7 ms·

It's a shift of responsibility from the motorist to the pedestrians. The car "belongs" in the street and the pedestrian doesn't. Cars are not required to look o

by imgabe 12y ago

It's a shift of responsibility from the motorist to the pedestrians. The car "belongs" in the street and the pedestrian doesn't. Cars are not required to look out for people, people have to look out for cars. That's a change that shifts the generally understood purpose of the whole infrastructure. If you and I are walking on the sidewalk, we're equals. It's as much your responsibility not to run into me as it is my responsibility to run into you. According to the article, before cars the situation was the same in the street. Everyone was equal. With the advent of jaywalking laws, suddenly cars are prioritized above all other traffic. If a car hits someone who wasn't in the street at a designated spot, the car has no responsibility for the accident.

SilasX 12y ago
Cars aren't required to look out for people? They don't have criminal or civil liability? That is not the world that I experience. Go run over a pedestrian (even one who technically shouldn't have been there) and let us know how that works out.
- smeyer 12y ago
  I think a lot of people are exaggerating in this thread. Still, only 5% of New York drivers who are involved in a fatal crash with with a pedestrian are arrested, let alone convicted[1]. It seems that most of the time, there isn't much criminal liability. [1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-f...
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  Here in Oregon, pedestrians and bicyclists are routinely run over by cars, buses, and light rail trains. Almost invariably without consequences. At least for the motorist; the bicyclist often suffers severe medical consequences. Usually it's considered an "accident". The one thing you can't do is "hit and run", you must stop. The police aggressively investigate hit-and-run accidents. There is no liability unless you are "negligent". So if you've been drinking and driving you could face both civil and criminal penalty. And certainly you can be sued by whoever you hit. And maybe your insurance company will pay the pedestrian, but that's usually because it's cheaper to pay a few medical bills than to pay lawyers to continue to litigate. Cost-benefit analysis.
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    I'm surprised about 'routinely' for light rail trains (which I call trams). There have been three pedestrians killed by trams in the UK in the last 20 years[1]. Every accident/incident gets a 30+ page independent report (linked from [1]). Railway safety has reached the point where the greatest danger to passengers is falling down stairs, or tripping over when running. The last fatality to someone on a train was on 23 February 2007. How different things would be if a fatal road accident led to a 30-page report concluding with a set of recommendations and an expectation that they'd all be implemented. [1] https://aib-cms.co.uk/sites/raib/publications/reports_by_type_of_railway/light_rail/operations.cfm https://aib-cms.co.uk/sites/raib/publications/reports_by_typ...
    - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
      Here are three deaths from Portland's MAX light rail in about the last 13 months.[1][2] And it's not a very big system. There have been 34 deaths in just one portion of the light rail, in less than 30 years. A few are classified as suicide.[3] There are some barriers and crossing gates, but MAX mostly runs alongside pedestrians and vehicles. It's up to the pedestrians to pay attention. Edit: BTW I think that what we call "light rail" may be larger than what you consider a tram and what we call a "streetcar". A MAX car is about 28 meters long, a streetcar is about 20 meters long.[4] [1] http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/08/max_train_deaths_family_friend.html http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/08/max_tr... [2] http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/12/man_struck_by_max_train_in_se.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/12/man_str... [3]http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/man_killed_by_max_train_at_eas.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/man_kil... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Streetcar#Compatibility_with_MAX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Streetcar#Compatibilit...
    - angersock 12y ago
      Houston put in a light rail, and for some reason decided that its drivers were competent enough (hah) to deal with that fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc Funny thing is, despite its relatively small size, it's one of the most heavily used rails in the country (last I checked).
ahomescu1 12y ago
> Cars are not required to look out for people, people have to look out for cars. It's not always sufficient to just "look out for people". It is quite possible that the driver, at the speed they're driving at, does not have the reflexes or braking distance to safely stop when encountering a "jaywalker". The alternative that many people propose is to reduce driving speed to "safe" values, which I always thought naive. Even if you make everyone drive at 20MPH inside cities, you'll still have people exceeding that limit and getting into accidents. IMHO, it's just safer to keep pedestrians away from cars.
- curun1r 12y ago
  > Even if you make everyone drive at 20MPH inside cities, you'll still have people exceeding that limit and getting into accidents. The key is how you make everyone drive 20mph. It's been pretty well established that speed limits do a horrible job of forcing drivers to slow down and are even counter productive since a small minority of drivers will actually follow them. This creates a delta between them and the majority of drivers and deltas between drivers, more so than absolute speed, contribute to an increase in accidents. However you can actually slow drivers down by making the lanes narrower. Drivers may complain, object and lobby to revert back to wider lanes, but they'll actually slow down until that happens.
- mjmahone17 12y ago
  The main issue is unless we ban cars from areas that benefit from pedestrian traffic, it's essentially impossible to keep pedestrians from cars. Given there will be a mixing of cars and pedestrians, who should we design primarily for: the person driving or walking? If we design for driving, then we relegate walkers to malls and parking lots. If we design for pedestrians, we relegate cars to narrow, crowded, slow streets, and possibly limit which streets cars are allowed on (or which streets through-traffic is allowed on). There isn't one "right" solution, but these are conscious decisions that communities need to be aware of.
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  >It's not always sufficient to just "look out for people".... Aren't the drivers of vehicles expected to look out for other vehicles that may be driving either slower or stopped within a driver's line of transit such as delivery vehicles or police cars? Is it reasonable to say "... well I can't be looking out for a police car working a traffic accident, it's really more their fault than mine..." That seems to be the implication if the collision is vehicle/person vs. vehicle/vehicle. At some point it's not unreasonable for drivers have to pull their heads out of their asses and "look out for people" as they drive.
sliverstorm 12y ago
Responsibility needs to be allocated according to reality, not historical sentiment. Horses have priority over hikers and mountain bikers on trails because horses spook, and around here hikers defer to mountain bikers because a hiker can quickly stop and step off the trail, while the biker cannot. Also, it's not true that the vehicle automatically bears no responsibility if they strike a jaywalker.
- stephencanon 12y ago
  Really? Bikes should always defer to hikers. If you can't stop quickly enough to do so, you're being reckless, since you then wouldn't be able to stop quickly enough to avoid an injured hiker on the trail or an obstacle, or my 73 year old mother.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    I don't know, maybe it's just a courtesy thing then, but either way that's what happens. As a mountain biker and hiker, when on foot I defer to bikes because that's what I would want as a biker, and that's what others do for me when I'm biking.

by imgabe 12y ago

SilasX 12y ago

Cars aren't required to look out for people? They don't have criminal or civil liability? That is not the world that I experience. Go run over a pedestrian (even one who technically shouldn't have been there) and let us know how that works out.

smeyer 12y ago
I think a lot of people are exaggerating in this thread. Still, only 5% of New York drivers who are involved in a fatal crash with with a pedestrian are arrested, let alone convicted[1]. It seems that most of the time, there isn't much criminal liability. [1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/2014/05/01/the-perfect-crime-a-new-f...
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Here in Oregon, pedestrians and bicyclists are routinely run over by cars, buses, and light rail trains. Almost invariably without consequences. At least for the motorist; the bicyclist often suffers severe medical consequences. Usually it's considered an "accident". The one thing you can't do is "hit and run", you must stop. The police aggressively investigate hit-and-run accidents. There is no liability unless you are "negligent". So if you've been drinking and driving you could face both civil and criminal penalty. And certainly you can be sued by whoever you hit. And maybe your insurance company will pay the pedestrian, but that's usually because it's cheaper to pay a few medical bills than to pay lawyers to continue to litigate. Cost-benefit analysis.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  I'm surprised about 'routinely' for light rail trains (which I call trams). There have been three pedestrians killed by trams in the UK in the last 20 years[1]. Every accident/incident gets a 30+ page independent report (linked from [1]). Railway safety has reached the point where the greatest danger to passengers is falling down stairs, or tripping over when running. The last fatality to someone on a train was on 23 February 2007. How different things would be if a fatal road accident led to a 30-page report concluding with a set of recommendations and an expectation that they'd all be implemented. [1] https://aib-cms.co.uk/sites/raib/publications/reports_by_type_of_railway/light_rail/operations.cfm https://aib-cms.co.uk/sites/raib/publications/reports_by_typ...
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    Here are three deaths from Portland's MAX light rail in about the last 13 months.[1][2] And it's not a very big system. There have been 34 deaths in just one portion of the light rail, in less than 30 years. A few are classified as suicide.[3] There are some barriers and crossing gates, but MAX mostly runs alongside pedestrians and vehicles. It's up to the pedestrians to pay attention. Edit: BTW I think that what we call "light rail" may be larger than what you consider a tram and what we call a "streetcar". A MAX car is about 28 meters long, a streetcar is about 20 meters long.[4] [1] http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/08/max_train_deaths_family_friend.html http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/08/max_tr... [2] http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/12/man_struck_by_max_train_in_se.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/12/man_str... [3]http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/man_killed_by_max_train_at_eas.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/man_kil... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Streetcar#Compatibility_with_MAX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Streetcar#Compatibilit...
  - angersock 12y ago
    Houston put in a light rail, and for some reason decided that its drivers were competent enough (hah) to deal with that fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc Funny thing is, despite its relatively small size, it's one of the most heavily used rails in the country (last I checked).

ahomescu1 12y ago

> Cars are not required to look out for people, people have to look out for cars. It's not always sufficient to just "look out for people". It is quite possible that the driver, at the speed they're driving at, does not have the reflexes or braking distance to safely stop when encountering a "jaywalker". The alternative that many people propose is to reduce driving speed to "safe" values, which I always thought naive. Even if you make everyone drive at 20MPH inside cities, you'll still have people exceeding that limit and getting into accidents. IMHO, it's just safer to keep pedestrians away from cars.

curun1r 12y ago
> Even if you make everyone drive at 20MPH inside cities, you'll still have people exceeding that limit and getting into accidents. The key is how you make everyone drive 20mph. It's been pretty well established that speed limits do a horrible job of forcing drivers to slow down and are even counter productive since a small minority of drivers will actually follow them. This creates a delta between them and the majority of drivers and deltas between drivers, more so than absolute speed, contribute to an increase in accidents. However you can actually slow drivers down by making the lanes narrower. Drivers may complain, object and lobby to revert back to wider lanes, but they'll actually slow down until that happens.
mjmahone17 12y ago
The main issue is unless we ban cars from areas that benefit from pedestrian traffic, it's essentially impossible to keep pedestrians from cars. Given there will be a mixing of cars and pedestrians, who should we design primarily for: the person driving or walking? If we design for driving, then we relegate walkers to malls and parking lots. If we design for pedestrians, we relegate cars to narrow, crowded, slow streets, and possibly limit which streets cars are allowed on (or which streets through-traffic is allowed on). There isn't one "right" solution, but these are conscious decisions that communities need to be aware of.
jbigelow76 12y ago
>It's not always sufficient to just "look out for people".... Aren't the drivers of vehicles expected to look out for other vehicles that may be driving either slower or stopped within a driver's line of transit such as delivery vehicles or police cars? Is it reasonable to say "... well I can't be looking out for a police car working a traffic accident, it's really more their fault than mine..." That seems to be the implication if the collision is vehicle/person vs. vehicle/vehicle. At some point it's not unreasonable for drivers have to pull their heads out of their asses and "look out for people" as they drive.

sliverstorm 12y ago

Responsibility needs to be allocated according to reality, not historical sentiment. Horses have priority over hikers and mountain bikers on trails because horses spook, and around here hikers defer to mountain bikers because a hiker can quickly stop and step off the trail, while the biker cannot. Also, it's not true that the vehicle automatically bears no responsibility if they strike a jaywalker.

stephencanon 12y ago
Really? Bikes should always defer to hikers. If you can't stop quickly enough to do so, you're being reckless, since you then wouldn't be able to stop quickly enough to avoid an injured hiker on the trail or an obstacle, or my 73 year old mother.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I don't know, maybe it's just a courtesy thing then, but either way that's what happens. As a mountain biker and hiker, when on foot I defer to bikes because that's what I would want as a biker, and that's what others do for me when I'm biking.