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> The lanugage in the article is full of ‘this was an unavoidable tragedy’, though i think it’s obvious a local city engineer ought to be held criminally liable

> The lanugage in the article is full of ‘this was an unavoidable tragedy’, though i think it’s obvious a local city engineer ought to be held criminally liable for their neglect. > Because not only was it entirely preventable, it was also statistically inevitable. Not putting bollards where they need to be is like not only not wearing a seatbelt when driving, but arguing that seatbelts should not be available in cars because usually they’re not needed This is 100% correct. A woman in Portland here was killed when a street racer plowed into a bus stop. The racer lived and the woman died. The racer got 36 months. Totally preventable. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/portland-street-racer-pleads-guilty-sentenced-36-months-crash-2022/283-a067723c-8e45-4764-9ce9-33cb5aebbc07 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/portland-street-racer...

zer00eyz 2y ago
[flagged]
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  > Likely a few too many I guess it's fun to be a contrarian, but I didn't expect to see a pro-death contrarian position here.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Everyone’s pro-death and some point, or we cover Everest in escalators. It’s all where the line between allowable risk and unacceptable risk is drawn.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      No. There's a difference between saying: A) The cost doesn't justify the benefits and B) There's too many humans anyway The comment I responded to said B, not A. That's what I mean by "pro death". Viewing it as a positive that we reduce the amount of humans by... random deaths from traffic?
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- paulgb 2y ago
  > now we want to filter for "statistically inevitable" I mean, yes? We’ve been making trade-offs to reduce statistically inevitable deaths for years with some real success stories to speak of. Getting doctors to wash their hands between patients, removing lead from gas, seatbelts, engineering safety factors, checklists in aviation, food safety standards…
dumbo-octopus 2y ago
In the case in the article, it sounds like the killed person was walking down the middle of a totally ordinary sidewalk, not a bus stop or intersection or storefront or anything. Are you proposing we place bollards on the edges of every sidewalk in existence?
- BeefySwain 2y ago
  Only the sidewalks next to roads.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    What sidewalk isn’t next to a road? It’s in the name: side-walk.
    - naikrovek 2y ago
      Which is why they are so dangerous for pedestrians, even though nothing bad happens most of the time.
- geraldwhen 2y ago
  Anywhere street racing happens, legal or no, probably yes.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    Building streets is going to become pretty expensive if we follow that advice.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      It is probably much more doable, and less hostile, to traffic calm streets so that people cannot get up to such speeds, and also to reduce the necessity of driving so that there is no car to crash in the first place.
sandworm101 2y ago
Correct. Cars need to be separated from people by barriers. But that goes both ways. Deaths by pedestrians getting into places they shouldn't are very common even absent roads (ie railroad crossings). Some have called for all railroads to be fenced off. But few want to live in a world with fences around every possible dangerous area. When I went to school there was no fence. Now schools are surrounded by so many that they look like prisons. Barriers can go too far.
- hmottestad 2y ago
  It's an article about bollards and how they stop vehicles from hitting pedestrians. Fences to keep people out of places where they can easily kill themselves is very important, but doesn't have anything to do with the article. A trend I see on Twitter is that someone will bring up an important issue and comments will highlight that it's very important, but what about this other thing that is somewhat related but also unrelated. Not saying that you intended to do that here, but be aware that fences provide no security against cars and that the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing pedestrians who are not on the road.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    >> the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing pedestrians Except all those bollards that have nothing to do with pedestrians. Many are there to prevent cars deliberately accessing protected areas with absolutely zero thought about stopping a crashing vehicle. The most common use of bollards is to stop vehicles from parking where they shouldn't. Some bollards are even soft so that they can be driven over without damage to either party. https://www.maibach.com/en/soft-bollard.html https://www.maibach.com/en/soft-bollard.html
    - estebank 2y ago
      > Some bollards are even soft so that they can be driven over without damage to either party. That's not a bollard. I'm assuming you're thinking of flex posts, or how some of us call them, car ticklers.
deleted 2y ago
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zer00eyz 2y ago

[flagged]

baobabKoodaa 2y ago
> Likely a few too many I guess it's fun to be a contrarian, but I didn't expect to see a pro-death contrarian position here.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Everyone’s pro-death and some point, or we cover Everest in escalators. It’s all where the line between allowable risk and unacceptable risk is drawn.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    No. There's a difference between saying: A) The cost doesn't justify the benefits and B) There's too many humans anyway The comment I responded to said B, not A. That's what I mean by "pro death". Viewing it as a positive that we reduce the amount of humans by... random deaths from traffic?
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
paulgb 2y ago
> now we want to filter for "statistically inevitable" I mean, yes? We’ve been making trade-offs to reduce statistically inevitable deaths for years with some real success stories to speak of. Getting doctors to wash their hands between patients, removing lead from gas, seatbelts, engineering safety factors, checklists in aviation, food safety standards…

dumbo-octopus 2y ago

In the case in the article, it sounds like the killed person was walking down the middle of a totally ordinary sidewalk, not a bus stop or intersection or storefront or anything. Are you proposing we place bollards on the edges of every sidewalk in existence?

BeefySwain 2y ago
Only the sidewalks next to roads.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  What sidewalk isn’t next to a road? It’s in the name: side-walk.
  - naikrovek 2y ago
    Which is why they are so dangerous for pedestrians, even though nothing bad happens most of the time.
geraldwhen 2y ago
Anywhere street racing happens, legal or no, probably yes.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  Building streets is going to become pretty expensive if we follow that advice.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    It is probably much more doable, and less hostile, to traffic calm streets so that people cannot get up to such speeds, and also to reduce the necessity of driving so that there is no car to crash in the first place.

sandworm101 2y ago

Correct. Cars need to be separated from people by barriers. But that goes both ways. Deaths by pedestrians getting into places they shouldn't are very common even absent roads (ie railroad crossings). Some have called for all railroads to be fenced off. But few want to live in a world with fences around every possible dangerous area. When I went to school there was no fence. Now schools are surrounded by so many that they look like prisons. Barriers can go too far.

hmottestad 2y ago
It's an article about bollards and how they stop vehicles from hitting pedestrians. Fences to keep people out of places where they can easily kill themselves is very important, but doesn't have anything to do with the article. A trend I see on Twitter is that someone will bring up an important issue and comments will highlight that it's very important, but what about this other thing that is somewhat related but also unrelated. Not saying that you intended to do that here, but be aware that fences provide no security against cars and that the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing pedestrians who are not on the road.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  >> the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing pedestrians Except all those bollards that have nothing to do with pedestrians. Many are there to prevent cars deliberately accessing protected areas with absolutely zero thought about stopping a crashing vehicle. The most common use of bollards is to stop vehicles from parking where they shouldn't. Some bollards are even soft so that they can be driven over without damage to either party. https://www.maibach.com/en/soft-bollard.html https://www.maibach.com/en/soft-bollard.html
  - estebank 2y ago
    > Some bollards are even soft so that they can be driven over without damage to either party. That's not a bollard. I'm assuming you're thinking of flex posts, or how some of us call them, car ticklers.

deleted 2y ago

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