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If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Who I can think to blame here: * The auto manufa

If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Who I can think to blame here: * The auto manufacturer for not having sensors to detect this. * The city for making car dependent areas * The city for making roads that have cars drive so fast by pedestrians, that the pedestrian can die if hit * The driver for not driving more reasonably * The city for not having a barrier between the sidewalk and the road, China has these in a lot of areas, a curb with a hedge between the side walks and roads, or a fence. The pedestrian who collapses is the last to blame in my view.

ballenf 5y ago
> If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Even 5 mph is too fast if the collapse is shielded from view until the last instant. In other words your statement boils down to "driver can stop unless they can't".
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  If the collapse is shielded from view until the last instant, but still possible, there's an engineer somewhere who designed a road irresponsibly.
  - kortex 5y ago
    Exactly this. The human-factors-engineering take is that these should be mutually exclusive: - a driver should be able to brake if a person falls suddenly (streets) - a person is isolated from/ is incapable of falling suddenly into oncoming traffic (roads) It's the same reason highways are fenced off, extended to streets and roads. A big part of the problem is America's reliance on stroads: too fast to be hospitable for non-drivers, insufficiently isolated to protect non-drivers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
- dml2135 5y ago
  It is extremely unlikely that someone will be killed by a 5 mph collision, and it is certainly less likely than a 30 mph collision.
  - nzmsv 5y ago
    Cars are heavy things and can kill you even if they move at 5mph: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/22/anton-yelchin-death-officially-ruled-as-accident https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/22/anton-yelchin-d...
Spivak 5y ago
Yeah, this isn't an act of god that no one could have possibly foreseen. This is system designed by humans that we have 100% control over.
- chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
  This is the key point of the research and the tool I built, and clearly I still have some work to do on making this clear on my site: The objective is not to shift blame from one party to the other, even if its shifting from VRUs to drivers. The important thing is that we emphasize that all car crashes have a cause and known solutions! Nearly all news articles miss this point, and tend to place blame (even inadvertently) on the parties involved rather than discuss how to prevent future incidents from happening.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    FWIW, one way in which you lost me early on was framing it as VRU vs driver. I don't see it in such simple terms. There are road users. It is not always the pedestrian that is killed. Sometimes it is another driver. And pedestrians can absolutely be the cause of a wreck where the driver dies. Not to mention, someone can be a VRU now, and a driver in a few minutes, then a VRU again. There are lots of good reasons to make roads safer, lots of methods for doing so, and none of them require making drivers the villains.
dgfitz 5y ago
> If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Or they collapse mere seconds before the car strikes them making the __accident__ unavoidable.
- lelandbatey 5y ago
  The duration between when the pedestrian collapses and when the driver runs over the pedestrian is not as relevant as you seem to be implying. If someone is standing in a crosswalk in broad daylight and falls over, even if the pedestrian collapses 0.1 seconds before someone runs them over that doesn't leave the driver blameless. Why, in broad daylight, in the middle of a crosswalk, was a driver 0.1 seconds away from running over a pedestrian? That sounds like poor road design, poor driving, or another factor. The same logic applies even as we worsen the conditions: if it was dark, where was the lighting? If the pedestrian "suddenly appeared" from behind an obstacle, why is there an obstacle that close to a road and why can a pedestrian get so close that they can "appear" from behind that obstacle? Roads should be designed so that pedestrians cannot accidentally end up 0.1 seconds (or pick your duration) from being crushed by a driver. And drivers, state-licensed machine operators, should face an incredibly high bar of scrutiny when it comes to damaging pedestrians. Yes this probably means very different road designs than the ones we have now, that is one of the end goals of this kind of effort.
  - dgfitz 5y ago
    I can say with confidence that this effort will not result in roads being re-designed, ripped up, re-poured, and money paid for the effort.
    - lolpython 5y ago
      What in the world are you talking about? Many US cities have already created traffic calming programs due to advocacy like this. https://lmgtfy.app/?q=traffic+calming+site%3A.gov https://lmgtfy.app/?q=traffic+calming+site%3A.gov

ballenf 5y ago

> If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Even 5 mph is too fast if the collapse is shielded from view until the last instant. In other words your statement boils down to "driver can stop unless they can't".

InitialLastName 5y ago
If the collapse is shielded from view until the last instant, but still possible, there's an engineer somewhere who designed a road irresponsibly.
- kortex 5y ago
  Exactly this. The human-factors-engineering take is that these should be mutually exclusive: - a driver should be able to brake if a person falls suddenly (streets) - a person is isolated from/ is incapable of falling suddenly into oncoming traffic (roads) It's the same reason highways are fenced off, extended to streets and roads. A big part of the problem is America's reliance on stroads: too fast to be hospitable for non-drivers, insufficiently isolated to protect non-drivers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
dml2135 5y ago
It is extremely unlikely that someone will be killed by a 5 mph collision, and it is certainly less likely than a 30 mph collision.
- nzmsv 5y ago
  Cars are heavy things and can kill you even if they move at 5mph: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/22/anton-yelchin-death-officially-ruled-as-accident https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/22/anton-yelchin-d...

Spivak 5y ago

Yeah, this isn't an act of god that no one could have possibly foreseen. This is system designed by humans that we have 100% control over.

chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
This is the key point of the research and the tool I built, and clearly I still have some work to do on making this clear on my site: The objective is not to shift blame from one party to the other, even if its shifting from VRUs to drivers. The important thing is that we emphasize that all car crashes have a cause and known solutions! Nearly all news articles miss this point, and tend to place blame (even inadvertently) on the parties involved rather than discuss how to prevent future incidents from happening.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  FWIW, one way in which you lost me early on was framing it as VRU vs driver. I don't see it in such simple terms. There are road users. It is not always the pedestrian that is killed. Sometimes it is another driver. And pedestrians can absolutely be the cause of a wreck where the driver dies. Not to mention, someone can be a VRU now, and a driver in a few minutes, then a VRU again. There are lots of good reasons to make roads safer, lots of methods for doing so, and none of them require making drivers the villains.

dgfitz 5y ago

> If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Or they collapse mere seconds before the car strikes them making the __accident__ unavoidable.

lelandbatey 5y ago
The duration between when the pedestrian collapses and when the driver runs over the pedestrian is not as relevant as you seem to be implying. If someone is standing in a crosswalk in broad daylight and falls over, even if the pedestrian collapses 0.1 seconds before someone runs them over that doesn't leave the driver blameless. Why, in broad daylight, in the middle of a crosswalk, was a driver 0.1 seconds away from running over a pedestrian? That sounds like poor road design, poor driving, or another factor. The same logic applies even as we worsen the conditions: if it was dark, where was the lighting? If the pedestrian "suddenly appeared" from behind an obstacle, why is there an obstacle that close to a road and why can a pedestrian get so close that they can "appear" from behind that obstacle? Roads should be designed so that pedestrians cannot accidentally end up 0.1 seconds (or pick your duration) from being crushed by a driver. And drivers, state-licensed machine operators, should face an incredibly high bar of scrutiny when it comes to damaging pedestrians. Yes this probably means very different road designs than the ones we have now, that is one of the end goals of this kind of effort.
- dgfitz 5y ago
  I can say with confidence that this effort will not result in roads being re-designed, ripped up, re-poured, and money paid for the effort.
  - lolpython 5y ago
    What in the world are you talking about? Many US cities have already created traffic calming programs due to advocacy like this. https://lmgtfy.app/?q=traffic+calming+site%3A.gov https://lmgtfy.app/?q=traffic+calming+site%3A.gov