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Other facts about pedestrian deaths: 80% are at night. 33% involve a drunk pedestrian. 20% are elderly. Contrary to these data about SF, most pedestrian dea

Other facts about pedestrian deaths: 80% are at night. 33% involve a drunk pedestrian. 20% are elderly. Contrary to these data about SF, most pedestrian deaths (73%) are not at intersections, but at non-crossings. I try to tell friends to be more careful walking at night, and to not walk drunk (take an uber, it's safer). https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i... https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestrians/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...

pharmakom 5y ago
It’s time for pedestrian infrastructure that is safe by design. Most of these fatalities could be prevented by lowering the speed limit.
- riffic 5y ago
  signs and fines have minimal impact on driver behavior. Apply treatments to the road that alter driver behavior - the perception of danger is quite a motivator in reducing speeds (tullock's spike for instance).
- jwagenet 5y ago
  Lowering the speed limit doesn’t make sense if there are wide streets with wide lanes (more comfortable to drive in) and no enforcement. In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width in reality or artificially with protected bike lanes, bus/muni right of way, etc on wide streets like Geary or Van Ness .
  - colpabar 5y ago
    > In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width Absolutely. It seems like the best way to reduce speeds in cities is to make it uncomfortable to drive fast in them. Big wide streets make it feel like you're going "slow" at 25mph, so people go faster. Of course, we could also slowly carve out areas of cities where cars are not allowed, but how will businesses survive if people can't park directly in front of them? /s
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      It’s funny that in my city, the most active retail area is a pedestrian only street. Anything with heavy car traffic tends to have more intentional destination type stuff.
      - IMTDb 5y ago
        > Anything with heavy car traffic tends to have more intentional destination type stuff. Is it possible that the intentional destination is the pedestrian street, to do your shopping ? Remove the heavy traffic lanes around it and people will go shopping somewhere else or go to amazon instead. In my city that's what's happening, the pedestrian only street used to be the place to go shopping for clothes/luxuries. Now it's impossible to get there so people go to off city malls instead (which are thriving) or online (also thriving), and street stores are slowly dying.
        Gigachad 5y ago
        This street has many highrise offices, universities and residential buildings around it so its a destination of a lot of foot traffic from buildings, not so much somewhere you drive to access. There are also multi level parks on the ends, you just can't drive through it.
    - laurent92 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - wahern 5y ago
        As a country France might not be going in the direction you think it's going: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-albi-french-towns-fading.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-albi-... I see that echoed in your post: "It has the added benefit of pushing right-wing people out of the cities back to the countryside". Perhaps what's happening is that France is seeing a transition to suburban communities. If so, enjoy your walkable town centers now while commerce remains viable. At some point in the future you may find yourself needing to trek to the big box retailer outside town, just as many of us urban Americans unfortunately have to do. :(
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    I really like seeing streets that have seating where parking spots used to be. Some popular areas have whole blocks converted. They really make it hard to jaywalk, and offer lots of barrier between sidewalk and cars. That said, it probably sucks for bicyclists.
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago
  The speed limit is 25 mph through most of San Francisco, even some of the major routes (like 19th Avenue which is 6 lanes wide with its own divider) are limited to 30 mph. Narrow alleys are 15 mph by default, Market Street is 20 mph, Van Ness is 25 mph. This city probably has the lowest speed limits I've ever seen, and I've lived on 3 continents. https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/Map-of-Speed-Limits/ttcm-fwt2 https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/Map-of-Speed-Limits/tt...
  - Levitz 5y ago
    Well, in Spain it's 30km/h max in the whole city, 18mp/h. Thing is, nobody normally goes that slow, from a point on drivers will start ignoring it and decide on a speed themselves.
  - alex_young 5y ago
    My observations in Europe are pretty much opposite to this. Many EU cities are max 30 kph (18.5 mph) on most roads. https://qz.com/2056530/european-cities-are-slowing-down-their-street-traffic/ https://qz.com/2056530/european-cities-are-slowing-down-thei...
    - Gwypaas 5y ago
      You have to separate the road from the stroad. Roads in Europe might be up to 60-70 kph even in a city center, but they also have calming intersections with roundabouts and to get on an off regularly or even ramps. Streets tend to be 30-40 kph depending on the place with lots of calming. The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all over the US & Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
- dahfizz 5y ago
  They could have just as easily (easier, even) been avoided if pedestrians followed the law and used the existing infrastructure.
- encoderer 5y ago
  Speed limits are set in part by how fast people actually drive on a street. You need to go further up-funnel and redesign streets so speeding doesn’t feel safe.
- atom_arranger 5y ago
  In Bangkok the roads are very wide and busy. Every couple hundred meters they have bridges that go over them. It's an interesting solution to the problem. It's nice that you just walk up the stairs and cross, no need to worry about the traffic. They're all over the place, most of them much more minimal, but similar to this: https://previews.123rf.com/images/ruslan_kokarev/ruslan_kokarev1806/ruslan_kokarev180600069/103206204-bangkok-thailand-july-19-2017-elevated-pedestrian-walkway-skywalk-at-ratchadamri-road-near-central-w.jpg https://previews.123rf.com/images/ruslan_kokarev/ruslan_koka...
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    Why should pedestrians be inconvenienced? Make the cars wait or send them the long way around.
  - twiddling 5y ago
    sucks if you're mobility impaired ( wheelchair ) , and with ADA the costs will be too prohibitive for most locales, so they'll just paint some zebra stripes and put up a flashing light
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
      Also sucks if you have a stroller, luggage, pets, small kids, a bum leg, if you're old or just tired.
      - atom_arranger 5y ago
        There are crosswalks on street level, you have to go further and wait though. Some of them have escalators or elevators.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    In Karachi too IIRC
- elgenie 5y ago
  If the physical design of the street says that it expects to be traversed at 40mph, people will drive 35 to 45mph on it even if the posted speed limit says 25. This situation offers tremendous benefits to traffic police officers a bit behind on their ticket writing, but minimal benefits for pedestrian safety, because the people likely to notice the sign and slow down were already the people likely to notice pedestrians and drive defensively.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Is this satire? The speed limit has barely anything to do with pedestrian infrastructure. It's the interaction points between the two where the problems are (intersections, crossings, etc). Give people (both pedestrians and drivers) the opportunities to get where they need to go without getting in each other's way and 99/100 they'll pull it off successfully.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    Is this satire? Vehicle speed is one of the best predictors of pedestrian fatality and injury severity in an accident. When a pedestrian is struck by a driver, almost nothing else matters as much as the vehicle's speed.
    - notacoward 5y ago
      > speed is one of the best predictors of pedestrian fatality and injury severity True, but a total red herring. Speed might be the main factor affecting severity of injury, but it's not the main factor affecting probability in a left-turn scenario. Remember left turns? It's what OP is about. Very few people are going the speed limit while turning left, and that would remain true even with lower limits. Visibility is the dominant factor here - around other vehicles, around the A-pillar, etc. The least severe accident is the one that doesn't happen. "Lower speed limits" is a great hobby horse, but not one that belongs here.
- speeder 5y ago
  speed limits... doesn't work. I live in a city where they lowered the speed limits heavily, the result is law abiding drivers constantly almost crashing because they have eyes glued on the speedometer to keep themselves under the speed limit while on roads that "feel" faster. And the non-law abiding drivers that will happily crash into the rear of law abiding ones, since everyone is same speed, when someone DO obey the speed limit, that person gets rear ended as the other drivers get surprised. Instead you need better road design. (also, putting speed bumps after long wide straights is just a retarded idea, saw a bunch of times people going airborne on those, including one time where a guy managed to leave his wheel STUCK INSIDE a wall, at the exact height a person head should be...).
bagacrap 5y ago
We need to normalize the use of lights at night by pedestrians on roads or multi use paths. I've seen them used by recreational pedestrians (dog walkers, runners) but for some reason never outside of that context. Sometimes I use my phone's flashlight when I find myself in this situation, and I leave a bike tail light clipped onto my backpack for this reason too.
- ck425 5y ago
  Or you know maybe we should insist that the people driving a ton of steel at high speed use their lights.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Only an American could have written this.
kodah 5y ago
That's interesting, though non-crossings seems vague. Are those parking lots combined with people j-walking?
- tfehring 5y ago
  The cited data [0] is presented in a super confusing way - the categories are "At Intersection" (18%), "Not At Intersection" (73%), and "Other" (9%). Apparently "other locations such as roadsides/shoulders, parking lanes/zones, bicycle lanes, sidewalks, medians/crossing islands, driveway accesses, shared-use paths/trails, non-traffic way areas, and other sites," which make up the "Other" category, are neither intersections nor non-intersections. I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers solely to jaywalkers. [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812681 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
  - watwut 5y ago
    > I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers solely to jaywalkers. That is absurd guess. Plenty of crossings are outside of intersections. Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close.
    - kodah 5y ago
      > Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close. Jaywalking is an act, I don't think anyone in this thread cares about it's legality with respect to the situation. We're just discussing how to interpret the statistics. The point here is that a majority of these accidents occur at non-intersections which are not covered by "Other".
    - Talanes 5y ago
      >Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close. Though not always, got burned by this as a teenager when I got hit crossing the highway in front of my trailer park. The intersection I crossed from was a private road, which stuck my family with liability on the ambulance ride (which luckily was the worst of it.)
cronix 5y ago
The quite large homeless population living all along the streets also contribute, although hard to quantify in stats as I don't think they're kept. The number of people who 1) are stoned out of their minds on x (not just alcohol, but things like meth/heroin) or 2) just don't care (they'll see you and step out anyway, and slam your hood when you stop), just suddenly step out in front of you from between 2 other parked cars. You have a split second to react, even at 15mph. Combine that with less than ideal visibility, especially during fall/winter (dark early/foggy/rainy) and it's a recipe for tragedy. I think I see more bike accidents caused by that than cars because the bikes are typically driving on the shoulder between the parked cars and the closest lane, so even less chance to see them step in front of you at the last second. You can see this around any large homeless population living on sidewalks in any large city in the US and it's not unique to SF at all. Just stand on a street corner for 15-20 minutes and observe the road all down the block.
- vkou 5y ago
  As both a driver, and a pedestrian, I have felt threatened by a lot more distracted, dangerous, and outright reckless drivers, than I have by pedestrians as a driver. While people stepping into traffic is a thing that sometimes happens in some parts of town, reckless driving is the sort of thing that is happening all the time, anywhere. There's an incredible amount of entitlement that many people feel when they get behind the wheel, which is not matched by their ability to operate one.
- dekhn 5y ago
  I call this dance the "Tenderloin Lurch" (1, not 2, and I think it's often mental illness not drugs). You can sort of spot the folks who look like they're completely unaware of traffic laws and/or reality and predict when they're going to change directions and lurch out into traffic.
- boudin 5y ago
  The thing is, the driver is always wrong. As a driver in a place with pedestrian, you will always be the danger and are the one responsible for adapting your behaviour.
watwut 5y ago
> non-crossings Which is and should be completely legal provided crossing is not close.
csours 5y ago
How many times do you notice a pedestrian AS you pass them? After you pass them? Not at all? Please wear light colored clothes at night. One time I only saw a person because they were wearing white shoes, all of their other clothes were black.
- ARandumGuy 5y ago
  You're not wrong, but it's frustrating that responsibility has to fall on the pedestrian, not the driver. A pedestrian would be perfectly safe walking around with dark clothing if there were no cars around.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I walk and drive in a big city (NYC), I don't get this mentality of being frustrated over self-preservation, yet you're not the first person to share a sentiment like this. No one exists in a modern city without indirectly taking advantage of cars and trucks. So people should be more enthusiastic about being part of the solution when it comes to pedestrian safety. - I see people get annoyed when I imply they should proactive about their safety as a pedestrian, but at the end of the day we're all shopping at stores stocked by trucks with horrible visibility and maneuverability mostly driving at night... The same way everyone benefits from the existence of automobiles, everyone should be part of the solution when it comes to their safety while near them.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      The best way to be "proactive about safety" as a pedestrian is to pressure your local government into improving the physical layout of roads so that they are safe by design, so that people do not need to do preposterous and undignified things like wear reflective clothing or helmets.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > responsibility has to fall on the pedestrian Drivers should drive at speeds/times/lighting conditions so they don't hit people, or at least minimize the chances. Pedestrians should care about their own safety too. There's a reason we tell children not to play in the road. I've a very pro-pedestrian and anti-car urban dweller who walks everywhere and curses at cars flying by, but i wouldn't blindly step into the road without paying attention to cars around me, especially at night. This behavior isn't because i think drivers should get a pass, its because it'd f*king suck if i died.
notacoward 5y ago
> 80% are at night. I don't want to blame the victims, but I'll bet the number would be lower if it weren't for all the people who go ninja at night - dark clothing, and not a stitch of anything reflective. That, combined with the increased prevalence of drivers blinding others with their high beams 100% of the time, seems like a recipe for more vehicle/pedestrian collisions.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  >I don't want to blame the victims, but But you basically are. You're driving a multi-ton hunk of steel around, and the onus is squarely on you to make sure you're driving it safely, which necessarily means proper lighting at night. The city you live in is the second responsible party, because it's up to them to light streets appropriately, especially at designated crossing points. Most if the time they do it the North American way instead.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    > You're driving a multi-ton hunk of steel around No, sometimes I'm the pedestrian. As such, regardless of whatever anyone else does, I bear some responsibility for ensuring my own safety. I owe it to my family. I owe it to other pedestrians, any of whom could become a victim if a driver avoiding me swerves into them. Drivers failing to see pedestrians in the dark at night happens even with the greatest caution. There's no excuse for being an idiot, or BTW for insisting on such a right. If you have an objection to ducking responsibility and always pointing the finger of blame outward, consider your own statements. > it's up to them to light streets appropriately It's not feasible or environmentally responsible to light every inch of roadway even on side/residential streets or rural areas, and I sincerely doubt that happens where you live either. Also, lights fail sometimes. If people want to enter the commons, they have a responsibility to participate in keeping it safe.
    - kspacewalk2 5y ago
      >No, sometimes I'm the pedestrian. Yes, and sometimes I'm the driver. I'm talking about those other times, and the "you" was used in the general sense. I guess we have a significant philosophical difference about how we see this problem. I approach it in much the same way as a woman would deal with the threat of being raped - sure, one should always take measures to watch out for oneself, but at no point can it be reasonably cast as "taking responsibility", because the responsibility always rests with the guilty party, the attacker (or the inattentive driver whose negligence becomes criminal if someone's hurt). It's not good enough to say "here are some rape whistles, purrsonal responsibility gals". And it's not good enough to say "shit happens, drivers sometimes don't care, wear some reflective vests, maybe put on a blinking light and a little spinning propeller on your hat to be more noticeable". No. Instead, we should (and some of us do) demand actual accountability for drivers who kill pedestrians through inattention. We don't have that in North America, and as a direct consequence a lot more people die on our streets, and blinking lights or reflective vests don't have squat to do with that. And we do insist on proper lighting of designated pedestrian crossings, at the very least. Pretty sure walking + more street lights is far more environmentally friendly than driving + no street lights at all. The responsibility lies squarely with the driver. Starts with the driver, stops with the driver. Lack of proper lighting can be a contributing factor, but it's the driver's responsibility to account for that. And all this muddying the waters, with this "yeah but was your hat blinking", is unhelpful.
kennywinker 5y ago
Yeeesh. Idk if it was intended that way, but this comes off very victim-blamey. So let's get an alternate take: 80% at night - drivers should be forced to slow down at night. They can't see and avoid pedestrians as well. 33% involve a drunk pedestrian - the implication of this is that without constant vigilance, your safety is in great danger. This agrees strongly with the "20% are elderly" stat. You ability as an able-bodied person to actively avoid cars is the only thing keeping you alive.
- belorn 5y ago
  > You ability as an able-bodied person to actively avoid cars is the only thing keeping you alive. That is true. One misstep near a busy road can easily result in death. The only way to fix this 100% is separating roads from pedestrian with a physical barrier, or remove the cars from the places where people live. Even at the lowish speed limit of 18miles/h (30km/h) there is around 25 meters/81 feet of stopping distance which can easily kill a person if the cars wheels goes over someone. Here in Sweden there is a general rule that all roads near places where children are must be 30km/h or lower (school, sports areas, and so on). Maybe it would be useful to extend this to also cover areas where alcohol is likely to be consumed. It won't reduce it to 0 deaths, but it might reduce the number of collisions that has a lethal outcome.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > Even at the lowish speed limit of 18miles/h (30km/h) there is around 25 meters/81 feet of stopping distance That seems extremely long. I always used the rule of thumb that the braking distance from 20 mph is 20 feet and it’s a quadratic function of speed. You would need to add a full 2 seconds of non-reaction time to get to 79 feet from 20mph.
    - belorn 5y ago
      I used 2.5 seconds. It is dark, the driver is tired and can not predict the behavior of the drunk pedestrian, and in times like now it might also be snow/ice. Road safety is part worst case scenarios and part about mitigation. It is why drivers here are trained that children will at any point run out on the road during play without them thinking. Children behavior are more unpredictable compared to adults and so it is the drivers responsibility to be vigilant against what they can't foresee.

pharmakom 5y ago

It’s time for pedestrian infrastructure that is safe by design. Most of these fatalities could be prevented by lowering the speed limit.

riffic 5y ago
signs and fines have minimal impact on driver behavior. Apply treatments to the road that alter driver behavior - the perception of danger is quite a motivator in reducing speeds (tullock's spike for instance).
jwagenet 5y ago
Lowering the speed limit doesn’t make sense if there are wide streets with wide lanes (more comfortable to drive in) and no enforcement. In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width in reality or artificially with protected bike lanes, bus/muni right of way, etc on wide streets like Geary or Van Ness .
- colpabar 5y ago
  > In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width Absolutely. It seems like the best way to reduce speeds in cities is to make it uncomfortable to drive fast in them. Big wide streets make it feel like you're going "slow" at 25mph, so people go faster. Of course, we could also slowly carve out areas of cities where cars are not allowed, but how will businesses survive if people can't park directly in front of them? /s
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    It’s funny that in my city, the most active retail area is a pedestrian only street. Anything with heavy car traffic tends to have more intentional destination type stuff.
    - IMTDb 5y ago
      > Anything with heavy car traffic tends to have more intentional destination type stuff. Is it possible that the intentional destination is the pedestrian street, to do your shopping ? Remove the heavy traffic lanes around it and people will go shopping somewhere else or go to amazon instead. In my city that's what's happening, the pedestrian only street used to be the place to go shopping for clothes/luxuries. Now it's impossible to get there so people go to off city malls instead (which are thriving) or online (also thriving), and street stores are slowly dying.
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        This street has many highrise offices, universities and residential buildings around it so its a destination of a lot of foot traffic from buildings, not so much somewhere you drive to access. There are also multi level parks on the ends, you just can't drive through it.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - wahern 5y ago
      As a country France might not be going in the direction you think it's going: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-albi-french-towns-fading.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-albi-... I see that echoed in your post: "It has the added benefit of pushing right-wing people out of the cities back to the countryside". Perhaps what's happening is that France is seeing a transition to suburban communities. If so, enjoy your walkable town centers now while commerce remains viable. At some point in the future you may find yourself needing to trek to the big box retailer outside town, just as many of us urban Americans unfortunately have to do. :(
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I really like seeing streets that have seating where parking spots used to be. Some popular areas have whole blocks converted. They really make it hard to jaywalk, and offer lots of barrier between sidewalk and cars. That said, it probably sucks for bicyclists.
OnlineGladiator 5y ago
The speed limit is 25 mph through most of San Francisco, even some of the major routes (like 19th Avenue which is 6 lanes wide with its own divider) are limited to 30 mph. Narrow alleys are 15 mph by default, Market Street is 20 mph, Van Ness is 25 mph. This city probably has the lowest speed limits I've ever seen, and I've lived on 3 continents. https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/Map-of-Speed-Limits/ttcm-fwt2 https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/Map-of-Speed-Limits/tt...
- Levitz 5y ago
  Well, in Spain it's 30km/h max in the whole city, 18mp/h. Thing is, nobody normally goes that slow, from a point on drivers will start ignoring it and decide on a speed themselves.
- alex_young 5y ago
  My observations in Europe are pretty much opposite to this. Many EU cities are max 30 kph (18.5 mph) on most roads. https://qz.com/2056530/european-cities-are-slowing-down-their-street-traffic/ https://qz.com/2056530/european-cities-are-slowing-down-thei...
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    You have to separate the road from the stroad. Roads in Europe might be up to 60-70 kph even in a city center, but they also have calming intersections with roundabouts and to get on an off regularly or even ramps. Streets tend to be 30-40 kph depending on the place with lots of calming. The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all over the US & Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
dahfizz 5y ago
They could have just as easily (easier, even) been avoided if pedestrians followed the law and used the existing infrastructure.
encoderer 5y ago
Speed limits are set in part by how fast people actually drive on a street. You need to go further up-funnel and redesign streets so speeding doesn’t feel safe.
atom_arranger 5y ago
In Bangkok the roads are very wide and busy. Every couple hundred meters they have bridges that go over them. It's an interesting solution to the problem. It's nice that you just walk up the stairs and cross, no need to worry about the traffic. They're all over the place, most of them much more minimal, but similar to this: https://previews.123rf.com/images/ruslan_kokarev/ruslan_kokarev1806/ruslan_kokarev180600069/103206204-bangkok-thailand-july-19-2017-elevated-pedestrian-walkway-skywalk-at-ratchadamri-road-near-central-w.jpg https://previews.123rf.com/images/ruslan_kokarev/ruslan_koka...
- pharmakom 5y ago
  Why should pedestrians be inconvenienced? Make the cars wait or send them the long way around.
- twiddling 5y ago
  sucks if you're mobility impaired ( wheelchair ) , and with ADA the costs will be too prohibitive for most locales, so they'll just paint some zebra stripes and put up a flashing light
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    Also sucks if you have a stroller, luggage, pets, small kids, a bum leg, if you're old or just tired.
    - atom_arranger 5y ago
      There are crosswalks on street level, you have to go further and wait though. Some of them have escalators or elevators.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  In Karachi too IIRC
elgenie 5y ago
If the physical design of the street says that it expects to be traversed at 40mph, people will drive 35 to 45mph on it even if the posted speed limit says 25. This situation offers tremendous benefits to traffic police officers a bit behind on their ticket writing, but minimal benefits for pedestrian safety, because the people likely to notice the sign and slow down were already the people likely to notice pedestrians and drive defensively.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Is this satire? The speed limit has barely anything to do with pedestrian infrastructure. It's the interaction points between the two where the problems are (intersections, crossings, etc). Give people (both pedestrians and drivers) the opportunities to get where they need to go without getting in each other's way and 99/100 they'll pull it off successfully.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Is this satire? Vehicle speed is one of the best predictors of pedestrian fatality and injury severity in an accident. When a pedestrian is struck by a driver, almost nothing else matters as much as the vehicle's speed.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    > speed is one of the best predictors of pedestrian fatality and injury severity True, but a total red herring. Speed might be the main factor affecting severity of injury, but it's not the main factor affecting probability in a left-turn scenario. Remember left turns? It's what OP is about. Very few people are going the speed limit while turning left, and that would remain true even with lower limits. Visibility is the dominant factor here - around other vehicles, around the A-pillar, etc. The least severe accident is the one that doesn't happen. "Lower speed limits" is a great hobby horse, but not one that belongs here.
speeder 5y ago
speed limits... doesn't work. I live in a city where they lowered the speed limits heavily, the result is law abiding drivers constantly almost crashing because they have eyes glued on the speedometer to keep themselves under the speed limit while on roads that "feel" faster. And the non-law abiding drivers that will happily crash into the rear of law abiding ones, since everyone is same speed, when someone DO obey the speed limit, that person gets rear ended as the other drivers get surprised. Instead you need better road design. (also, putting speed bumps after long wide straights is just a retarded idea, saw a bunch of times people going airborne on those, including one time where a guy managed to leave his wheel STUCK INSIDE a wall, at the exact height a person head should be...).

bagacrap 5y ago

We need to normalize the use of lights at night by pedestrians on roads or multi use paths. I've seen them used by recreational pedestrians (dog walkers, runners) but for some reason never outside of that context. Sometimes I use my phone's flashlight when I find myself in this situation, and I leave a bike tail light clipped onto my backpack for this reason too.

ck425 5y ago
Or you know maybe we should insist that the people driving a ton of steel at high speed use their lights.
_dain_ 5y ago
Only an American could have written this.

kodah 5y ago

That's interesting, though non-crossings seems vague. Are those parking lots combined with people j-walking?

tfehring 5y ago
The cited data [0] is presented in a super confusing way - the categories are "At Intersection" (18%), "Not At Intersection" (73%), and "Other" (9%). Apparently "other locations such as roadsides/shoulders, parking lanes/zones, bicycle lanes, sidewalks, medians/crossing islands, driveway accesses, shared-use paths/trails, non-traffic way areas, and other sites," which make up the "Other" category, are neither intersections nor non-intersections. I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers solely to jaywalkers. [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812681 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
- watwut 5y ago
  > I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers solely to jaywalkers. That is absurd guess. Plenty of crossings are outside of intersections. Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close.
  - kodah 5y ago
    > Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close. Jaywalking is an act, I don't think anyone in this thread cares about it's legality with respect to the situation. We're just discussing how to interpret the statistics. The point here is that a majority of these accidents occur at non-intersections which are not covered by "Other".
  - Talanes 5y ago
    >Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is not crossing close. Though not always, got burned by this as a teenager when I got hit crossing the highway in front of my trailer park. The intersection I crossed from was a private road, which stuck my family with liability on the ambulance ride (which luckily was the worst of it.)

cronix 5y ago

The quite large homeless population living all along the streets also contribute, although hard to quantify in stats as I don't think they're kept. The number of people who 1) are stoned out of their minds on x (not just alcohol, but things like meth/heroin) or 2) just don't care (they'll see you and step out anyway, and slam your hood when you stop), just suddenly step out in front of you from between 2 other parked cars. You have a split second to react, even at 15mph. Combine that with less than ideal visibility, especially during fall/winter (dark early/foggy/rainy) and it's a recipe for tragedy. I think I see more bike accidents caused by that than cars because the bikes are typically driving on the shoulder between the parked cars and the closest lane, so even less chance to see them step in front of you at the last second. You can see this around any large homeless population living on sidewalks in any large city in the US and it's not unique to SF at all. Just stand on a street corner for 15-20 minutes and observe the road all down the block.

vkou 5y ago
As both a driver, and a pedestrian, I have felt threatened by a lot more distracted, dangerous, and outright reckless drivers, than I have by pedestrians as a driver. While people stepping into traffic is a thing that sometimes happens in some parts of town, reckless driving is the sort of thing that is happening all the time, anywhere. There's an incredible amount of entitlement that many people feel when they get behind the wheel, which is not matched by their ability to operate one.
dekhn 5y ago
I call this dance the "Tenderloin Lurch" (1, not 2, and I think it's often mental illness not drugs). You can sort of spot the folks who look like they're completely unaware of traffic laws and/or reality and predict when they're going to change directions and lurch out into traffic.
boudin 5y ago
The thing is, the driver is always wrong. As a driver in a place with pedestrian, you will always be the danger and are the one responsible for adapting your behaviour.

watwut 5y ago

> non-crossings Which is and should be completely legal provided crossing is not close.

csours 5y ago

How many times do you notice a pedestrian AS you pass them? After you pass them? Not at all? Please wear light colored clothes at night. One time I only saw a person because they were wearing white shoes, all of their other clothes were black.

ARandumGuy 5y ago
You're not wrong, but it's frustrating that responsibility has to fall on the pedestrian, not the driver. A pedestrian would be perfectly safe walking around with dark clothing if there were no cars around.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I walk and drive in a big city (NYC), I don't get this mentality of being frustrated over self-preservation, yet you're not the first person to share a sentiment like this. No one exists in a modern city without indirectly taking advantage of cars and trucks. So people should be more enthusiastic about being part of the solution when it comes to pedestrian safety. - I see people get annoyed when I imply they should proactive about their safety as a pedestrian, but at the end of the day we're all shopping at stores stocked by trucks with horrible visibility and maneuverability mostly driving at night... The same way everyone benefits from the existence of automobiles, everyone should be part of the solution when it comes to their safety while near them.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    The best way to be "proactive about safety" as a pedestrian is to pressure your local government into improving the physical layout of roads so that they are safe by design, so that people do not need to do preposterous and undignified things like wear reflective clothing or helmets.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > responsibility has to fall on the pedestrian Drivers should drive at speeds/times/lighting conditions so they don't hit people, or at least minimize the chances. Pedestrians should care about their own safety too. There's a reason we tell children not to play in the road. I've a very pro-pedestrian and anti-car urban dweller who walks everywhere and curses at cars flying by, but i wouldn't blindly step into the road without paying attention to cars around me, especially at night. This behavior isn't because i think drivers should get a pass, its because it'd f*king suck if i died.

notacoward 5y ago

> 80% are at night. I don't want to blame the victims, but I'll bet the number would be lower if it weren't for all the people who go ninja at night - dark clothing, and not a stitch of anything reflective. That, combined with the increased prevalence of drivers blinding others with their high beams 100% of the time, seems like a recipe for more vehicle/pedestrian collisions.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
>I don't want to blame the victims, but But you basically are. You're driving a multi-ton hunk of steel around, and the onus is squarely on you to make sure you're driving it safely, which necessarily means proper lighting at night. The city you live in is the second responsible party, because it's up to them to light streets appropriately, especially at designated crossing points. Most if the time they do it the North American way instead.
- notacoward 5y ago
  > You're driving a multi-ton hunk of steel around No, sometimes I'm the pedestrian. As such, regardless of whatever anyone else does, I bear some responsibility for ensuring my own safety. I owe it to my family. I owe it to other pedestrians, any of whom could become a victim if a driver avoiding me swerves into them. Drivers failing to see pedestrians in the dark at night happens even with the greatest caution. There's no excuse for being an idiot, or BTW for insisting on such a right. If you have an objection to ducking responsibility and always pointing the finger of blame outward, consider your own statements. > it's up to them to light streets appropriately It's not feasible or environmentally responsible to light every inch of roadway even on side/residential streets or rural areas, and I sincerely doubt that happens where you live either. Also, lights fail sometimes. If people want to enter the commons, they have a responsibility to participate in keeping it safe.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    >No, sometimes I'm the pedestrian. Yes, and sometimes I'm the driver. I'm talking about those other times, and the "you" was used in the general sense. I guess we have a significant philosophical difference about how we see this problem. I approach it in much the same way as a woman would deal with the threat of being raped - sure, one should always take measures to watch out for oneself, but at no point can it be reasonably cast as "taking responsibility", because the responsibility always rests with the guilty party, the attacker (or the inattentive driver whose negligence becomes criminal if someone's hurt). It's not good enough to say "here are some rape whistles, purrsonal responsibility gals". And it's not good enough to say "shit happens, drivers sometimes don't care, wear some reflective vests, maybe put on a blinking light and a little spinning propeller on your hat to be more noticeable". No. Instead, we should (and some of us do) demand actual accountability for drivers who kill pedestrians through inattention. We don't have that in North America, and as a direct consequence a lot more people die on our streets, and blinking lights or reflective vests don't have squat to do with that. And we do insist on proper lighting of designated pedestrian crossings, at the very least. Pretty sure walking + more street lights is far more environmentally friendly than driving + no street lights at all. The responsibility lies squarely with the driver. Starts with the driver, stops with the driver. Lack of proper lighting can be a contributing factor, but it's the driver's responsibility to account for that. And all this muddying the waters, with this "yeah but was your hat blinking", is unhelpful.

kennywinker 5y ago

Yeeesh. Idk if it was intended that way, but this comes off very victim-blamey. So let's get an alternate take: 80% at night - drivers should be forced to slow down at night. They can't see and avoid pedestrians as well. 33% involve a drunk pedestrian - the implication of this is that without constant vigilance, your safety is in great danger. This agrees strongly with the "20% are elderly" stat. You ability as an able-bodied person to actively avoid cars is the only thing keeping you alive.

belorn 5y ago
> You ability as an able-bodied person to actively avoid cars is the only thing keeping you alive. That is true. One misstep near a busy road can easily result in death. The only way to fix this 100% is separating roads from pedestrian with a physical barrier, or remove the cars from the places where people live. Even at the lowish speed limit of 18miles/h (30km/h) there is around 25 meters/81 feet of stopping distance which can easily kill a person if the cars wheels goes over someone. Here in Sweden there is a general rule that all roads near places where children are must be 30km/h or lower (school, sports areas, and so on). Maybe it would be useful to extend this to also cover areas where alcohol is likely to be consumed. It won't reduce it to 0 deaths, but it might reduce the number of collisions that has a lethal outcome.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > Even at the lowish speed limit of 18miles/h (30km/h) there is around 25 meters/81 feet of stopping distance That seems extremely long. I always used the rule of thumb that the braking distance from 20 mph is 20 feet and it’s a quadratic function of speed. You would need to add a full 2 seconds of non-reaction time to get to 79 feet from 20mph.
  - belorn 5y ago
    I used 2.5 seconds. It is dark, the driver is tired and can not predict the behavior of the drunk pedestrian, and in times like now it might also be snow/ice. Road safety is part worst case scenarios and part about mitigation. It is why drivers here are trained that children will at any point run out on the road during play without them thinking. Children behavior are more unpredictable compared to adults and so it is the drivers responsibility to be vigilant against what they can't foresee.