areas that it is self regulating as people stop driving their cars through unless they absolutely must.
        • wozniacki 7y ago
          If it's so dangerous, maybe we should get the cars out of the places where people are walking around a lot. Since the primary purpose of a city is for people to get business and life done, and not to move cars from one side of it to the other. This is why level-headed observers dismiss opinions on HN to be thoroughly foolhardy, tone-deaf and impractical. People use cars for a variety of reasons - convenience just being one of them. One's safety in public places (which cant be guaranteed in public transit atleast to the same degree as offered by motor vehicles), security from riffraff & sinister actors, protection from the elements in even slightly inclement weather, securing & securing valuables (like an expensive laptop or other gadgets) to & from work or otherwise, to receive & place phone calls when commuting in a private & noise-free environment, to enjoy a meal / breakfast while commuting (most transit options forbid eating foods or even drinking liquids) and a whole host of other reasons too long to list here - are all reasons why people prefer cars over transit. Its foolish to dismiss cars as just A-to-B conveyance method for human bodies.
  • 7952 7y ago
    Of course it is about organising traffic. And that makes sense if that is the only metric you care about optimising. The problem is that other things are obstructed (figuratively and literally) by that optimisation.
• kortilla 7y ago
  Do trains stop for pedestrians crossing the tracks where you’re from? That sounds very inefficient.
  • jstummbillig 7y ago
    Where there are no lights, pedestrians have right of way in Canada. Even though forcing a stop on the gasoline powered vehicle with much more momentum is strictly less efficient than making the pedestrian wait, it stuck as an arrangement, that made for a more enjoyable and relaxing city experience.
    • upofadown 7y ago
      Which Canadian province is this? Here in Manitoba cars have right of way away from intersections. Pedestrians are responsible for avoiding a collision. Canada has a very intense car culture. What you are describing has to be some sort of local exception.
      • jstummbillig 7y ago
        Interesting! My experience was based around Nova Scotia. However, I actually meant at intersections (which is, I guess, where I mostly crossed streets). This arrangement was new and refreshing to me. However, it is of course reasonable that pedestrians can not assume to just walk on a street everywhere, at any time.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • vegardx 7y ago
    Trains and trams are exempt from those rules, and not just pedestrians, but everyone.
  • tomstoms 7y ago
    That’s not a fair comparison. Hundreds of tons of train of 100kmh take several km to stop.
• vegardx 7y ago
  In Oslo at least, the crosswalks (usually) have lights if there's an intersection, and since there are no laws against crossing on red you are free to do so, as long as you don't create any dangerous situations. I'd argue that the lights are not to improve traffic flow, but to signal pedestrians that it's safe to cross, something sighted, young or otherwise healthy people often take for granted by just looking both ways before crossing. So no - the lights aren't only to improve traffic. The dynamic changes when there are no jaywalking laws.
  • alistairSH 7y ago
    In the US, pedestrian signals do NOT signal when it’s safe to cross. Cars almost always have a green in the same direction, meaning they can turn into you. I almost get run over once a month because of this.
    • vegardx 7y ago
      Seems like a cultural problem, not a crosswalk light problem. Most people (myself included) automatically slow down when driving into a crosswalk. Our intersections are usually fairly small, so it's hard to build up any speed, even if you wanted to.
      • S_A_P 7y ago
        This. In Houston you have the added adventure of every 1 of every 2.5 people distracted driving and not looking where they are going or minding the pedestrian traffic.
      • MereInterest 7y ago
        Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether. For example, pulling up to an intersection and only looking to the left before making a right turn, because that is the only direction that car traffic can be coming from. It isn't every car by any means, but enough cars that pedestrians need to assume that drivers are incompetent until given evidence otherwise.
• TomMarius 7y ago
  I am not sure what you mean with this effectiveness. I live in Prague, the city with (what they say) one of the best public transport systems in the world, and yet, going to my workplace is 45 minutes by public transport and 15 minutes by car. Even though I live close to a subway and tram station, and the workplace is right in the city center, car still wins - where is the effectiveness you're talking about? This is the case for my past 3 workplaces and 2 homes. Sorry but my time is more valuable than waiting an hour per day just because. Before you say that I can read or listen to music on the way in public transport, I listen to audiobooks in the car, and the trams are lately so packed that for me it's especially hard to not puke because of the terrible air (and sometimes smelly people, luckily not that much in winter) there, sadly I would puke right into someone's face. Even though there is a lot of traffic which slows my car down, I am still in comfort. I'd rather sit 45 minutes in a car listening to wonderful music than be pushed inside a can full of people for the same time, and given the traffic, I am not the only one thinking the same. First improve public transport, make it at least a tiny bit comfortable, then hate cars, not the other way around, that just won't work. (let the downvotes rain... What did I expect, a discussion? Lol)
  • lucideer 7y ago
    There's multiple issues with your anecdote (one of course it being an anecdote, not a statistic); to focus on the main ones: - you're looking at individual efficiency rather than system: in particular the fact that public transport is made less efficient by people driving. You're describing a chicken-egg problem if you want improvements in public transport - you're focused on time as a metric, not accounting for economic cost (both individual and municipal: car infra is expensive), and other costs (health, env)
    • TomMarius 7y ago
      If I live next to a subway and tram stations (trams have dedicated tracks not shared with car in most places here) and the car is still a better option, it's an issue with the public transport system and people driving do not make it much worse. The subway is not affected at all and yet the number of trains per hour has stayed constant for years.
• lr4444lr 7y ago
  For the safety of the pedestrians. It signals clearly to large vehicles at a safe distance for them to stop that they MUST stop, so that there are fewer accidents due to lack of visibility of the actual pedestrian.
• OGWhales 7y ago
  Here is an interesting article on how automobile manufacturers helped to make jaywalking a crime in order to quell the concerns of automobile deaths and shift the responsibility onto the pedestrians in order to make automobiles more appealing: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
  • blattimwind 7y ago
    Almost like it would make sense to have at least legally separate pathways for motorized, less motorized (scooters, e-bikes), bicycles and pedestrians, because they are very different forms of transport.
    • bluGill 7y ago
      It makes perfect sense in theory. In the real world though space is limited. We cannot have separate spaces: there isn't enough room - unless you space things out so far that only only car transport makes sense, at which point why bother building paths for the other modes? Which is why suburbs don't have sidewalks: there is no place you can practically go by any mode other than car so why bother creating space for those modes.
      • whatshisface 7y ago
        >suburbs don't have sidewalks Plenty of suburbs have sidewalks.
        • bagacrap 7y ago
          I grew up in suburbs that did not have a consistent network of sidewalks. Some existed but you really need 100% of roads to have one or you're suddenly walking 2 miles extra to get around the missing link. Nobody complained because why would you want to walk miles to the closest grocery store anyway?
        • bluGill 7y ago
          "Sidewalks to nowhere" don't count as sidewalks. They count as decoration.
• blattimwind 7y ago
  > Without lights, pedestrians would always have first priority on a crosswalk. Cars would have to stop for any pedestrian crossing the street. Traffic lights in combination with a pedestrian crossing proper (a zebra crossing) seem to be rather rare, at least in Europe. Thus most crossing points of pedestrian would, in absence of traffic lights, not give them the right of way, because crossing traffic generally does not have the right of way. Traffic crossing from something other than a street never has the right of way. So I don't see at all how "lights are in gross contrast to the rights of pedestrians".
  • trunc 7y ago
    Pedestrians had the right of way before the cars existed
    • blattimwind 7y ago
      No, historically carriages have held the right of way, and the higher their occupants social status the more right of way they had.
      • trmsw 7y ago
        Well technically it's priority not right of way. My guess is that the concept was only codified with the introduction of traffic laws, which in most places didn't happen before the 20th century. Until then, "priority" in land probably came down to common sense: size, conventions, and social status.
      • jessaustin 7y ago
        Yes, horses take priority. That's true on nature trails too. Automobiles don't inherit anything from horses and horse-drawn carriages.
      • trunc 7y ago
        Pedestrians existed before carriages, too
  • andrewaylett 7y ago
• caiocaiocaio 7y ago
  Where I live (Victoria BC), we don't have many pedestrian lights, but pedestrians definitely do not have priority in crosswalks. Pedestrians here make sure that there are definitely no cars moving anywhere near the crosswalk, and no one potentially wanting to make a left turn, before venturing out.
• leetcrew 7y ago
  the energy cost of a car coming to a full stop is very large though. if you're going to have cars in the city at all, you should have a system of one-way streets with synchronized lights so vehicles rarely come to a full stop. letting pedestrians interrupt this whenever they feel like crossing is not only annoying, but leads to much higher gas consumption.
• Havoc 7y ago
  I prefer the laws where its linked to distance ot intersection. Which in practice means you can jaywalk on open roads but not near intersections where the risk is less obvious and cars could catch you out. Good compromise