7 ms·

Why is this a reckless driving question and not a reckless pedestrian question?

dncornholio 5y ago
Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. This question baffles me because where I'm from, hitting a pedestrian or biker with your car, the car driver is almost always 100% liable. And it works. Cars don't want to hit cyclists or pedestrians because they don't want to pay, and cyclists/pedestrians don't want to hit cars because they want to stay alive.
- dqv 5y ago
  >Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. Do they? Where I live, at night, no one ever wears reflectors, save a few cyclists. It seems like people don’t think about this at all. You’re walking around at night and someone driving a car doesn’t see you until it’s too late. I think there is some merit to asking the question about how pedestrians can be safer. I’m happy to practice what I preach and wear reflectors at night but it seems that pedestrians are ignorant about their visibility. You can only be so safe driving a car, it’s not feasible to drive 5mph everywhere you go.
  - dncornholio 5y ago
    Where are you walking around where a car might hit you though? Are there no sidewalks? Infrastructure needs to be build around pedestrians and cyclists. The youtube channel "Not Just Bikes" shows how it can be done.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      When I drive in Cambridge, I find people dressed in dark clothes constantly darting out to cross streets at random locations at night. As a driver am I alert and keep my speed down? Absolutely. But many pedestrians and cyclists absolutely behave recklessly.
    - dqv 5y ago
      Plenty of sidewalks. Not everyone wants to use them for some reason. There is also the issue of crossing the street where there aren’t crosswalks. I am aware of Not Just Bikes, but that doesn’t remove the need for pedestrians to have awareness of their visibility in car-centric areas.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    Why on earth should the responsibility be on pedestrians to wear reflectors? That is _preposterous_. What's next, they should wear license plates and helmets? Something is deeply wrong about the built environment that such an indignity is even considered. If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices. See also: all of these bright yellow illuminated retroreflective bollards that should have made themselves more visible: https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/new-road-safety-campaign-calls-for-greater-visibility-on-the-roads/ https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/new-road-s...
    - dqv 5y ago
      >If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars They can get around just fine, they just don't want to walk further to get to the crosswalks, which is fine, but I think it's reasonable to ask people to wear reflectors as a trade off. I also can't exactly expect drivers new to the area to intuitively know where someone might decide to cross at night. Thus reflectors. When I see someone walking on the sidewalk, I slow down (even though it's not necessary given the amount of space between the road and the sidewalk). If I can't see that anyone is on the sidewalk at night, how am I going to know to do that? I want people to wear reflectors so I can give them a lot of space to feel safe not because I think it's their fault if they get hit. >If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices. Yes, but saying this doesn't just magically make the problem go away. I also think people should wear reflectors at night regardless. When I'm walking around at night, in low-visibility areas, people seem to appear out of nowhere and I'd prefer to keep my distance.
      - _dain_ 5y ago
        I'll wear reflectors while walking as soon as drivers wear helmets while driving.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  > Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. Exactly. So it seems to me the pedestrian would want to avoid the 4 ton vehicular machines and the law here differs from common sense in my opinion. Seems to me... by virtue of being a 4 ton death machine...the auto should have the right of way in almost every case against a small fleshy pedestrian.
QuarterReptile 5y ago
At the risk of taking seriously a sarcastic comment (and doing it by responding instead of downvoting): it's a combination of higher value land use and the magnitude of outcomes. Drivers kill people, make noise, pollution, smells, are expensive to accommodate, and take up a lot of space. People may dent cars while they are being killed, do not have loud engines, have negligible emissions, and generally improve places around them by being present and engaging in commerce. People are also much smaller. Extremely valuable places have lots of people interacting. Low value-per-acre places accommodate cars well. When there is a conflict between the two, the higher value-per-acre use should be expected to win because, by the mechanism that we use to allocate the space (money), the higher value use is, by definition, better. Also, from a perspective of what was there first (another principle of ownership): unarmored, walking people are the default state of humans. Armored 4-ton 65mph people are a recent change and a very expensive change, at that. So it stands to reason that we prefer the pre-existing state (though not by the US American traffic engineering system.) There is also an ethical principle deriving from Judaism, and expanded by Christianity, which says that all people have intrinsic value and by extension should not be killed. This intrinsic value is accepted in western culture and is taken to apply to all people, whether they are too disabled to drive a car, too young to drive, too old to drive, or too poor to drive. I know this is just a small sampling of the answer to your question, but I don't want to get too tedious here.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  To me it stands to reason that the armored 4 ton machine wins the battle every time against a small fleshy pedestrian. So the pedestrian should really be the one avoiding the auto.

Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. This question baffles me because where I'm from, hitting a pedestrian or biker with your car, the car driver is almost always 100% liable. And it works. Cars don't want to hit cyclists or pedestrians because they don't want to pay, and cyclists/pedestrians don't want to hit cars because they want to stay alive.

dqv 5y ago
>Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. Do they? Where I live, at night, no one ever wears reflectors, save a few cyclists. It seems like people don’t think about this at all. You’re walking around at night and someone driving a car doesn’t see you until it’s too late. I think there is some merit to asking the question about how pedestrians can be safer. I’m happy to practice what I preach and wear reflectors at night but it seems that pedestrians are ignorant about their visibility. You can only be so safe driving a car, it’s not feasible to drive 5mph everywhere you go.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  Where are you walking around where a car might hit you though? Are there no sidewalks? Infrastructure needs to be build around pedestrians and cyclists. The youtube channel "Not Just Bikes" shows how it can be done.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    When I drive in Cambridge, I find people dressed in dark clothes constantly darting out to cross streets at random locations at night. As a driver am I alert and keep my speed down? Absolutely. But many pedestrians and cyclists absolutely behave recklessly.
  - dqv 5y ago
    Plenty of sidewalks. Not everyone wants to use them for some reason. There is also the issue of crossing the street where there aren’t crosswalks. I am aware of Not Just Bikes, but that doesn’t remove the need for pedestrians to have awareness of their visibility in car-centric areas.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Why on earth should the responsibility be on pedestrians to wear reflectors? That is _preposterous_. What's next, they should wear license plates and helmets? Something is deeply wrong about the built environment that such an indignity is even considered. If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices. See also: all of these bright yellow illuminated retroreflective bollards that should have made themselves more visible: https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/new-road-safety-campaign-calls-for-greater-visibility-on-the-roads/ https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/new-road-s...
  - dqv 5y ago
    >If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars They can get around just fine, they just don't want to walk further to get to the crosswalks, which is fine, but I think it's reasonable to ask people to wear reflectors as a trade off. I also can't exactly expect drivers new to the area to intuitively know where someone might decide to cross at night. Thus reflectors. When I see someone walking on the sidewalk, I slow down (even though it's not necessary given the amount of space between the road and the sidewalk). If I can't see that anyone is on the sidewalk at night, how am I going to know to do that? I want people to wear reflectors so I can give them a lot of space to feel safe not because I think it's their fault if they get hit. >If pedestrians cannot get around at night without wearing ridiculous fluorescent outfits because of the danger of cars, then the problem is with the cars, not the pedestrians' fashion choices. Yes, but saying this doesn't just magically make the problem go away. I also think people should wear reflectors at night regardless. When I'm walking around at night, in low-visibility areas, people seem to appear out of nowhere and I'd prefer to keep my distance.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      I'll wear reflectors while walking as soon as drivers wear helmets while driving.
edmcnulty101 5y ago
> Because pedestrians have the intrinsic motivation of not wanting to die. Exactly. So it seems to me the pedestrian would want to avoid the 4 ton vehicular machines and the law here differs from common sense in my opinion. Seems to me... by virtue of being a 4 ton death machine...the auto should have the right of way in almost every case against a small fleshy pedestrian.

QuarterReptile 5y ago

At the risk of taking seriously a sarcastic comment (and doing it by responding instead of downvoting): it's a combination of higher value land use and the magnitude of outcomes. Drivers kill people, make noise, pollution, smells, are expensive to accommodate, and take up a lot of space. People may dent cars while they are being killed, do not have loud engines, have negligible emissions, and generally improve places around them by being present and engaging in commerce. People are also much smaller. Extremely valuable places have lots of people interacting. Low value-per-acre places accommodate cars well. When there is a conflict between the two, the higher value-per-acre use should be expected to win because, by the mechanism that we use to allocate the space (money), the higher value use is, by definition, better. Also, from a perspective of what was there first (another principle of ownership): unarmored, walking people are the default state of humans. Armored 4-ton 65mph people are a recent change and a very expensive change, at that. So it stands to reason that we prefer the pre-existing state (though not by the US American traffic engineering system.) There is also an ethical principle deriving from Judaism, and expanded by Christianity, which says that all people have intrinsic value and by extension should not be killed. This intrinsic value is accepted in western culture and is taken to apply to all people, whether they are too disabled to drive a car, too young to drive, too old to drive, or too poor to drive. I know this is just a small sampling of the answer to your question, but I don't want to get too tedious here.

edmcnulty101 5y ago
To me it stands to reason that the armored 4 ton machine wins the battle every time against a small fleshy pedestrian. So the pedestrian should really be the one avoiding the auto.