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I guess pickup trucks fall under the category of SUVs? It's wild how we've lost access to our streets and neighbourhoods for the convenience of mostly suburban

I guess pickup trucks fall under the category of SUVs? It's wild how we've lost access to our streets and neighbourhoods for the convenience of mostly suburban vehicle users. Actually not wild, but disgraceful. The majority of roads are too wide and with little options for alternative modes of transport, drivers are growingly frustrated and angry on the road. We continue to make the mistake of thinking the solution is wider roads. An incredible policy and prioritization failure. That said, it would take very little work and money to fix the problems. Road diets (as pointed out by the article) and tactical infrastructure is cheap and the solutions are well known. The spend will be a drop in the bucket compared to most other budgets.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
In many areas, it would take a ton of work in the effort of making destinations closer to each other. Huge parking lots, setbacks, wide roads, and detached houses on their own quarter, or even eighth, of an acre lot make it so the choice between walking/bicycling and using a personal car is not much of a choice. Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is due to how infrequently it would run, and the cost of missed or missing buses/trains, which again, run infrequently due to lack of density of people. Plus the separation of commercial zones and residential zones mean public transport is always going to one specific area, and so if you have any interest in traveling outside the central core, you are once again depending on a personal car.
- luxurytent 3y ago
  Yes, some areas in particular the big box developments are almost a lost cause. What needs to happen to those first is large, dense development within the plazas. Build residential on top of the mall, remove parking lots (or move them underground), and densify first. Once you move that needle, you can focus on active transport options. The type of development I describe is happening (two examples in my Canadian city). Ultimately the evolution of a poorly built model.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    "Densification" can eaily lead to poorer quality of life and oppressive housing, though. There is a middle ground, I think. I like individual houses with gardens (most people do, I think) with a size such that convenience stores are viable and reacheable on foot. It's like that in my area (England): good size houses but it's dense enough that I can walk to 2-3 different convenience stores when I need a few things, with a Post Office counter in one of those stores. In Europe there are also plenty of small scale 'appartment buildings', say 3 to 5 floors surrounded by some greenery and a small carpark, which I think works well, too. A random example in France (near a world famous tourist site): https://goo.gl/maps/avKMYuRAfgxq3gvM9 https://goo.gl/maps/avKMYuRAfgxq3gvM9 (that area is also built around a big shopping centre, which is therefore within walking distance). The bigger it gets the higher the likelihood that it becomes shit.
    - Lukas_Skywalker 3y ago
      In the parts of Europe I lived in (France, Switzerland, Sweden) there is one additional important thing: there is usually at most one parking space per apartment. This makes everything already a lot denser.
    - foxyv 3y ago
      > "Densification" can eaily lead to poorer quality of life and oppressive housing, though. Where I lived, there used to be tons of orange groves, beautiful natural areas, trails, and fields to ride your bike through. They all turned into suburban houses. Tracts of homes with huge offsets. Cars zooming by at 60 mph on streets so wide it takes half a minute to cross them on foot, all while dodging cars. Some people try to make it sound like densification will lead to Soviet era buildings or everyone living in Skyscrapers. But it mostly just leads to the city staying in the city instead of spreading out like a cancerous tumor across farmland and nature.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      What is your definition of a convenience store? To me, a convenience store sells candy, snacks, beverages, sometimes coffee and rather nasty hot prepared food, vapes and tobacco products. 95% of what a convenience store sells is stuff that you really should not be eating. Perhaps they'll have a small basket of apples or bananas, but they are a far cry from the small grocery stores I've seen in European neighborhoods that stock a reasonable selection of produce as well as meat, dairy, and dry goods. In the USA, I think many people would view having a "convenience store" in their neighborhood as a negative thing. I know I would.
- pkulak 3y ago
  Sure, turning Houston into Madrid would be very hard. But this is one of the most incrementally solvable problems I've ever seen. There are hundreds of low-cost, low-effort ways to start making things better.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    In the handful jurisdictions where I am familiar with zoning laws and the permitting process, low cost and low effort is not how I would describe any part of even a straightforward approval. Lord help you if you need a variance, and I cannot even imagine what eminent domain on that scale would look like. I do not see how the change would even be possible without tearing buildings down and building new ones closer to each other, and to do it legislatively adds unimaginable legal expenses, I presume. Edit: Also note the popular local opinion in many places is keeping a place car dependent means the population who cannot afford a car is kept out.
    - pkulak 3y ago
      I meant stuff like city counsel passing a new zoning law. Maybe some concrete bollards to make a protected bike lane. Run a few more busses and trains. That kind of thing.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        My point is that does nothing, because the root problem of destinations being too far from one another is not addressed. A few more buses and trains are not going to cut it. You need to outcompete the convenience of a personal car. The bus or train has to run at least every 10min, otherwise one missed connection and you’re wasting 20min+ with your refrigerated groceries. And that type of frequency is simply not economical without density. Chicken and egg at this point. Best case scenario is to build outwards from already dense areas, but it will involve eminent domain and demolishing buildings and parking lots to make new ones that are pedestrian friendly and hostile to cars.
        3y ago
- VirusNewbie 3y ago
  Are pedestrian and bike bridged out of the question?
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    In my opinion, yes. At its root, it’s simply physics. Once the distances between destinations becomes sufficiently large, it is impossible, especially for the elderly or children. Search for Target/Costco/Best Buy/Walmart/Kroger/mall and do a street view in US suburbs and see if you can walk those distances carrying things. You could easily be looking at a quarter mile just from one store entrance to its adjacent store entrance, or even crossing the road which is usually 8+ lanes.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    Pedestrian and bike bridges are car infrastructure. You can tell because they make the person who is moving under their own power, climb a set of stairs, walk across the bridge, and then walk down the stairs. In the meantime, the most vulnerable road users (Disabled people) have to cross 2 miles down the road at a deadly intersection. All the while, people who are sitting in air conditioned motorized vehicles have a straight level crossing. In my opinion, if you can't afford to build an at grade crossing for pedestrians with a car underpass, you should close the road to cars, or lower speeds 15 mph with chicanes and raised crossings. Making people climb stairs to cross the road is insane.
    - VirusNewbie 3y ago
      Considering how much of the country is suburbs with large streets or freeways separating housing tracts from shopping centers, is your proposal really to close those freeways and arterial streets down? Or just demolish all the homes that are there and move those people to higher density areas? I'm sympathetic to the idea of building new large developments in a non car centric fashion, but how do you do this with the majority of existing areas.
      - foxyv 3y ago
        To be honest, the majority of existing areas will probably go bankrupt as densification happens, plunging the value of cookie cutter, match stick homes to be bulldozed and hopefully re-wilded. Most of suburbia is already going bankrupt. The roads, sewers, pipes, and electrical wires are falling apart because they are too expensive to maintain. All it takes is one company to move out or the land to run out before they start to spiral. San Bernardino CA is a good example. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-dead-forever-2010-9#flint-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-...
- johnea 3y ago
  In this analysis, pickup trucks and SUVs are identical, in that they have high vertical grills that obstruct the driver's view of the area immediately in front of the vehicle. This vehicle configuration is the major cause of the increase in pedistrian accidents. However I was surprised the article didn't mention pedestrian behavior at all, which is clearly increasing the risk of pedistrian accidents in recent years. My experiences with pedistrian near misses have been when people step in front of my car while staring at their phone. The worst cases being mid-block, at night, while the pedestrian was wearing all black. Walkable cities are awesome! Unfortunately in the US the overwhelming majority of places offer very poor, or no, mass transit and cars are still the only practiucal means of transportation.
- stephencanon 3y ago
  Lot size isn't really the issue, it's having big swathes of land zoned all-residential or all-commercial. We live in a small college town with mostly half- to one-acre lots outside of the downtown core, but we walk and bike everywhere most of the year because it's an actual town laid out before cars, with pockets of not-housing spread out among houses, and no wastelands of giant retail parking lots. I would really like to get more infill development and smaller lots, personally, but just for the sake of preserving open space. It's easy to walk and bike in actual cities and towns already. Suburbs are the issue, because they are entirely planned around cars.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  As true as that is, I'd be happy just with attention being paid to sidewalks and protected bike paths. I live in an area with a grocery store that is well within biking distance. But it is on the other side of a four lane road and there's no safe way to get a bike across it. In other parts of the state, there are housing developments within walking distance of grocery stores, but no sidewalks. It isn't uncommon to see people get in their car to go to the mail kiosk 2 blocks away, in part because of the lack of sidewalks.
- bichiliad 3y ago
  > Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is due to how infrequently it would run, and the cost of missed or missing buses/trains, which again, run infrequently due to lack of density of people. I think it depends on where you are, but useful public transit is very possible in most places. Low frequency is the result of poor planning, not a requirement of public transit.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Low frequency is the result of poor planning Not in my experience. It has more to do with funding. We have a specific tax levied just for transit, and people don't vote to increase it.
    - bichiliad 3y ago
      I'm treating them as one and the same here. My point is more that it's not endemic of public transit itself, but the way it's implemented (and supported and funded).
- bannedbybros 3y ago
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- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is I love how even people with radical anti-car discourse just shrugs it away and never even stop to think that half of that catch-22 problem can be solved by just the government spending some money on running empty buses. No social reorganization, no legal change, no non-popular choice; just spending what is pennies compared to transit infrastructure.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I am speaking more to the political possibility. Things like increasing car parking costs, removing car parking, and spending money on more frequent buses is feasible, but politically impossible. Sufficient voters will have sufficient resources to own and store their own car, and they are going to want to use it, and they are not going to want to spend money on empty buses.
  - goosedragons 3y ago
    And make those buses have dedicated lanes cars can't use. It is amazing how nice a bus can be when it's not stuck in the same shitty traffic as all the cars.
    - strix_varius 3y ago
      Exactly - this tactic converts busses from "shitty cars that stop all the time" to "faster, huge cars with a built-in chauffeur."
  - supertrope 3y ago
    One of the most important factors in whether someone will vote for a transit tax if is they can imagine riding it themself. Since the current system sucks people can't imagine that and they vote no. Which keeps these networks starved of resources. Meanwhile legislators approve billions for highways every year. Zoning laws and minimum parking laws are kept in place. Every time gasoline prices increase politicians seek to sooth voters/motorists.
- royaltheartist 3y ago
  I think it's difficult to make cities more dense if viewed as just strictly taking the current cities and trying to condense them, but that also seems like the less productive way to do it First and foremost is that the US government itself needs to change how it gives out funds. Instead of emphasizing car and highway development over all, it should give money for cities which plan out multiple modes of transit and also develop 20-30 year maintenance plans (infrastructure maintenance is not currently factored into development). This would result in cities being financially incentivized to build for things other than car traffic throughput The next place to start is with the new developments, giving them new regulations for how streets should be placed, reducing regulations involving setbacks, lot size, parking and allocating more land to mixed used or denser building, rather than single-family detached housing As time goes on and roads need repairs, cities can use those as opportunities to connect cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, fix intersections (remove traffic lights, add roundabouts) and properly segregate public transit routes from private vehicle routes It's a long process but cities only need to change the rules now and start building better developments. People will move to them over time, and they'll be able to convert older developments as people move out of them over time. The thing that needs to change first, though, is the attitude and belief that car travel above all else needs to be heavily subsidized at the expense of everything else, only then will federal, state and local governments be able to begin making space for people
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  There is so much land available in the form of parking lots, and so much unmet housing demand, that you could reasonably infill your standard mall or big box lot if zoning allows. A lot of malls have been doing this since retail has been in free fall for quite some time.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  Fixing bad infrastructure takes time, but you don't even need that to reduce pedestrian deaths. If only people had smaller vehicles the rate of survival would go way up. I could pretty easily imagine a sliding vehicle tax scale where safer, more practical sub-compacts and minivans are subsidized by the mega-lifted land yacht SUVs and pickups. Sure it doesn't fix the design problems of cities, but it at least means the vehicles that are traversing them aren't as likely to kill and maim people while we sort out the other problems.
  - strix_varius 3y ago
    We wouldn't even need to change taxes if we just stopped subsidizing gas. Fuel would cost about $12.75 per gallon, naturally making the Prius significantly cheaper to operate than the F-150.
pkulak 3y ago
> drivers are growingly frustrated and angry Good luck making policy changes against the wishes of a majority population that's frustrated and angry as it is. We are in deep, deep trouble. Not only are we not removing lanes and giving space back to people, we're still adding lane miles in every city in America. Even my "urbanist" home town of Portland Oregon is about to spend billions to add a few dozen lane miles to an urban freeway that already destroys the entire East bank of our waterfront and a couple historic neighborhoods, and is used mostly by people and companies that don't live here.
- InSteady 3y ago
  Shame we can't instead invest billions into making public transit, especially the max lines running from the suburbs into downtown, far more efficient as a practical solution for commuters. The Esplanade is one of my favorite bike routes in the city, second only to the Springwater corridor. I love cruising up the East side and back on the West side while looking out over the Willamette. I'm going to be sad if that route gets all fucked up, and all just to add a few lanes that simply induce more demand and do nothing to solve traffic problems in the long run. I hate to be that guy, but its inescapable.. cars (as currently conceived and implemented) are a blight on humanity.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    If only we could have made max more like a real urban rail system instead of a toy. It's brutally slow, especially if you are unfortunate enough to take it through downtown Portland.
    - pkulak 3y ago
      That really needs to be fixed. I live in NE, and if I need to go to Beaverton, I ride my bike to the West side of downtown to catch the Max there. It saves 30 full minutes. They need to get rid of half the downtown stops.
  - loco5niner 3y ago
    I'm hesitant to take the Max in Portland because of the homeless/drug problem and I'm a fairly big guy in the prime of life. Definitely not taking my family. I LOVE being able to cart my kids around in my perfectly sized and designed mini-van.
ecshafer 3y ago
This is a relatively easy fix. Remove zoning regulation and the market should build towards denser towns. It is outright illegal to build dense right now in most of the US. There are other ares that need to be fixed that all exacerbate the issue: The NHSTA recommends large wide roads for moving vehicles faster, CAFE standards makes cars heavier and larger since trucks / suvs don't have the same regulations, FHA loans require developments are built with curvy roads and not grids. We need laws that prioritize pedestrians and bikers, force cars to be smaller through regulation and taxes.
- BorgHunter 3y ago
  Is zoning regulation as a concept really the root cause, though? Houston famously has no zoning code and is fairly lax with land use generally (although it isn't completely the Wild West), and it isn't very dense. It seems like zoning could even be a key part of the solution, being a tool that could be used to mandate that new construction be more dense around mass transit hubs, for instance. There are lots of anti-density zoning regulations that should be reformed, it's true, but throwing the whole thing out seems like overkill to me.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    Houston has zoning codes but by a different name. They use Deed restrictions which functionally act as zoning. Japan has the right solution though. Japan has a national level zoning that is black list based as opposed to white list, also it only has a few categories. In the US a town says "You can only build homes here with these requirements". In Japan you can build homes anywhere, and light commercial anywhere. So only heavy commercial and industry is effectively limited. In fact their "light industrial use" zones is where something like 60% of people live.
  - ryukafalz 3y ago
    Houston might not have something specifically called a "zoning code" but it has plenty of the sorts of regulations that lead to sprawl. Take a look at this table of parking requirements for Houston, and keep in mind that a typical parking space takes up 320 square feet: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/parking_req.pdf https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/par...
johnea 3y ago
In this analysis, pickup trucks and SUVs are identical, in that they have high vertical grills that obstruct the driver's view of the area immediately in front of the vehicle. This vehicle configuration is the major cause of the increase in pedistrian accidents. However I was surprised the article didn't mention pedestrian behavior at all, which is clearly increasing the risk of pedistrian accidents in recent years. My experiences with pedistrian near misses have been when people step in front of my car while staring at their phone. The worst cases being mid-block, at night, while the pedestrian was wearing all black. Walkable cities are awesome! Unfortunately in the US the overwhelming majority of places offer very poor, or no, mass transit and cars are still the only practiucal means of transportation.
- ahoy 3y ago
  I don't think analyzing this issue from the perspective of individual interactions is useful. Even in safe, walkable cities, some pedestrians will be reckless. Even in Phoenix AZ, some drivers will be courteous toward walkers. All that disappears in the aggregate though, and we're left with the fact that the built environment is the main factor dictating how we interact on our streets. We build wide roads and build huge dangerous vehicles to go very fast on them. That's the issue.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  How many times are you going to copy and paste the same comment in replay to different parents? I see you do that a lot, and it doesn't seem productive.
- loco5niner 3y ago
  Agreed. A pedestrian recently got themselves killed near my house by darting right into the rode in front of a driver who was going under 35 mph in a 35. Driver had no chance to avoid him. The pedestrian didn't even turn their head before being hit and was likely high or drunk (per the local business owner who was familiar with him).
jmclnx 3y ago
Yes they do now, in my State, until I think 30 or 40 years ago, pickups had to register as commercial and had to follow laws specific to them and pay more taxes. Some lows restricts commercial vehicles from many roads. I suspect it was a move by Reagan when he deregulated the trucking industry. I think if a vehicle meet specific weight and size criteria, it needs to pay more and have restrictions. These new big pickups and SUVs fully meet that criteria. >The majority of roads are too wide Actually in my state it is the opposite. Most roads are way too narrow. When two large pickups are driving at each other, one needs to pull over.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  In California, pickups are still registered as commercial vehicles. This comes as a surprise to some first-time truck buyers. The new Rivian R1T is registered commercial and weighs over 3 tons, bringing further restrictions as to the places and times it can be driven or parked. Again, surprising some buyers.
  - briandear 3y ago
    Not true. I had a Tacoma that was not commercial registered. This was two years ago.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      OK, go ahead and prove that with photographs or something. Because it's quite clear in the law that if you have a pickup truck it is to be registered as a commercial vehicle, unless it has a fixed camper top or other thing that permanently covers the bed. That's why almost* every pickup truck in CA has commercial plates distinguished by their format of a single letter and six digits, instead of three letters and four digits. * almost, because you can still get custom vanity plates on pickups.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    That is untrue. Passenger vehicles are specifically excluded. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/new-registration/commercial-vehicle-registration https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/new-regis... You may be thinking of the classification they apply to pickup trucks that costs like $24. They have no additional regulation as a commercial vehicle unless you're using them, well, commercially.
glimshe 3y ago
My suburb does as much as it can to make itself walkable. There are crossings and sidewalks everywhere, but it's still a low density suburb so it doesn't make much sense to walk almost anywhere (my kid does walk to school as it happens to be close, but that's it). So while they are trying to address this problem, very few people actually walk. But all of this said, I want low density. Having lived many years in a high density ant colony (aka "walkable city"), I want nothing to do with that. Keep your high rises to yourself. I think that high density living is inhuman. I respect your opinion, but we don't think alike. And I promise to not mess with your lifestyle if you don't mess with mine, we can all live together many miles apart. I want the convenience of a drivable suburb with wide roads where everything I care about is just a 5-10min drive away and I'm willing to pay for these roads and the electricity/gas to take me where I want to go. I exercise every morning by walking around for 45 min in my cookie cutter neighborhood; the air is pure and it's a joy to walk around trees, ducks and birds instead of buses, cabs, people sneezing etc.
- scrollaway 3y ago
  A walkable city doesn’t have to be an ant colony. American exceptionalism really is hard to grasp sometimes. Take a look at a city like Brussels to understand how a capital city can be both walkable and high density without being Seoul.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Hell you can probably look at Seoul, assuming it’s anything like Tokyo or London you have a very long tail of dense but pretty low outer rings.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  Curious, have you considered the in-between here? Consider medium-density European cities, which still have massively higher density suburbs, but rarely the density -- combined employment and population densities -- of the urban core of most American cities. I hated living in Seattle, but I'm now an American finding I enjoy living in London. I walk around trees and birds every day, because I have good park access, and I can walk to them without having to worry about car traffic. For what it's worth, by the way, you almost certainly AREN'T willing to pay for the infrastructure that supports you: Suburbs are almost overwhelmingly economically supported by cities. I hate NotJustBikes (his self-righteous attitude is just awful), but he does have a great video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
S_A_P 3y ago
I understand the sentiment, but is it these assault vehicles at fault here? I tend to think that the real problem is distracted driving, since EVERYONE from the smallest Kia on the street to the biggest lifted truck seems to have trouble staying off their phones while driving.
- luxurytent 3y ago
  ¿Por Qué No Los Dos?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mrbabbage 3y ago
  How does distracted driving explain increasing pedestrian death rates in America while death rates are flat or down [1] in other industrialized countries? Unless there's a reason why distracted driving particularly affects America, I don't think it can explain this trend. [1] https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/Table?IndicatorCode=59 https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/Table?IndicatorCode=59
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    There could be a number of reasons from average vehicle size to urban planning norms to pedestrian culture. Maybe we jaywalk more on more dangerous roads with larger vehicles with less visibility and our fat bodies have larger hit boxes.
    - atlasunshrugged 3y ago
      I think the majority of the increased deaths are probably from the higher grills and weight -- instead of tumbling over the hood of a sedan, you get hit center mass by a truck or SUV which is far more damaging. That said, great point on jaywalking more, compared to when I was living in Germany or Estonia, we jaywalk far more (and engage in riskier activities in roadways like with scooters and ATVs) than those places.
- 3y ago
winternett 3y ago
In Washington DC, ridesharing has taken over. I think if someone truly correlated this, they'd find that having a bunch of untrained and self regulated rideshare drivers contributes greatly to these troubling statistics. Cities are also flooding roads with inexperienced bike and scooter riders on faulty equipment in favor of the revenue it provides, cities also have not updated traffic light infrastructure since the 50s... The biggest innovation to come to traffic control are simply speed cameras, which dramatically reduced police on streets. It's all be a chaotic mess and cities also lobby their policies online, hiring private companies to provide spin and brigade online on sites like reddit in favor of their failed policies. DC years ago introduced a campaign that everyone should stop for pedestrians in crosswalks (green light or not) and that has empowered some to walk into streets even when they are not clear. Cities have also turned already congested traffic lanes now into bike lanes, while bicycle traffic is untaxed to fun the arrangement. The aforementioned change also completely removes parking which existed before, leaving driver to double park and dangerously block traffic. The combination of frustrated drivers and frustrated pedestrians is a toxic mix. Many cities and states have been reducing speed limits in the past years since the pandemic to increase their ability to give out citations, despite cars being safer. more efficient, and able to stop faster now than ever. The changes being made now contradict logic as the demand to be on time increases more and more, and the statistics are showing deaths are going up. In my opinion, separating traffic by type would go a much farther way to encourage safety. Innovation should also be centered around a smarter traffic light system, on separating traffic lanes and routes, and and in better and more affordable parking arrangements in every city. It's not a complex problem, the problem is that decision makers are often high on individual bias and not routed in reason to conquer this issue. Perhaps the decision makers need to be look at more closely, and held accountable for their continual failure to bring the number of casualties downward.
- rimunroe 3y ago
  I'm surprised you wouldn't always be required to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Vehicles going fast speeding in dense areas are a huge driver of pedestrian fatalities so reducing speed limits sounds great to me. I've heard that lowering the speed limit from 35 to 25 mph can actually increase average throughput in cities by calming traffic. Here in Massachusetts we're trying to make it legal to use automatic speed limit enforcement (cameras with license plate readers detecting speeding vehicles). Bicycle traffic does far less to wear down roads and other infrastructure than vehicle traffic. They simply aren't comparable. They also have a number of ancillary benefits for the city, like increasing income from local businesses (even accounting for decreased curbside parking!). Barrier separated transport is great for cyclists (and pedestrians), but not if it means restricting cyclists to only riding in bicycle lanes. If you limited cyclists to only riding in places where they had dedicated pathways you'd vastly reduce the practicality of riding in any US city I've been to. I personally feel much safer riding on streets when there are more cyclists around me. It feels like the motorists are more likely to keep an eye out and not do something careless. We could also try and force automakers to make safer "light trucks", as they're currently much more dangerous than This article[1] suggests the rate of pedestrian fatalities by vehicle type is 50% higher for light trucks than for cars per mile driven. It's baffling that we allow such large and dangerously-designed vehicles on the road. [1] https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232 https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232
pxc 3y ago
> We continue to make the mistake of thinking the solution is wider roads. I swear, bro. Just let me build one more lane. I swear we're gonna fix traffic. https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE
barbariangrunge 3y ago
I live in a small town with... not enough sidewalks. I try to walk my dog, but half the streets where I live, I have to walk on the street or else on people's lawns. I definitely walk a lot less because of it Not really a systemic issue in this case, just a pet peeve
- pastage 3y ago
  If anything designing a neighborhood with no sidewalks must be a systemic issue?
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    It's just one town. Doesn't necessarily apply to the other towns or cities nearby
    - pastage 3y ago
      It is very common if street view is anything to go on.
christophilus 3y ago
I watched a movie (I think from the 50s), and it was amazing to see people ambling casually through the streets, and cars driving slowly and carefully to avoid them as if streets were for people, and cars were the intruder. I'd love to recapture that aspect of the past.
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  Which movie?
LarryDarrell 3y ago
We've been regulating the wrong things when it comes to vehicles. Instead of being obsessed with MPG, we should have been obsessed with weight and size. There's no reason for a sedan to be heavier than 3000 lbs. There's no reason 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150. Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo 240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it needing a tune up. I only ride my bike on protected bike lanes now. It's inconvenient and limiting, but there's no way I can expect to share the road with these behemoths.
- tootie 3y ago
  There was a brief and futile anti-SUV movement in the 90s. Manufacturers generally got much better about size and safety compared to what they were, but they still sell based primarily on looks. For anyone who actually needs all that interior space, you're always better off with a minivan. And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan. I've got a wife and two kids we can fit ourselves and enough junk for a 4-day vacation in a compact pretty easily (which I rent as needed because I live in a walkable city).
  - masklinn 3y ago
    > And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan. That’s still the norm in Europe. Every summer you see the Dutch migrating through France in station wagons. A roof carrier or a small trailer does wonder (when you don’t just go with a camper).
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      Even the same sedans are built with different engine options between North America and Europe. Europe models will start with smaller engines that are just unavailable in US models. No idea why given Europe has mountains too and 120 and 130km/h speed limits are the highway norm but often with shorter on-ramps.
      - 3y ago
sidewndr46 3y ago
The reason why drivers are increasingly angry where I live is because there is no enforcement of traffic laws at all. Red lights are run nonstop, drivers use bicycle lanes as travel lanes, etc. I watched someone just reverse down a road opposite the direction of travel yesterday. Like it was no big deal.
- vwcx 3y ago
  Agreed. Sometimes I feel that most traffic laws only exist to serve as stand-in probable cause for forces' own agendas.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    Nah that's what drug prohibition is for. It turns out almost everyones vehicle smells like weed.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    This is an extremely local phenomenon. We have very light touch enforcement in our state yet people do not run red lights or stop signs, because that's a stupid thing to do and a great way to get into an accident. Distracted driving could use more enforcement though.
- VohuMana 3y ago
  This has been my experience, in my area people have even found ways around the newly installed red light cameras, they just remove their license plate. Usually you would get hit with a pretty big ticket for that but the police are not enforcing any sort of traffic laws and relying on cameras to do the enforcing.
  - pnutjam 3y ago
    This is what happens when every traffic stop is billed as a combat situation. Cops feel like their dangerous (and they are) because America can't pass sensible gun restrictions.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
US cars seem to be a special case. Saw a Cadillac Escalade on European streets and it was so comically large. The driver looked like an ant. And I complain about SUVs here...

lotsofpulp 3y ago

In many areas, it would take a ton of work in the effort of making destinations closer to each other. Huge parking lots, setbacks, wide roads, and detached houses on their own quarter, or even eighth, of an acre lot make it so the choice between walking/bicycling and using a personal car is not much of a choice. Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is due to how infrequently it would run, and the cost of missed or missing buses/trains, which again, run infrequently due to lack of density of people. Plus the separation of commercial zones and residential zones mean public transport is always going to one specific area, and so if you have any interest in traveling outside the central core, you are once again depending on a personal car.

luxurytent 3y ago
Yes, some areas in particular the big box developments are almost a lost cause. What needs to happen to those first is large, dense development within the plazas. Build residential on top of the mall, remove parking lots (or move them underground), and densify first. Once you move that needle, you can focus on active transport options. The type of development I describe is happening (two examples in my Canadian city). Ultimately the evolution of a poorly built model.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  "Densification" can eaily lead to poorer quality of life and oppressive housing, though. There is a middle ground, I think. I like individual houses with gardens (most people do, I think) with a size such that convenience stores are viable and reacheable on foot. It's like that in my area (England): good size houses but it's dense enough that I can walk to 2-3 different convenience stores when I need a few things, with a Post Office counter in one of those stores. In Europe there are also plenty of small scale 'appartment buildings', say 3 to 5 floors surrounded by some greenery and a small carpark, which I think works well, too. A random example in France (near a world famous tourist site): https://goo.gl/maps/avKMYuRAfgxq3gvM9 https://goo.gl/maps/avKMYuRAfgxq3gvM9 (that area is also built around a big shopping centre, which is therefore within walking distance). The bigger it gets the higher the likelihood that it becomes shit.
  - Lukas_Skywalker 3y ago
    In the parts of Europe I lived in (France, Switzerland, Sweden) there is one additional important thing: there is usually at most one parking space per apartment. This makes everything already a lot denser.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    > "Densification" can eaily lead to poorer quality of life and oppressive housing, though. Where I lived, there used to be tons of orange groves, beautiful natural areas, trails, and fields to ride your bike through. They all turned into suburban houses. Tracts of homes with huge offsets. Cars zooming by at 60 mph on streets so wide it takes half a minute to cross them on foot, all while dodging cars. Some people try to make it sound like densification will lead to Soviet era buildings or everyone living in Skyscrapers. But it mostly just leads to the city staying in the city instead of spreading out like a cancerous tumor across farmland and nature.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    What is your definition of a convenience store? To me, a convenience store sells candy, snacks, beverages, sometimes coffee and rather nasty hot prepared food, vapes and tobacco products. 95% of what a convenience store sells is stuff that you really should not be eating. Perhaps they'll have a small basket of apples or bananas, but they are a far cry from the small grocery stores I've seen in European neighborhoods that stock a reasonable selection of produce as well as meat, dairy, and dry goods. In the USA, I think many people would view having a "convenience store" in their neighborhood as a negative thing. I know I would.
pkulak 3y ago
Sure, turning Houston into Madrid would be very hard. But this is one of the most incrementally solvable problems I've ever seen. There are hundreds of low-cost, low-effort ways to start making things better.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  In the handful jurisdictions where I am familiar with zoning laws and the permitting process, low cost and low effort is not how I would describe any part of even a straightforward approval. Lord help you if you need a variance, and I cannot even imagine what eminent domain on that scale would look like. I do not see how the change would even be possible without tearing buildings down and building new ones closer to each other, and to do it legislatively adds unimaginable legal expenses, I presume. Edit: Also note the popular local opinion in many places is keeping a place car dependent means the population who cannot afford a car is kept out.
  - pkulak 3y ago
    I meant stuff like city counsel passing a new zoning law. Maybe some concrete bollards to make a protected bike lane. Run a few more busses and trains. That kind of thing.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      My point is that does nothing, because the root problem of destinations being too far from one another is not addressed. A few more buses and trains are not going to cut it. You need to outcompete the convenience of a personal car. The bus or train has to run at least every 10min, otherwise one missed connection and you’re wasting 20min+ with your refrigerated groceries. And that type of frequency is simply not economical without density. Chicken and egg at this point. Best case scenario is to build outwards from already dense areas, but it will involve eminent domain and demolishing buildings and parking lots to make new ones that are pedestrian friendly and hostile to cars.
      - 3y ago
VirusNewbie 3y ago
Are pedestrian and bike bridged out of the question?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  In my opinion, yes. At its root, it’s simply physics. Once the distances between destinations becomes sufficiently large, it is impossible, especially for the elderly or children. Search for Target/Costco/Best Buy/Walmart/Kroger/mall and do a street view in US suburbs and see if you can walk those distances carrying things. You could easily be looking at a quarter mile just from one store entrance to its adjacent store entrance, or even crossing the road which is usually 8+ lanes.
- foxyv 3y ago
  Pedestrian and bike bridges are car infrastructure. You can tell because they make the person who is moving under their own power, climb a set of stairs, walk across the bridge, and then walk down the stairs. In the meantime, the most vulnerable road users (Disabled people) have to cross 2 miles down the road at a deadly intersection. All the while, people who are sitting in air conditioned motorized vehicles have a straight level crossing. In my opinion, if you can't afford to build an at grade crossing for pedestrians with a car underpass, you should close the road to cars, or lower speeds 15 mph with chicanes and raised crossings. Making people climb stairs to cross the road is insane.
  - VirusNewbie 3y ago
    Considering how much of the country is suburbs with large streets or freeways separating housing tracts from shopping centers, is your proposal really to close those freeways and arterial streets down? Or just demolish all the homes that are there and move those people to higher density areas? I'm sympathetic to the idea of building new large developments in a non car centric fashion, but how do you do this with the majority of existing areas.
    - foxyv 3y ago
      To be honest, the majority of existing areas will probably go bankrupt as densification happens, plunging the value of cookie cutter, match stick homes to be bulldozed and hopefully re-wilded. Most of suburbia is already going bankrupt. The roads, sewers, pipes, and electrical wires are falling apart because they are too expensive to maintain. All it takes is one company to move out or the land to run out before they start to spiral. San Bernardino CA is a good example. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt... https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-dead-forever-2010-9#flint-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/10-american-cities-that-are-...
johnea 3y ago
In this analysis, pickup trucks and SUVs are identical, in that they have high vertical grills that obstruct the driver's view of the area immediately in front of the vehicle. This vehicle configuration is the major cause of the increase in pedistrian accidents. However I was surprised the article didn't mention pedestrian behavior at all, which is clearly increasing the risk of pedistrian accidents in recent years. My experiences with pedistrian near misses have been when people step in front of my car while staring at their phone. The worst cases being mid-block, at night, while the pedestrian was wearing all black. Walkable cities are awesome! Unfortunately in the US the overwhelming majority of places offer very poor, or no, mass transit and cars are still the only practiucal means of transportation.
stephencanon 3y ago
Lot size isn't really the issue, it's having big swathes of land zoned all-residential or all-commercial. We live in a small college town with mostly half- to one-acre lots outside of the downtown core, but we walk and bike everywhere most of the year because it's an actual town laid out before cars, with pockets of not-housing spread out among houses, and no wastelands of giant retail parking lots. I would really like to get more infill development and smaller lots, personally, but just for the sake of preserving open space. It's easy to walk and bike in actual cities and towns already. Suburbs are the issue, because they are entirely planned around cars.
_ea1k 3y ago
As true as that is, I'd be happy just with attention being paid to sidewalks and protected bike paths. I live in an area with a grocery store that is well within biking distance. But it is on the other side of a four lane road and there's no safe way to get a bike across it. In other parts of the state, there are housing developments within walking distance of grocery stores, but no sidewalks. It isn't uncommon to see people get in their car to go to the mail kiosk 2 blocks away, in part because of the lack of sidewalks.
bichiliad 3y ago
> Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is due to how infrequently it would run, and the cost of missed or missing buses/trains, which again, run infrequently due to lack of density of people. I think it depends on where you are, but useful public transit is very possible in most places. Low frequency is the result of poor planning, not a requirement of public transit.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Low frequency is the result of poor planning Not in my experience. It has more to do with funding. We have a specific tax levied just for transit, and people don't vote to increase it.
  - bichiliad 3y ago
    I'm treating them as one and the same here. My point is more that it's not endemic of public transit itself, but the way it's implemented (and supported and funded).
bannedbybros 3y ago
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marcosdumay 3y ago
> Public transportation is also not an option due to how inconvenient it is I love how even people with radical anti-car discourse just shrugs it away and never even stop to think that half of that catch-22 problem can be solved by just the government spending some money on running empty buses. No social reorganization, no legal change, no non-popular choice; just spending what is pennies compared to transit infrastructure.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I am speaking more to the political possibility. Things like increasing car parking costs, removing car parking, and spending money on more frequent buses is feasible, but politically impossible. Sufficient voters will have sufficient resources to own and store their own car, and they are going to want to use it, and they are not going to want to spend money on empty buses.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  And make those buses have dedicated lanes cars can't use. It is amazing how nice a bus can be when it's not stuck in the same shitty traffic as all the cars.
  - strix_varius 3y ago
    Exactly - this tactic converts busses from "shitty cars that stop all the time" to "faster, huge cars with a built-in chauffeur."
- supertrope 3y ago
  One of the most important factors in whether someone will vote for a transit tax if is they can imagine riding it themself. Since the current system sucks people can't imagine that and they vote no. Which keeps these networks starved of resources. Meanwhile legislators approve billions for highways every year. Zoning laws and minimum parking laws are kept in place. Every time gasoline prices increase politicians seek to sooth voters/motorists.
royaltheartist 3y ago
I think it's difficult to make cities more dense if viewed as just strictly taking the current cities and trying to condense them, but that also seems like the less productive way to do it First and foremost is that the US government itself needs to change how it gives out funds. Instead of emphasizing car and highway development over all, it should give money for cities which plan out multiple modes of transit and also develop 20-30 year maintenance plans (infrastructure maintenance is not currently factored into development). This would result in cities being financially incentivized to build for things other than car traffic throughput The next place to start is with the new developments, giving them new regulations for how streets should be placed, reducing regulations involving setbacks, lot size, parking and allocating more land to mixed used or denser building, rather than single-family detached housing As time goes on and roads need repairs, cities can use those as opportunities to connect cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, fix intersections (remove traffic lights, add roundabouts) and properly segregate public transit routes from private vehicle routes It's a long process but cities only need to change the rules now and start building better developments. People will move to them over time, and they'll be able to convert older developments as people move out of them over time. The thing that needs to change first, though, is the attitude and belief that car travel above all else needs to be heavily subsidized at the expense of everything else, only then will federal, state and local governments be able to begin making space for people
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bobthepanda 3y ago
There is so much land available in the form of parking lots, and so much unmet housing demand, that you could reasonably infill your standard mall or big box lot if zoning allows. A lot of malls have been doing this since retail has been in free fall for quite some time.
JeremyNT 3y ago
Fixing bad infrastructure takes time, but you don't even need that to reduce pedestrian deaths. If only people had smaller vehicles the rate of survival would go way up. I could pretty easily imagine a sliding vehicle tax scale where safer, more practical sub-compacts and minivans are subsidized by the mega-lifted land yacht SUVs and pickups. Sure it doesn't fix the design problems of cities, but it at least means the vehicles that are traversing them aren't as likely to kill and maim people while we sort out the other problems.
- strix_varius 3y ago
  We wouldn't even need to change taxes if we just stopped subsidizing gas. Fuel would cost about $12.75 per gallon, naturally making the Prius significantly cheaper to operate than the F-150.

pkulak 3y ago

> drivers are growingly frustrated and angry Good luck making policy changes against the wishes of a majority population that's frustrated and angry as it is. We are in deep, deep trouble. Not only are we not removing lanes and giving space back to people, we're still adding lane miles in every city in America. Even my "urbanist" home town of Portland Oregon is about to spend billions to add a few dozen lane miles to an urban freeway that already destroys the entire East bank of our waterfront and a couple historic neighborhoods, and is used mostly by people and companies that don't live here.

InSteady 3y ago
Shame we can't instead invest billions into making public transit, especially the max lines running from the suburbs into downtown, far more efficient as a practical solution for commuters. The Esplanade is one of my favorite bike routes in the city, second only to the Springwater corridor. I love cruising up the East side and back on the West side while looking out over the Willamette. I'm going to be sad if that route gets all fucked up, and all just to add a few lanes that simply induce more demand and do nothing to solve traffic problems in the long run. I hate to be that guy, but its inescapable.. cars (as currently conceived and implemented) are a blight on humanity.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  If only we could have made max more like a real urban rail system instead of a toy. It's brutally slow, especially if you are unfortunate enough to take it through downtown Portland.
  - pkulak 3y ago
    That really needs to be fixed. I live in NE, and if I need to go to Beaverton, I ride my bike to the West side of downtown to catch the Max there. It saves 30 full minutes. They need to get rid of half the downtown stops.
- loco5niner 3y ago
  I'm hesitant to take the Max in Portland because of the homeless/drug problem and I'm a fairly big guy in the prime of life. Definitely not taking my family. I LOVE being able to cart my kids around in my perfectly sized and designed mini-van.

ecshafer 3y ago

This is a relatively easy fix. Remove zoning regulation and the market should build towards denser towns. It is outright illegal to build dense right now in most of the US. There are other ares that need to be fixed that all exacerbate the issue: The NHSTA recommends large wide roads for moving vehicles faster, CAFE standards makes cars heavier and larger since trucks / suvs don't have the same regulations, FHA loans require developments are built with curvy roads and not grids. We need laws that prioritize pedestrians and bikers, force cars to be smaller through regulation and taxes.

BorgHunter 3y ago
Is zoning regulation as a concept really the root cause, though? Houston famously has no zoning code and is fairly lax with land use generally (although it isn't completely the Wild West), and it isn't very dense. It seems like zoning could even be a key part of the solution, being a tool that could be used to mandate that new construction be more dense around mass transit hubs, for instance. There are lots of anti-density zoning regulations that should be reformed, it's true, but throwing the whole thing out seems like overkill to me.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  Houston has zoning codes but by a different name. They use Deed restrictions which functionally act as zoning. Japan has the right solution though. Japan has a national level zoning that is black list based as opposed to white list, also it only has a few categories. In the US a town says "You can only build homes here with these requirements". In Japan you can build homes anywhere, and light commercial anywhere. So only heavy commercial and industry is effectively limited. In fact their "light industrial use" zones is where something like 60% of people live.
- ryukafalz 3y ago
  Houston might not have something specifically called a "zoning code" but it has plenty of the sorts of regulations that lead to sprawl. Take a look at this table of parking requirements for Houston, and keep in mind that a typical parking space takes up 320 square feet: https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/parking_req.pdf https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/docs_pdfs/par...

johnea 3y ago

In this analysis, pickup trucks and SUVs are identical, in that they have high vertical grills that obstruct the driver's view of the area immediately in front of the vehicle. This vehicle configuration is the major cause of the increase in pedistrian accidents. However I was surprised the article didn't mention pedestrian behavior at all, which is clearly increasing the risk of pedistrian accidents in recent years. My experiences with pedistrian near misses have been when people step in front of my car while staring at their phone. The worst cases being mid-block, at night, while the pedestrian was wearing all black. Walkable cities are awesome! Unfortunately in the US the overwhelming majority of places offer very poor, or no, mass transit and cars are still the only practiucal means of transportation.

ahoy 3y ago
I don't think analyzing this issue from the perspective of individual interactions is useful. Even in safe, walkable cities, some pedestrians will be reckless. Even in Phoenix AZ, some drivers will be courteous toward walkers. All that disappears in the aggregate though, and we're left with the fact that the built environment is the main factor dictating how we interact on our streets. We build wide roads and build huge dangerous vehicles to go very fast on them. That's the issue.
InitialLastName 3y ago
How many times are you going to copy and paste the same comment in replay to different parents? I see you do that a lot, and it doesn't seem productive.
loco5niner 3y ago
Agreed. A pedestrian recently got themselves killed near my house by darting right into the rode in front of a driver who was going under 35 mph in a 35. Driver had no chance to avoid him. The pedestrian didn't even turn their head before being hit and was likely high or drunk (per the local business owner who was familiar with him).

jmclnx 3y ago

Yes they do now, in my State, until I think 30 or 40 years ago, pickups had to register as commercial and had to follow laws specific to them and pay more taxes. Some lows restricts commercial vehicles from many roads. I suspect it was a move by Reagan when he deregulated the trucking industry. I think if a vehicle meet specific weight and size criteria, it needs to pay more and have restrictions. These new big pickups and SUVs fully meet that criteria. >The majority of roads are too wide Actually in my state it is the opposite. Most roads are way too narrow. When two large pickups are driving at each other, one needs to pull over.

jeffbee 3y ago
In California, pickups are still registered as commercial vehicles. This comes as a surprise to some first-time truck buyers. The new Rivian R1T is registered commercial and weighs over 3 tons, bringing further restrictions as to the places and times it can be driven or parked. Again, surprising some buyers.
- briandear 3y ago
  Not true. I had a Tacoma that was not commercial registered. This was two years ago.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    OK, go ahead and prove that with photographs or something. Because it's quite clear in the law that if you have a pickup truck it is to be registered as a commercial vehicle, unless it has a fixed camper top or other thing that permanently covers the bed. That's why almost* every pickup truck in CA has commercial plates distinguished by their format of a single letter and six digits, instead of three letters and four digits. * almost, because you can still get custom vanity plates on pickups.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  That is untrue. Passenger vehicles are specifically excluded. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/new-registration/commercial-vehicle-registration https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/new-regis... You may be thinking of the classification they apply to pickup trucks that costs like $24. They have no additional regulation as a commercial vehicle unless you're using them, well, commercially.

glimshe 3y ago

My suburb does as much as it can to make itself walkable. There are crossings and sidewalks everywhere, but it's still a low density suburb so it doesn't make much sense to walk almost anywhere (my kid does walk to school as it happens to be close, but that's it). So while they are trying to address this problem, very few people actually walk. But all of this said, I want low density. Having lived many years in a high density ant colony (aka "walkable city"), I want nothing to do with that. Keep your high rises to yourself. I think that high density living is inhuman. I respect your opinion, but we don't think alike. And I promise to not mess with your lifestyle if you don't mess with mine, we can all live together many miles apart. I want the convenience of a drivable suburb with wide roads where everything I care about is just a 5-10min drive away and I'm willing to pay for these roads and the electricity/gas to take me where I want to go. I exercise every morning by walking around for 45 min in my cookie cutter neighborhood; the air is pure and it's a joy to walk around trees, ducks and birds instead of buses, cabs, people sneezing etc.

scrollaway 3y ago
A walkable city doesn’t have to be an ant colony. American exceptionalism really is hard to grasp sometimes. Take a look at a city like Brussels to understand how a capital city can be both walkable and high density without being Seoul.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Hell you can probably look at Seoul, assuming it’s anything like Tokyo or London you have a very long tail of dense but pretty low outer rings.
jwestbury 3y ago
Curious, have you considered the in-between here? Consider medium-density European cities, which still have massively higher density suburbs, but rarely the density -- combined employment and population densities -- of the urban core of most American cities. I hated living in Seattle, but I'm now an American finding I enjoy living in London. I walk around trees and birds every day, because I have good park access, and I can walk to them without having to worry about car traffic. For what it's worth, by the way, you almost certainly AREN'T willing to pay for the infrastructure that supports you: Suburbs are almost overwhelmingly economically supported by cities. I hate NotJustBikes (his self-righteous attitude is just awful), but he does have a great video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

S_A_P 3y ago

I understand the sentiment, but is it these assault vehicles at fault here? I tend to think that the real problem is distracted driving, since EVERYONE from the smallest Kia on the street to the biggest lifted truck seems to have trouble staying off their phones while driving.

luxurytent 3y ago
¿Por Qué No Los Dos?
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mrbabbage 3y ago
How does distracted driving explain increasing pedestrian death rates in America while death rates are flat or down [1] in other industrialized countries? Unless there's a reason why distracted driving particularly affects America, I don't think it can explain this trend. [1] https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/Table?IndicatorCode=59 https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/Table?IndicatorCode=59
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  There could be a number of reasons from average vehicle size to urban planning norms to pedestrian culture. Maybe we jaywalk more on more dangerous roads with larger vehicles with less visibility and our fat bodies have larger hit boxes.
  - atlasunshrugged 3y ago
    I think the majority of the increased deaths are probably from the higher grills and weight -- instead of tumbling over the hood of a sedan, you get hit center mass by a truck or SUV which is far more damaging. That said, great point on jaywalking more, compared to when I was living in Germany or Estonia, we jaywalk far more (and engage in riskier activities in roadways like with scooters and ATVs) than those places.
3y ago

winternett 3y ago

In Washington DC, ridesharing has taken over. I think if someone truly correlated this, they'd find that having a bunch of untrained and self regulated rideshare drivers contributes greatly to these troubling statistics. Cities are also flooding roads with inexperienced bike and scooter riders on faulty equipment in favor of the revenue it provides, cities also have not updated traffic light infrastructure since the 50s... The biggest innovation to come to traffic control are simply speed cameras, which dramatically reduced police on streets. It's all be a chaotic mess and cities also lobby their policies online, hiring private companies to provide spin and brigade online on sites like reddit in favor of their failed policies. DC years ago introduced a campaign that everyone should stop for pedestrians in crosswalks (green light or not) and that has empowered some to walk into streets even when they are not clear. Cities have also turned already congested traffic lanes now into bike lanes, while bicycle traffic is untaxed to fun the arrangement. The aforementioned change also completely removes parking which existed before, leaving driver to double park and dangerously block traffic. The combination of frustrated drivers and frustrated pedestrians is a toxic mix. Many cities and states have been reducing speed limits in the past years since the pandemic to increase their ability to give out citations, despite cars being safer. more efficient, and able to stop faster now than ever. The changes being made now contradict logic as the demand to be on time increases more and more, and the statistics are showing deaths are going up. In my opinion, separating traffic by type would go a much farther way to encourage safety. Innovation should also be centered around a smarter traffic light system, on separating traffic lanes and routes, and and in better and more affordable parking arrangements in every city. It's not a complex problem, the problem is that decision makers are often high on individual bias and not routed in reason to conquer this issue. Perhaps the decision makers need to be look at more closely, and held accountable for their continual failure to bring the number of casualties downward.

rimunroe 3y ago
I'm surprised you wouldn't always be required to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Vehicles going fast speeding in dense areas are a huge driver of pedestrian fatalities so reducing speed limits sounds great to me. I've heard that lowering the speed limit from 35 to 25 mph can actually increase average throughput in cities by calming traffic. Here in Massachusetts we're trying to make it legal to use automatic speed limit enforcement (cameras with license plate readers detecting speeding vehicles). Bicycle traffic does far less to wear down roads and other infrastructure than vehicle traffic. They simply aren't comparable. They also have a number of ancillary benefits for the city, like increasing income from local businesses (even accounting for decreased curbside parking!). Barrier separated transport is great for cyclists (and pedestrians), but not if it means restricting cyclists to only riding in bicycle lanes. If you limited cyclists to only riding in places where they had dedicated pathways you'd vastly reduce the practicality of riding in any US city I've been to. I personally feel much safer riding on streets when there are more cyclists around me. It feels like the motorists are more likely to keep an eye out and not do something careless. We could also try and force automakers to make safer "light trucks", as they're currently much more dangerous than This article[1] suggests the rate of pedestrian fatalities by vehicle type is 50% higher for light trucks than for cars per mile driven. It's baffling that we allow such large and dangerously-designed vehicles on the road. [1] https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232 https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232

pxc 3y ago

> We continue to make the mistake of thinking the solution is wider roads. I swear, bro. Just let me build one more lane. I swear we're gonna fix traffic. https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE

barbariangrunge 3y ago

I live in a small town with... not enough sidewalks. I try to walk my dog, but half the streets where I live, I have to walk on the street or else on people's lawns. I definitely walk a lot less because of it Not really a systemic issue in this case, just a pet peeve

pastage 3y ago
If anything designing a neighborhood with no sidewalks must be a systemic issue?
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  It's just one town. Doesn't necessarily apply to the other towns or cities nearby
  - pastage 3y ago
    It is very common if street view is anything to go on.

christophilus 3y ago

I watched a movie (I think from the 50s), and it was amazing to see people ambling casually through the streets, and cars driving slowly and carefully to avoid them as if streets were for people, and cars were the intruder. I'd love to recapture that aspect of the past.

jonny_eh 3y ago
Which movie?

LarryDarrell 3y ago

We've been regulating the wrong things when it comes to vehicles. Instead of being obsessed with MPG, we should have been obsessed with weight and size. There's no reason for a sedan to be heavier than 3000 lbs. There's no reason 1/2 ton pickups should be bigger than a 1994 Ford F150. Once a car is light and small(ish) the good MPG will follow. My 1988 Volvo 240 got 30mpg on a recent road trip and that's with it needing a tune up. I only ride my bike on protected bike lanes now. It's inconvenient and limiting, but there's no way I can expect to share the road with these behemoths.

tootie 3y ago
There was a brief and futile anti-SUV movement in the 90s. Manufacturers generally got much better about size and safety compared to what they were, but they still sell based primarily on looks. For anyone who actually needs all that interior space, you're always better off with a minivan. And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan. I've got a wife and two kids we can fit ourselves and enough junk for a 4-day vacation in a compact pretty easily (which I rent as needed because I live in a walkable city).
- masklinn 3y ago
  > And really most people, even families, can make do with a regular sedan. That’s still the norm in Europe. Every summer you see the Dutch migrating through France in station wagons. A roof carrier or a small trailer does wonder (when you don’t just go with a camper).
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Even the same sedans are built with different engine options between North America and Europe. Europe models will start with smaller engines that are just unavailable in US models. No idea why given Europe has mountains too and 120 and 130km/h speed limits are the highway norm but often with shorter on-ramps.
    - 3y ago

sidewndr46 3y ago

The reason why drivers are increasingly angry where I live is because there is no enforcement of traffic laws at all. Red lights are run nonstop, drivers use bicycle lanes as travel lanes, etc. I watched someone just reverse down a road opposite the direction of travel yesterday. Like it was no big deal.

vwcx 3y ago
Agreed. Sometimes I feel that most traffic laws only exist to serve as stand-in probable cause for forces' own agendas.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Nah that's what drug prohibition is for. It turns out almost everyones vehicle smells like weed.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  This is an extremely local phenomenon. We have very light touch enforcement in our state yet people do not run red lights or stop signs, because that's a stupid thing to do and a great way to get into an accident. Distracted driving could use more enforcement though.
VohuMana 3y ago
This has been my experience, in my area people have even found ways around the newly installed red light cameras, they just remove their license plate. Usually you would get hit with a pretty big ticket for that but the police are not enforcing any sort of traffic laws and relying on cameras to do the enforcing.
- pnutjam 3y ago
  This is what happens when every traffic stop is billed as a combat situation. Cops feel like their dangerous (and they are) because America can't pass sensible gun restrictions.

raxxorraxor 3y ago

US cars seem to be a special case. Saw a Cadillac Escalade on European streets and it was so comically large. The driver looked like an ant. And I complain about SUVs here...