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I’m pretty sure that at the end of the day, it comes down to cost. The author writes as if people who work in this space are not smart. I’m pretty sure everyon

• notatoad 2y ago
  >I’m pretty sure everyone realizes bollards saves lives [...] Will constituents support it? and this is, i think, the whole point. we're not stupid. we all know that bollards save pedestrian lives. for a relatively low cost. and we as a society have just decided nah, we're not gonna do that. it is, as you say "an easy cut". and some of us feel it should not be that way.
  • ctidd 2y ago
    The other part of this decision not to protect human-powered mobility (pedestrian, bicycle, wheelchair, etc.) is that we allow or encourage automotive traffic as a constant, and _then_ we choose not to protect people. It’s a two step process where we make an active choice to create danger and then a second choice not to mitigate the danger.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • wonder_er 2y ago
      > we make an active choice to create danger and then a second choice not to mitigate the danger. Precisely! This is why I keep suggesting charges of criminal negligence against city engineers, along side stripping them of sovereign immunity. > Oh no, Josh, it sounds like you want someone to be responsible for the decisions they make! Yes, yes I do. (I wrote the article. You very correctly perceive that two-step choice. make it dangers, keep it dangerous.)
  • xp84 2y ago
    This is such a shallow take though. If 10,000 cars pass a certain stretch in a day, and 40 pedestrians, and 2 cars veer off the road per month there, chances are zero pedestrians are hurt most years. If you had enough big beefy bollards likely half those cars would have a fatality. You do the math. I don’t think it would be appropriate to do the bollards if it killed 12 people per year just because some people think pedestrians are more righteous. Setting aside entirely the absurdity of lining every street and road with bollards from a cost perspective, just the disruption alone of such a massive, decade-long public works project would no doubt enrage all street users alike. This would be the most unpopular policy move ever. Anyone arguing that it should be done anyway seems to deeply dislike the idea of democracy. Now, the idea that convenience stores and such ought to be strongly encouraged to do bollards is another idea entirely and probably a good one. Also, people should learn to f**king back in. It’s not that hard since backup cameras were invented. That would also eliminate ¾ of these idiots crashing into stores.
    • devman0 2y ago
      I think guardrails should also be in this discussion (and indeed the article does address this). Many places have guardrails installed behind the sidewalk instead of in front of the sidewalk. Like if we are going to have guardrails anyway they may as well protect the pedestrian spaces.
      • deleted 2y ago
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    • cuu508 2y ago
      A couple extra factors to consider when doing the math for the 10'000 cars and 40 pedestrians example: * if bollards are installed, more pedestrians may start to use the road (because pedestrians now perceive the road as safer) * if bollards are installed, the average car speed may decrease (because motorists consciously or subconsciously weigh in the potential consequences of hitting the bollards. This has been shown to work with tree lines. Not sure about bollards, as they are less visually prominent).
  • bobthepanda 2y ago
    it would be also equally cheap to just narrow the roads, plant street trees, etc. that slow down cars without necessarily having bollards everywhere at least in the US, the root issue is the same, that society has prioritized the fast movement of cars, and ever bigger cars, and so we're reaping what we sow.
• emodendroket 2y ago
  It’s not just about cost: if you read about the topic you will find many arguments that bollards shouldn’t be placed because they endanger motorists — even though they would make pedestrians safer. The article is challenging the implicit prioritization of motorist safety over pedestrian safety that underlies such a judgment.
  • flaminHotSpeedo 2y ago
    And that's fair, to an extent, but the author seems to have a vendetta or total lack of empathy towards motorists. You can't just ignore the consequences of vehicles hitting bollards, you have to weigh the likelihood of cars hitting them and the severity of those incidents against the likelihood of cars going past where the bollards would be and the severity of that scenario both when there are or aren't pedestrians that could be struck. I'm not saying the status quo is correct, but I am saying that the author's tone does not strike confidence that they are approaching this from an objective and rational viewpoint that accounts for all the factors, at least in the case of bollards in locations where there's a good chance of high speed collisions with them.
    • emodendroket 2y ago
      I didn't get the sense the author is wishing for motorists to die; he's taken the (in my view quite reasonable) stance that the person operating the dangerous machine has a greater responsibility and that pedestrians who are not endangering anyone else shouldn't shoulder the risk for what they do.
      • flaminHotSpeedo 2y ago
        I agree that pedestrians shouldn't shoulder risk, within reason. But by my interpretation of the article the author derides city planners for perceived incompetence/prioritization of motorist safety, without considering any nuance.
        • wonder_er 2y ago
• throwup238 2y ago
  I think most people (including TFA author) just don't realize what bollards actually cost to install. They're not simple little poles that can be plopped on top of concrete, they have to actually be built into the foundation. Ironically the @WorldBollard association account TFA links to illustrates it best: https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1384527600639434755 https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1384527600639434755 and https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1635595240508735490 https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1635595240508735490 That's why the US is full of corrugated steel barriers TFA maligns by association. They use tension cables mounted at the ends to provide the rigidity, requiring just two holes to dig instead of an entire ditch.
  • caf 2y ago
    The article includes a construction picture that shows the foundation portion, down at the bottom.
  • Terr_ 2y ago
    > That's why the US is full of corrugated steel barriers TFA maligns by association. TFA does not malign those barriers, it is against their specific placement on the outer edge of sidewalks, rather than in between the sidewalk and the road. Such placement implies minimizing scratches to the paint of a swerving car is more important than the lives and limbs of the average pedestrian.
    • Terr_ 2y ago
      > Such placement implies P.S.: Or perhaps that cars must be given the ability to drive on top of the sidewalks in order to dodge other cars that are driving erratically, but I feel that logic is still kinda questionable.
  • michael1999 2y ago
    Transport routinely install expensive guard rails to save drivers. Their opposition to bollards is not cost -- it is because they are a Dangerous Fixed Object that endangers drivers that leave the roadway.
  • 2y ago
• loeg 2y ago
  The cost of bollards is pretty low.
  • eVeechu7 2y ago
    Very low compared to not bollards.
    • wonder_er 2y ago
      I feel seen. (Author here.) Indeed, the cost of bollards is _dramatically_ lower than 'not bollards'. Also, a one time spend for permanent safety, for years or decades. It's a slam dunk.
• jjmarr 2y ago
  One of the things about evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a safety feature is that there's implicitly a monetary value assigned to human life, when you know the probability of something saving a life and the amount of money that thing costs. https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-policy/revised-departmental-guidance-on-valuation-of-a-statistical-life-in-economic-analysis https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-... For 2022, the US Department of Transportation benchmarks that at $12.5 million and that's the number used to decide if something is cost-effective. If one is proposing that society spends more on road-safety, that's more or less saying that $12.5 million should be higher. So what should it be? Are we ok with spending $20 million? $50 million? $100 million? Because that's the question we're implicitly answering when we decide if a proposal such as bollards are cost-effective.
  • ctidd 2y ago
    The implicit premise in this argument is that safety is an add-on that you buy or install like an antivirus package. If we designed to encourage less dangerous forms of transportation from the start, there may be cost savings that aren’t surfaced in the “add-on safety” cost calculation.
• michael1999 2y ago
  No. It is not about cost at all. Traffic engineers will routinely spend money installing guard rails to save drivers. It's actually much crazier, but you will find it hard to believe. Traffic engineers are against bollards because they reduce _driver_ safety, and increase damage to cars that lose control. Traffic engineers consider the sidewalk a buffer zone for cars. Notice that the guard rails are outside the sidewalk next time you go for a stroll. You'll also notice that street lights, and other utility poles are now mounted with breakaway bolts so they sheer off rather that kill drivers. The fact that they might protect a pedestrian is considered a minor point.
  • wonder_er 2y ago
    exaaaaaactly. this, all the way. (i wrote the bollard post.) > It's actually much crazier, but you will find it hard to believe. I kept having this experience, as professional, licensed engineers would tell me, with their whole mouth, and a straight face, things like "we cannot protect pedestrians because it might hurt a car." Me: Who _the fuck_ do you think drives the cars? The false dichotomy in america between 'pedestrians' and 'cars' is entirely downstream of the class-based ethnic cleansing ushered in by municipal planning agencies in the 1920s-1960s. They couldn't say "we don't want black people here", but they could say "we want only the kinds of people who drive cars _here_".
• wonder_er 2y ago
  > The author writes as if people who work in this space are not smart. That's correct. I write as if they are not smart, because the other option is that _they are willfully malicious and committed to maintaining a status quo that is not in accordance with any other ethical framework that you and I routinely validate_. > I’m pretty sure everyone realizes bollards saves lives No, american municipal "planners" and "engineers" (the people who claim special authority over, and knowledge about, mobility networks) routinely state that bollards are dangerous and _kill people_, because a properly engineered and placed bollard would completely destroy a car, if the car hit it at any speed. Basically, I'm ranting because the people who say "there can be no bollard here" justify their decision with "because it would function as a bollard, creating a 'shadow' or 'eddy' of safety behind it, but at the cost of being able to stop a car, and what if the vehicle driver was inconvenienced or annoyed?" I'm not suggesting miles of bollards, I'm suggesting that every intersection have two bollards on each corner, pointing towards the street in such a way that if you are standing in the vicinity of the corner, you could be positioned relative to passing vehicle traffic with a bollard between you and it. If there is money to pour concrete and place rebar in the ground, there is money to reshape some of the metal so it protrudes from the concrete instead of being _exclusively_ embedded within it. Also, youre "who will pay for it" is simply opposing the energy of anyone trying to create safety. It's not welcome. You're straw-manning me, I didn't say 'miles of bollards', I'm saying 'that bollards exist should be professionally relevant to anyone who claims special knowledge of roads and cars, and it's dedignifying to pretend that they don't know better.'