I walk to work every morning- about 3/4 of a mile in Texas.
At least twice a week, while crossing an intersection someone will turn at least 30% of the way through the intersection (if not more) before realizing that I'm crossing the street (in a crosswalk, with a green signal) then slam on the brakes.
This is after I _already started crossing_. I don't think any amount of diligence would protect me from this, other than simply not walking.
New cars with huge A pillars designed to protect the driver. They are a huge blind spot. I grew up driving 80s Hondas with thin pillars and absolutely amazing visibility. My 2010 Fit, I have made left turns multiple times and been surprised to see pedestrians that I didn't notice. This never happened to me once in any of my older cars. Visibility in modern cars is pathetic, and a crime they they allow it to be so bad as long as the car passes a crash test.
It sounds like they’re talking about a turn-on-green car conflicting with a simultaneous walk-on-white pedestrian phase.
Around here (MA), we’ve given pedestrians about a 4 second head start to make them more visible in situations like this (less likely to be in the A-pillar airbag blockage).
As the sibling said, this is mostly due to left yield on green (there's no protected left at this intersection), but some drivers do this with turn on red. Even though this intersection has no turn on red signage due to very low visibility to oncoming traffic.
Cars destroy walkability. City planners need to shift their mind from arterial expressways to moats that prevent cars from ever approaching city centers and actually provide alternative transit options that aren't crap.
My partner and I had a day long layover in Dallas and trying to get anywhere in that city on foot felt futile even after we taxi'd into the middle of what I assume is downtown.
Excessive distances between destinations destroys walkability, too. Which is a necessary condition for environments that can accommodate the quantity and size of most American cars.
Edit: Excessive distances are also a necessary condition for living in an environment with detached 2.5k+ sq ft single family houses with garages and backyards.
Exactly. Basically, Americans simply do not want walkable neighborhoods or cities. They want to have huge houses with garages and backyards they rarely use, and they don't want to use municipal parks because "those people" might also use them. You can't have walkable cities when everyone is living in a huge, detached single-family house with a big yard.
If it comes down to a choice between the dense, walkable cities of Europe and Asia, or the car-dominated suburban hellscape that is most of America, the vast majority of Americans are going to choose the latter.
IMO, if you really want to live in a walkable city, the thing to do is simply move to one, rather than sitting around hoping the rest of Americans are going to change their opinions and their culture. This is most likely going to mean leaving America. It's exactly what I did, and walkability was one of the big reasons.
My understanding is that there are actually a fair amount of planners and engineers who like walkability, but that they fairly often get overriden by politicians. Local politician elections have fairly thin margins, and the most motivated voters and the most motivated NIMBYs tends to overlap.
The majority of planners I’ve met are what you might call “urbanists”. They are generally limited by policy and politics to maintain the status quo, and are therefore frustrated.
I know people like to attack drivers and want them to quit driving, but if you want to walk maybe you should move instead? I mean you know what happens in cities, and what the dangers are, just like there are dangers to driving.
Oh, I'm doing both - I've left the US for Canada and will actually be doing some remote work in Spain shortly with any luck. I'm immensely excited! But... I'm a software developer and I have the financial freedom to jetset about - most people do not and the people unwalkable cities hurt the most are the working poor which Florida and Texas have a whole bunch of.
For those of us that need to walk while the powers that be figure out how to save us from cars, my suggestion is to assume that they can't see you. Because they probably can't. No, they don't see you when you cross the street when the light is green for you. No, they can't see you when you cross the street on a 25mph school zone. No, they can't see you when you walkway is closed (for construction) and you need to walk onto the road for a bit. And, they especially can't see you at night.
If you make eye contact with its driver, then maybe they've seen you. Otherwise, they can't see you.
I'm a daily commuter cyclist. I try hard to be the most visible thing on the road. I always wear hi-viz clothing, always have front and rear lights (even in broad daylight), put reflective hi-viz tape on my bike and helmet, make eye contact with drivers, and politely wave at them as appropriate. (Surely other things as well; this is all from memory.)
Despite all of this, I still regularly run into drivers who clearly don't see me. I'm lit up like a Christmas tree! The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of drivers aren't paying attention. I think all the visibility changes I've made probably make a difference, but there's little I can do to for those who won't see me no matter what I do.
Acting like other drivers can't see you leads to particularly conservative cycling. I do often wait for a road to be clear if I'm going through a dangerous stretch of road, but this adds a significant amount of time to my commute.
The only thing I've found that works decently for drivers who clearly aren't paying attention is noise. I used to have an air horn, which I should start using again. I've been shouting as needed lately, which works but probably isn't good for my throat.
I've been paying attention to my surroundings a bit more lately, and it's _shocking_ how many people don't even bother using hands-free technology with their phones. I frequently see people holding their phone 6 inches from their face, presumably on speaker phone (but probably using it more actively than that), which blocks a good 50% of their windshield.
Even before I had a car with bluetooth capabilities, if I _needed_ to make a call on the road (which is already a very high bar), I would use the voice assistant to place a call on speaker phone and talk loud enough that it could catch my voice from the cupholder.
I've been hit twice on a bicycle by a car when the car had a stop sign and I had no sign/light at a T intersection and I was looking at the driver, people can get into a zone of looking for cars and just ignoring all else.
Eye contact is a good minimum bet. Not just a glance, either, humans are blind for something like 40 minutes a day and that may be one of those moments.
I am legally blind and must walk, but I can't see the drivers face. I've travelled around looking for good cities to call home, but haven't found one in the US. Given all the close calls I've had... I think my days are numbered and I can only hope it's a quick and mostly painless death.
When I lived in the Los Angeles area, I commuted to work three miles—six miles round trip—as a pedestrian. I certainly buy the data shown here, though it feels like it may merely reflect the number of people walking versus the number of drivers. I suspect in the central-northern part of the country, there just aren't a whole lot of pedestrians out and about to be injured in the first place.
Back in Los Angeles, I was most surprised by the resistance I received from the local city council when I asked for additional protections for pedestrians at obviously-problematic intersections. There was one crossing on my route where the cross-traffic speed limit was 40 MPH, meaning the real-world speed was 45 to 50 MPH, sometimes lower depending on traffic congestion. Only the intersecting street I was followjng had a stop, and as a result, the 45 MPH opposing traffic also had essentially zero expectation of having to stop for a pedestrian.
I asked the city to consider modifying the intersection into an all-way stop.
They promptly rejected the idea and instead simply painted thicker lines on the crosswalk. Thicker lines. That was what the city thought would save me and other pedestrians from cars traveling ~45 MPH on a street where no one ever expects a pedestrian to be crossing. Needless to say, I avoided crossing there for all the years I walked to work, even though doing so made my route less convenient. They claimed it had something to do with nearby train tracks, but that argument did not hold any water.
So it comes as no surprise that California has high pedestrian traffic fatalities.
I've been seeing increase in traffic fatalities in general being attributed by increasingly large vehicles, because they have significantly less visibility and their shape makes it so crashes are much more fatal. Does anyone have causal relationship studies?
[That being said the rapid increase of pedestrian traffic fatalities depresses me greatly. Children are less safe to play on sidewalks and neighborhood suburb streets than they were just a decade ago. This isn't how safety is supposed to work.]
I am certainly less dangerous in my F250 than my Bolt (though I've never caused a wreck, so that's hypothetical). Why? Because the godforsaken F250 turns like an aircraft carrier and I drive it slowly and carefully as a result. The real design failure of modern cars, IMO, is the A-pillar width. It creates a huge blind spot, especially on the front left, that you have to very consciously mitigate.
My suspicion is that this is true for you, but untrue generally. When walking and biking, all of my close calls have been with large trucks. Drivers typically feel more confident going faster in large vehicles because they are higher up, and they are less likely to see pedestrians and especially small children. Modern trucks and SUVs are very unlikely to rollover in normal intersections, so the more awkward turning doesn't force drivers to slow down. Is there any data on how often trucks and SUVs hit pedestrians and bikers compared to cars? They are certainly more lethal when they are involved in a collision.
I have to constantly look around my A pillars and its annoying as hell. Even taking my Fit onto the race track, the damn pillar blocks half of the corner from view. It's a real problem.
Even in supposedly bike and pedestrian friendly Minneapolis, the drivers are terrifying. The traffic dampening measures the city has put in do very little to slow the aggressive drivers, and there is next to zero law enforcement. Before becoming a parent, I was very deliberate about where I biked / ran / walked. Now with a toddler, I only walk a very limited number of specific routes at specific times of day that try to minimize potential interaction with drivers. After 8 years in NYC and 3 in Dallas, I was so excited to move here. Now I'm desperate to leave - 100% because of the drivers. But I haven't figured out where drivers don't dominate somewhat affordable urban living.
Readit News
At least twice a week, while crossing an intersection someone will turn at least 30% of the way through the intersection (if not more) before realizing that I'm crossing the street (in a crosswalk, with a green signal) then slam on the brakes.
This is after I _already started crossing_. I don't think any amount of diligence would protect me from this, other than simply not walking.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings
Around here (MA), we’ve given pedestrians about a 4 second head start to make them more visible in situations like this (less likely to be in the A-pillar airbag blockage).
My partner and I had a day long layover in Dallas and trying to get anywhere in that city on foot felt futile even after we taxi'd into the middle of what I assume is downtown.
Edit: Excessive distances are also a necessary condition for living in an environment with detached 2.5k+ sq ft single family houses with garages and backyards.
If it comes down to a choice between the dense, walkable cities of Europe and Asia, or the car-dominated suburban hellscape that is most of America, the vast majority of Americans are going to choose the latter.
IMO, if you really want to live in a walkable city, the thing to do is simply move to one, rather than sitting around hoping the rest of Americans are going to change their opinions and their culture. This is most likely going to mean leaving America. It's exactly what I did, and walkability was one of the big reasons.
My understanding is that there are actually a fair amount of planners and engineers who like walkability, but that they fairly often get overriden by politicians. Local politician elections have fairly thin margins, and the most motivated voters and the most motivated NIMBYs tends to overlap.
(Like, 5 people. This is not a study).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
If you make eye contact with its driver, then maybe they've seen you. Otherwise, they can't see you.
Despite all of this, I still regularly run into drivers who clearly don't see me. I'm lit up like a Christmas tree! The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of drivers aren't paying attention. I think all the visibility changes I've made probably make a difference, but there's little I can do to for those who won't see me no matter what I do.
Acting like other drivers can't see you leads to particularly conservative cycling. I do often wait for a road to be clear if I'm going through a dangerous stretch of road, but this adds a significant amount of time to my commute.
The only thing I've found that works decently for drivers who clearly aren't paying attention is noise. I used to have an air horn, which I should start using again. I've been shouting as needed lately, which works but probably isn't good for my throat.
Even before I had a car with bluetooth capabilities, if I _needed_ to make a call on the road (which is already a very high bar), I would use the voice assistant to place a call on speaker phone and talk loud enough that it could catch my voice from the cupholder.
Back in Los Angeles, I was most surprised by the resistance I received from the local city council when I asked for additional protections for pedestrians at obviously-problematic intersections. There was one crossing on my route where the cross-traffic speed limit was 40 MPH, meaning the real-world speed was 45 to 50 MPH, sometimes lower depending on traffic congestion. Only the intersecting street I was followjng had a stop, and as a result, the 45 MPH opposing traffic also had essentially zero expectation of having to stop for a pedestrian.
I asked the city to consider modifying the intersection into an all-way stop.
They promptly rejected the idea and instead simply painted thicker lines on the crosswalk. Thicker lines. That was what the city thought would save me and other pedestrians from cars traveling ~45 MPH on a street where no one ever expects a pedestrian to be crossing. Needless to say, I avoided crossing there for all the years I walked to work, even though doing so made my route less convenient. They claimed it had something to do with nearby train tracks, but that argument did not hold any water.
So it comes as no surprise that California has high pedestrian traffic fatalities.
[That being said the rapid increase of pedestrian traffic fatalities depresses me greatly. Children are less safe to play on sidewalks and neighborhood suburb streets than they were just a decade ago. This isn't how safety is supposed to work.]
https://www.currentresults.com/Images/Maps/usa-state-tempera...