3 ms·

Can you show me this crosswalk on Streetview? I'm trying to get an idea of the kinds of environments people are talking about in this thread (I'm non-American).

• sethammons 5y ago
  Here is the exact intersection. It looks safer than it is (or was, I've since moved far away). https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7878268,-117.8588114,3a,75y,72.64h,88.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUVDQOb0I-hmAlddL6IX-lg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7878268,-117.8588114,3a,75y,...
  • _dain_ 5y ago
    That doesn't look safe at all. Five lanes! And you have to cross them all in one go, with no signaling!!! My goodness. Such a thing would never be constructed here (UK)*. There would be, at minimum, a protected pedestrian island in the middle, so that in crossing you only need to look in one direction at a time. Almost always a set of pedestrian-controlled traffic lights too. In the Netherlands they might even go a step further and put in a continuous sidewalk (i.e. the surface the pedestrians walk on remains at the same level as the sidewalk, so that cars have to rise onto it like a speedbump). Here is an example comparable to yours: a 4-lane major road intersecting perpendicularly with a 2-lane minor road. Pedestrians have controlled crossings across the major part, and protected islands so they never have to cross more than two lanes in one go: https://goo.gl/maps/MYbcyPgQZD1PMAL69 https://goo.gl/maps/MYbcyPgQZD1PMAL69 This design is standard everywhere. And it isn't even optimal (it doesn't accommodate cyclists very well). *If you searched high and low across the country you might find a counterexample or two, but the fact remains that this kind of junction is thoroughly alien to the British built environment.