3 ms·

Just to state the "obvious": the reason people cross at intersections is because that is one place on the road where there are stop lights! Well, usually. It's

by rtpg 4y ago

Just to state the "obvious": the reason people cross at intersections is because that is one place on the road where there are stop lights! Well, usually. It's banking off of existing stops for cars. It's funny to think about how the grid layout of cities like NYC mean that it's too tempting to just put crosswalks at intersections since there are so many of them, but in other cities you often have crosswalks away from intersections as well. Some of them have lights associated with them. The fact of the matter is that no matter how careful a pedestrian tries to be, given how roads tend to be often used by cars if you don't want to wait around for 10 minutes having cars yield in one way or another is important. But given how dangerous intersections are in general, I wonder how much safer it would be to just paint a lot of crosswalks _everywhere_ and apply the whole "you have to stop if someone looks like they're crossing" logic.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
There's all sorts of ways to make crossings safer. One can raise crosswalks, add bulb-outs to intersections to give cars better sightlines in an intersection and slow them down, push most pedestrian collision liability to the driver, add traffic lights, place Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons/HAWK signals, etc etc. There's a lot of fascinating resources on this stuff. In the US the problem is that most traffic engineers and local politicians are skeptical that anyone will do anything but drive. When proposing pedestrian-oriented changes most local politicians and engineers will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety. EDIT: I don't mean "will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety" in a conspiratorial way. I mean legitimately, they'll balk at slowing down car trip times or having to field angry motorist resident complaints to help save pedestrian lives. Many of them genuinely don't think that people walk unless they have no other option (perceived homeless, mentally ill, disabled, etc.) or are out for sightseeing.

by rtpg 4y ago

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

There's all sorts of ways to make crossings safer. One can raise crosswalks, add bulb-outs to intersections to give cars better sightlines in an intersection and slow them down, push most pedestrian collision liability to the driver, add traffic lights, place Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons/HAWK signals, etc etc. There's a lot of fascinating resources on this stuff. In the US the problem is that most traffic engineers and local politicians are skeptical that anyone will do anything but drive. When proposing pedestrian-oriented changes most local politicians and engineers will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety. EDIT: I don't mean "will place vehicle throughput above pedestrian safety" in a conspiratorial way. I mean legitimately, they'll balk at slowing down car trip times or having to field angry motorist resident complaints to help save pedestrian lives. Many of them genuinely don't think that people walk unless they have no other option (perceived homeless, mentally ill, disabled, etc.) or are out for sightseeing.