This morning while jogging in the US I came to an intersection. Green lights and walk on in my direction. A car approaching from my left had a red light, the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path. I expected this of course, so avoided being run over. If I wasn't watching for this, it likely would be a different outcome.
So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.
Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing...
This is exactly why this turn is illegal in nearly every country in the world except the US and Canada. [1]
If you are in the UK, this turn is illegal always and everywhere, so it basically never happens.
I grew up in the US with right turn on red, so I was used to it and accepted it as normal. But after living the UK for 6 years, I'm now physically shocked when visiting the US at how dangerous it is to walk around even very dense urban US areas like Chicago's north loop. Cars are constantly trying to run you over by turning across active crosswalks. It's totally absurd to experience once you've lived somewhere else where that would result in you immediately losing your license. US culture in general has no respect for pedestrians (although of course some individuals do).
This isn't some utopian dream of ultimate walkability achieved through pro-pedestrian urban redesign. This is the most basic laws that govern cities actively making it dangerous to walk around because it saved a bit of gas during the 1970s oil crisis.
In Sweden you are not allowed to turn on red, but the crossroad on the right and left are often aligned to be green at the same time as the cars has green. As such, both the car lane and crossroads are active at the same time, and drivers are expected to turn across active crosswalks. Pedestrian has priority, and there is usually a short period between green -> yellow -> red, where the crosswalk will be red, which allow for around 2-3 cars to pass if the crossroad has people on them during the full active duration.
I think the major difference lies elsewhere. A major one could be that teaching drivers to ignore red is just a very bad idea. An other aspect I find quite different when I visited the states was that the transition time was extremely long compared to Sweden. Here it is not uncommon to see green to be only active for a handful cars worth of traffic before changing, or about the estimated time that it takes for a person to cross the road. It not designed to drive fast and do a quick turn.
I'm convinced this is a big cause as well. Reduced visibility greatly exacerbates this (as a driver looking for visibility while in the turning lane) trying to see if walkers or cars are coming over the very high hoods of other vehicles. Multiple lanes, signs and etc. all vying for attention all cause a drain on focus which wouldn't exist if the turn was outlawed in the first place.
I'll also say, it's not only pedestrians affected by this, anecdotally just this morning a car turned right on red directly into my path, while the driver was making eye contact with me as I was turning left through a green arrow.
> permits the operator of a motor vehicle to turn such vehicle right at a red stop light after stopping
Quoting GP, emphasis again mine:
> the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path
The driver turned without stopping. That is explicitly and clearly illegal throughout the US.
This is one of those rules drivers are supposed to be trained on (and tested on) before being given a license, but it doesn't seem to stick.
The Wikipedia article notes that allowing turn-on-red became widespread in response to fuel scarcity. Fuel efficiency is dramatically higher in modern vehicles. Maybe it's time to repeal it after all.
If only there was public interest in public safety...
> This is exactly why this turn is illegal in nearly every country in the world except the US and Canada.
I think variations of this are pretty common in Europe. Your link says this actually. Details vary, but as the GP post says, it is not uncommon that the pedestrian has a green light and the car can still turn right across it. UK, indeed, does not have it. But frankly I find it frustrating, both as a driver and a pedestrian, as I feel waiting time on junctions is always infinitely long.
I'm not familiar with how it works in the US, but in Europe pedestrians have priority in such cases, and it's fairly well respected.
The reason drivers are able to drive like that is the design of the streets themselves. Things like raised crosswalks[1] and corner extensions[2] slow cars down and force them to pay attention. A lot of intersections in my area are the opposite, where they lower the whole curb to road level so cars can cut onto the curb to make the turn faster. There are lots of ways that the US builds infrastructure in ways that make it much more dangerous for pedestrians and bikers.
This comment makes it seem like people are built differently in the US than they are in the rest of the world, but that obviously isn't true. The roads (particularly intersections, where crashes tend to happen) are in fact built differently though. Urbanist resources like NotJustBikes and Oh The Urbanity! YouTube channels do a great job of highlighting the differences, and how they force drivers to pay attention through the laws of physics rather than the laws of signage.
No, the US has a culture of not giving a single shit about anyone but yourself. A frighteningly large fraction of drivers will do anything they can get away with. Here in the land of the free, rules are for other people, not for me.
The problem is that even if they look back and fourth and know you're there the "go" condition (no incoming cross traffic) is the same for both parties so it's a ready made "two idiots trying to pass each other in the hallway" situation.
I think it speaks volumes that the discussion is anchored around whether cars look or not despite the fact that the underlying algorithm will produce conflicts even if they do.
One thing I always do is say a car is stopped at an intersection and is making a right turn while I'm in the crosswalk, I always look at the driver and where they are looking. Often times what I see is the driver will just look to see that the road is clear and never looks to see that the sidewalk is clear and just goes. I can count maybe 2-3 occasions where had I not done this I would have been run over.
This was one thing not talked about in the article: drivers in the US are not used to pedestrians outside of major cities like Boston, NYC, etc. I've seen drivers blow past me while I was in the crosswalk to rush and make a right turn and were bewildered that someone was actually using the crosswalk.
I was just in Montpelier, VT yesterday, which has a population of just 8000 people, but as the state capital enjoys a busy downtown with a lot of activity. The moment a pedestrian approaches a non-signal crosswalk, traffic in both directions immediately stops to allow them to cross.
Not sure why the people in Vermont have all worked this out, but they do.
> So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.
You think that isn't the same everywhere? I've got some news: in every country there are parents distracted by kids fighting in the back seat, and in every country pedestrians walking into light poles while on the phone is a running joke. Also: the USA has managed to export it's love for large cars to most countries. Here in Australia we call large SUV's shopping trolleys.
Despite this, if you look at the graphs in the article, you will see most countries have managed to drive down pedestrian deaths. Except the US, where the curve trends up. The reason is pretty straight forward, and has nothing to do with the cars, the attitudes of drives or pedestrians. Hell, you can even ask an AI what it is, and you will get a reasonable answer:
[Countries] have historically managed to drive down pedestrian deaths due to motor vehicle accidents primarily by adopting the Safe System approach, which includes elements of Vision Zero, a long-term goal of zero road fatalities and serious injuries.
This approach focuses on creating a road system that is safe for all users, particularly vulnerable ones like pedestrians, by managing speed, designing safer infrastructure, and ensuring safe vehicles and road user behavior.
The AI drones on and on, listing the many changes to road design and rules that caused the drop. This is not rocket science. Everybody can do it, and it's trivial to find out what needs to be done. What the USA lacks is a political system that can deliver it.
Yes one of the hardest things is to train a toddler for the hostile road conditions when she's biking, walking or scootering to school from the train station. Obviously I'm with her, but it's hard to explain the art of making eye contact to make sure the motorists acknowledge us at a crosswalk or stop sign
>> The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.
If that is the cause, why did the number of drivers not looking for pedestrians suddenly start increasing around 2010?
>> Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing
"If the increase of size and frequency of trucks and SUVs was behind the increase in pedestrian deaths, we wouldn’t expect to see an increase in the frequency of pedestrians killed by sedans or compact cars. However, if we look at pedestrian deaths by model of car, we see that pedestrian deaths involving popular sedans have increased as well. Pedestrian deaths involving Honda Civics and Accords, Toyota Corollas and Camrys, and Nissan Altimas have all increased substantially"
To me the reason is the right-on-red rule. I still find it insane, and I have been in Canada for 9 years.
In my driving classes, I have been clearly explained that a right-on-red must be treated like a stop sign and that to turn, there needs to be two lanes free of cars: the one you are getting into and the next one (if one lane is available,this doesn't apply).
Many,many drivers treat the red light like a green light for turning right and that's the root of the issue.
Looks like most of these comments aren't reading the article. Most of the pedestrian deaths are not at intersections. Likely it's a combo of big vehicles, distracted pedestrians and distracted drivers. One thing I've noticed in other countries is people are much more likely to jaywalk. I wonder if that is becoming more common as our share of immigrants increases.
Pedestrians pay with their lives so that we can have butch looking trucks in the US. Seriously. It's for the vanity of pavement queens. And it's measurable. Quantifiable. Regulators are unwilling to take on this problem because they'd be called woke.
The "pavement queens" have been convinced they need larger by companies that sell trucks, because larger trucks have lower legal requirements for fuel efficiency.
Even when they do see you they have an air of entitlement and/or don't know any of the right-of-way rules. I've had drivers honk and yell at me when they want to cross a sidewalk driveway I'm currently moving through.
Except this seems to differ from the article in that the article notes that the vast majority of fatalities are the fault of the pedestrian. What you describe would be the drivers fault.
>> vast majority of fatalities are the fault of the pedestrian
>> This doesn’t necessarily mean the pedestrian was at fault — it could simply indicate that in a pedestrian death we only get one side of the story, which makes it hard to charge the driver with a crime.
But I have to say, I agree with both of you there. I lived in a country where car drivers are explicitly required by law to avoid killing people, and therefore are always at fault, even if pedestrian was crossing illegally. Law even requires drivers to speed down if they reasonably couldn't see a pedestrian. Basically, if you can't not hit people, you might as well abandon you car.
Just the fact that the pedestrian could be at fault for their own killing, I think, makes the chances of that happening way way higher.
It's insane that "well my car weights 8 ton and cant stop in time even when im under speed limit" is even an argument for an innocence, and not a jail ticket that has "didn't care enough about not killing people" written on it.
Pedestrians are hit by cars in the USA because the roads are not designed for non-car users. This is exacerbated by distracted driving, drunk driving, and recent car design changes like higher hood heights but the root of it is poorly designed roads which don’t consider pedestrians’ needs.
A huge part of poorly designed roads is wider lanes (and parking spaces) that allow/encourage huge cars. Its been proven that narrower lanes correlate strongly with lower crash and fatality rates (e.g. [0] below) yet lane widths are under pressure to increase with larger vehicles, and every time this happens the vehicles get larger again.
Someone doesn't understand that any article that's drawing conclusions based on a workflow that involves putting a Chevy Suburban (functionally a chevy pickup from the B pillar forward) and a Honda HRV into the same category is sus at best and anyone uncritically accepting said conclusions is also sus at best.
If one wanted to be honest they'd look at GVW or some other metric that tracks size far more closely than a fairly arbitrary categorization that is highly gamed for regulatory reasons.
We're all just so sick of these shallow analysis. Shitting numbers and graphs onto them doesn't make them not shallow. Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?[1]?
Yes, european roads are not as wide, since they make place for proper sidewalks and bike lanes. Another advantage is that narrower roads make drivers drive more carefully and slowly, reducing accidents even further.
Yeah. Halving the width halves the time to cross and also causes drivers to slow down in proportion even if the speed limit is significantly higher. Narrowing and placing “obstacles” is the only effective way of showing traffic permanently.
There are lots of narrow roads in America, like the one I currently live on, which is about 1.75 lanes wide. If I come up against a large truck, one of us has to pull to the side.
Most people prefer not to drive on roads like that.
people drive slower on narrower roads — some traffic calming efforts in the US include making right turns at lights narrower so people slow down while potentially turning into a crosswalk
I was amazed when I travelled to the US at just how pedestrian hostile it is. I was travelling to a conference in San Diego and it was just impossible to walk safely between where I was staying and where I was going to because this was the road:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/G2PeVbEzQyqbgDTN9
Only because you chose to walk through the port instead of through town. Google Maps' walking route is shorter than the route that goes through that road, entirely on sidewalks, and only requires crossing one road wider than one car lane per direction (and said road has a signalized crosswalk). There is also a pedestrian bridge across that road that could be used instead, but Google didn't pick it, likely because it connects with "private" property (the convention center's path).
It has a lot to do with many Americans relationships to cities, and dare I say, wanting to be away from "those people" in the cities.
Some Americans can be hostile to increasing city density, arguing it will increase car traffic. Yet the whole point of dense cities is to help people avoid driving as you live next to everything.
Meanwhile development out in the hinterlands continues unabated, and the only way to get to the city if you live there is with a car.
When you ask the same Americans why they like visiting a resort or European city, they will talk about being able to walk around without a car to get everything they need.
> When you ask the same Americans why they like visiting a resort or European city, they will talk about being able to walk around without a car to get everything they need.
To be fair, you're looking for different things at a resort than you are at home. At a resort, you're not looking to do weekly food shopping, or buy supplies to do work around the house, or etc, etc. That's not to say things can't be organized to make doing so more reasonable, but living in an area where you drive to get everything and wanting to _visit_ (but not live in) an area where you can walk to everything (because you don't need major things) is not unreasonable.
I was at a conference years ago in Burbank, wanted to walk during lunch break as I was tired from all the sitting and was stopped by the cops also. They were super friendly, offered me a ride but couldn't understand why I'm walking (especially without some destination). It's a really different mindset from Europe.
Where I live they will randomly build a bike path for a mile on the side of the road. But then it just ends. There's not a sense of how it could be built to connect people to the places they need to go. It's random and ad-hoc. Then people say "its pointless to build bike / ped infrastructure, nobody uses it!"
Around here, there seems to be an unwritten rule that every place a trail crosses the road there must be a row of 20’ tall shrub blocking the entire line of visibility in both directions.
I’ve lived in places where they’ll add the bike path during scheduled road work, as it’s cheaper to get it done while there’s a crew already onsite. It can be a bit stochastic at first like you mention, but over a while I’ve seen the corridor eventually fill out, making the most of a shoestring budget.
This is a huge problem where I live too. The thing is, technically, everyone is equally connected, because people have a legal right of way on all roads using any means of transport (apart from motorways, but these are always redundant links). But practically, most routes are unsafe and just downright unpleasant to use in anything but a motorvehicle.
I don't know what metrics they are using to assess walking or cycling infrastructure, but it seems like it's just raw miles of pavement/tarmac. This is a useless metric. You can have 10 miles of pristine cycle path but if it goes nowhere it's not useful and nobody will use it.
The metrics need to be based on graph completeness. Important places are the nodes. You get to draw an edge if there's a reasonable route that is less than, say, 150% of the crow flies distance (or some more clever formula taking into account gradients etc., ie. it's allowed to be longer if it means not including a 25% gradient). Then your score is simply number of edges divided by number of edges in the complete graph (or 2E/(N^2*N) where E is number of edges and N number of places).
I had a suspicion that there were more idiots on the road after and during covid. good to see this reflected in the data, but sad to know that it's actually true. no matter where I go in the USA I see people speeding easily 50% over the limit, running red lights, blowing through stop signs. it's ridiculous.
given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyota safety sense are pretty effective - you can check on youtube. people will place random dummys in front of the car and it stops pretty accurately.
I’d like someone to do a deep dive in the data; I suspect that almost all of the fatalities involve some variation of “not following the laws” simply because nobody does.
We need crosswalks enforced by spikes that pop up from the ground or something similarly draconian to get people to wake up.
The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.
A similar nation-wide campaign is needed around auto safety.
>The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.
They also changed bus routing best practice to alter the sorts of stops that were causing the bulk of the passing. Like for example right side stops on roads divided by any sort of median are avoided where possible these days.
> there were more idiots on the road after and during covid
I don't think the data really supports this, because pedestrian deaths have been rising continuously since 2008 instead of abruptly after 2019; there is at least a bunch of other factors at play.
Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.
Personally, I think that "more distracted pedestrians" (from smartphones) is also an interesting theory which could possibly explain the huge increase in Sedan-lethality.
> Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.
I'd be cautious of reading _too_ much into that, because in that time period the US has largely legalised a popular drug. You'd expect this rate to rise just because a cop asking "were you using cannabis" in the US is now a very different threat level than it was 20 years ago.
We're 30mph through my village but because it is a 'cut through' the local government deem it to be important and the speed cannot be reduced. Even though we had two cars go round a sharp bend into a tree within a month of each other, in dry conditions.
Not Germany here but I witnessed buses of the bus company of my former city driving at 50 or more in a 30 km/h area. Some of those areas have a 30 limit because of a good reason, some probably only to add up kilometers and make the city council look good.
Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be. One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place). I see jwalking pretty much every day. I see people walking when the signal says to stay put. I see people darting out from between parked cars. I see this every day. Sure they have priority. But a car doing 55 does not care. Keep your head on a swivel. I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.
But most of these issues are highlighting road/driver issues, not pedestrian ones.
People jaywalk because the lights are timed more for the convenience of the drivers. People dart out between parked cars because the nearest crosswalk is a long way away. People cross the interstate because otherwise their 5 minute walk becomes an hour. Drivers shouldn't be going 55 in spots where someone can be obscured by a row of parked cars. etc.
A lot of this is parked cars right beside a 55mph highway. Or stretches of stroad that are a mile long with no pedestrian crossings. In the US we love to zone that 'business over here' and 'residentials over there' which means you have to cross high traffic areas to do anything. And if you're without car you're rightly screwed.
> One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place).
That IS a problem. However, what is the locality doing to fixing an obvious problem of 'nowhere to safely cross a high speed road'? Aside "fuckit, cross halfway when it looks safe" is basically the only sane response. WALKING up or down an interstate or major highway to get to a light or some crossing way would take 1+ hours to do.
> Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be.
Are they actually obstructing, or just crossing and you don't like that?
> I see people walking when the signal says to stay put.
So in my liberal-ish city in a republican state, we have basically terrible cargo-cult traffic control. They do shit like "dont turn on pedestrian lights when nobody presses the button", no right-turn on reds even if theres no ped crossing, arbitrary bad speed control, stuff like that.
On the city square, its routine to see no cars cause the lights are anti-timed to impede cars. BUT the light will be green allowing all those cars (NONE!) to continue. So yeah, we look the 1 way - its a 1 way road - and we will cross when we're not supposed to.
Again, this is what happens when you mix blaming pedestrians, poor traffic handling, and cargo cult liberal ideas all together. Makes a terrible situation for everyone.
> I see people darting out from between parked cars.
Again, goes back to car companies criminalizing "jaywalking", in order to steer the blame to humans rather than humans driving a 1 ton slab of metal and plastic.
> But a car doing 55 does not care.
Ah hah! And there's the gotcha. You're not talking about downtown and slower streets, like city residential or the city square. You're talking about Stroads, this bastardized terrible mix between a street (slow, humans everywhere) and a road (high speed, no humans, limited entry/exit). Not Just Bikes talks extensively about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
Yes, Stroads kill. And Stroads are EVERYWHERE in the USA. This US-centric anti-pattern is best seen with a state highway going 55MPH, maybe dropping to 40-45MPH with a town built AROUND this bisecting nigh-uncrossable stroad. They are some of the most anti-human infrastructure we have seen.
> I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.
Thats the problem with stroads and the highways that bifurcate towns and cities. There's FEW places to cross, and the lights themselves are almost never set up to actually allow pedestrian traffic. And you're lucky to even get a sidewalk. And if you do, your door prize is face full of vehicles fumes and super loud vehicles.
The USA has sold off and demolished pedestrian infrastructure for implicitly requiring everyone have a motor vehicle, unless you're lucky enough to live in a rare city with great public infra. (And no, bus lines that share the road with regular vehicles will take you 2 hours to get where your car can take you 20 minutes.)
What's the vehicle window tint situation outside of the US?
Window tint is a pet peeve of mine - as a long-time small car driver I'm used to being around taller vehicles that I can't necessarily see through or around. But the situation has gotten worse and worse.
The law hasn't changed AFAIK - there's a longstanding regulation that cars are generally not allowed to have dark tint from the factory but trucks, SUVs and vans can have dark tint from the second row back.
So you used to see older "standard" pickup trucks, the ones with a single row of seats, and there'd be no tint - you could see through the truck. Now the typical pickup has 2 rows, and dark tint in the back.
A lot of cars have become SUVs as well - now your Subaru Outback or even Crosstrek are technically categorized as SUVs and come with dark rear tint in most configurations.
As a result, when I sit at a traffic light, I can see much less of what is happening beyond the neighboring vehicles than in years past.
Sure, everywhere with roads has some large, opaque vehicles like delivery vans, etc. But the percentage of my field of view that is blocked by neighboring vehicles certainly seems higher than ever.
ive had to resort to heavy tint myself literally just to not be blinded by headlights constantly. i know its not legal but ill take the ticket to not have my retinas seared every 10 seconds at night
I don’t buy the distraction numbers. I see people on their phones constantly while driving, despite laws against it. It’s also impossible to really prove anything after the fact, as the article touches on. The graph shows a massive increase in “distraction not reported,” which to me just sounds like the driver didn’t choose to incriminate themself.
The spike started in 2010, which is when 4G was rolling out, Instagram launched, Facebook was already big, and social media in your pocket was becoming an addictive reality. Before this, there wasn’t a lot to do on a smartphone while driving.
Any attempt to blame it primarily on phones has to wrangle with the fact that those phones are available and in use everywhere on the planet, not just the USA.
I was thinking the same, but many other countries have drivers and pedestrians more separated, to while the distraction, from either the driver or the pedestrians is still a problem, it's mitigated by the greater distance between the two.
Still the "on drug or drunk" for the pedestrians is wild.
My only critique of this is that maybe the countries they compared started to invested in safer urban driving infrastructure during the Lehman shock, and its counteracting the universal growth in distractedness
If it was phone-related, you'd expect it to have risen everywhere, but in fact it has generally fallen modestly in most OECD countries, and risen massively in the US.
>Relatedly, in the majority of pedestrian deaths, the pedestrian is blamed for the accident. In 66% of cases, pedestrians are described as “failing to yield right of way,” “jaywalking,” or “in roadway improperly.” In 87% of cases, the driver is not charged with anything following the accident
It's insane that society has come to accept that some parts of the public space are deadly, and it's your fault if you're not cautious and get killed on them. Just to have more cars.
Readit News
So why do so many pedestrians get killed in the US? The two main reasons to me are: 1. Drivers don't look for pedestrians, and 2. pedestrians expect drivers to follow rules.
Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing...
If you are in the UK, this turn is illegal always and everywhere, so it basically never happens.
I grew up in the US with right turn on red, so I was used to it and accepted it as normal. But after living the UK for 6 years, I'm now physically shocked when visiting the US at how dangerous it is to walk around even very dense urban US areas like Chicago's north loop. Cars are constantly trying to run you over by turning across active crosswalks. It's totally absurd to experience once you've lived somewhere else where that would result in you immediately losing your license. US culture in general has no respect for pedestrians (although of course some individuals do).
This isn't some utopian dream of ultimate walkability achieved through pro-pedestrian urban redesign. This is the most basic laws that govern cities actively making it dangerous to walk around because it saved a bit of gas during the 1970s oil crisis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red
I think the major difference lies elsewhere. A major one could be that teaching drivers to ignore red is just a very bad idea. An other aspect I find quite different when I visited the states was that the transition time was extremely long compared to Sweden. Here it is not uncommon to see green to be only active for a handful cars worth of traffic before changing, or about the estimated time that it takes for a person to cross the road. It not designed to drive fast and do a quick turn.
I'll also say, it's not only pedestrians affected by this, anecdotally just this morning a car turned right on red directly into my path, while the driver was making eye contact with me as I was turning left through a green arrow.
> permits the operator of a motor vehicle to turn such vehicle right at a red stop light after stopping
Quoting GP, emphasis again mine:
> the driver glanced to his left and without stopping or looking in my direction, turned right across my path
The driver turned without stopping. That is explicitly and clearly illegal throughout the US.
This is one of those rules drivers are supposed to be trained on (and tested on) before being given a license, but it doesn't seem to stick.
The Wikipedia article notes that allowing turn-on-red became widespread in response to fuel scarcity. Fuel efficiency is dramatically higher in modern vehicles. Maybe it's time to repeal it after all.
If only there was public interest in public safety...
I think variations of this are pretty common in Europe. Your link says this actually. Details vary, but as the GP post says, it is not uncommon that the pedestrian has a green light and the car can still turn right across it. UK, indeed, does not have it. But frankly I find it frustrating, both as a driver and a pedestrian, as I feel waiting time on junctions is always infinitely long.
I'm not familiar with how it works in the US, but in Europe pedestrians have priority in such cases, and it's fairly well respected.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
[0] https://highways.dot.gov/safety/speed-management/traffic-cal... [1] 3.14 Raised Crosswalk section of [0] [2] 3.16 Corner Extension/Bulbout section of [0]
I think it speaks volumes that the discussion is anchored around whether cars look or not despite the fact that the underlying algorithm will produce conflicts even if they do.
This was one thing not talked about in the article: drivers in the US are not used to pedestrians outside of major cities like Boston, NYC, etc. I've seen drivers blow past me while I was in the crosswalk to rush and make a right turn and were bewildered that someone was actually using the crosswalk.
Not sure why the people in Vermont have all worked this out, but they do.
You think that isn't the same everywhere? I've got some news: in every country there are parents distracted by kids fighting in the back seat, and in every country pedestrians walking into light poles while on the phone is a running joke. Also: the USA has managed to export it's love for large cars to most countries. Here in Australia we call large SUV's shopping trolleys.
Despite this, if you look at the graphs in the article, you will see most countries have managed to drive down pedestrian deaths. Except the US, where the curve trends up. The reason is pretty straight forward, and has nothing to do with the cars, the attitudes of drives or pedestrians. Hell, you can even ask an AI what it is, and you will get a reasonable answer:
The AI drones on and on, listing the many changes to road design and rules that caused the drop. This is not rocket science. Everybody can do it, and it's trivial to find out what needs to be done. What the USA lacks is a political system that can deliver it.If that is the cause, why did the number of drivers not looking for pedestrians suddenly start increasing around 2010?
>> Another contributing factor is of course the huge vehicles that crush people with drivers barely noticing
"If the increase of size and frequency of trucks and SUVs was behind the increase in pedestrian deaths, we wouldn’t expect to see an increase in the frequency of pedestrians killed by sedans or compact cars. However, if we look at pedestrian deaths by model of car, we see that pedestrian deaths involving popular sedans have increased as well. Pedestrian deaths involving Honda Civics and Accords, Toyota Corollas and Camrys, and Nissan Altimas have all increased substantially"
In my driving classes, I have been clearly explained that a right-on-red must be treated like a stop sign and that to turn, there needs to be two lanes free of cars: the one you are getting into and the next one (if one lane is available,this doesn't apply).
Many,many drivers treat the red light like a green light for turning right and that's the root of the issue.
I see that in both 1, and 2, and the lawyer ads everywhere necessary to make the consequences also someone else’s problem and fault.
>> This doesn’t necessarily mean the pedestrian was at fault — it could simply indicate that in a pedestrian death we only get one side of the story, which makes it hard to charge the driver with a crime.
But I have to say, I agree with both of you there. I lived in a country where car drivers are explicitly required by law to avoid killing people, and therefore are always at fault, even if pedestrian was crossing illegally. Law even requires drivers to speed down if they reasonably couldn't see a pedestrian. Basically, if you can't not hit people, you might as well abandon you car.
Just the fact that the pedestrian could be at fault for their own killing, I think, makes the chances of that happening way way higher. It's insane that "well my car weights 8 ton and cant stop in time even when im under speed limit" is even an argument for an innocence, and not a jail ticket that has "didn't care enough about not killing people" written on it.
[0] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-stree...
The article that has all the cool plots, and no relevant information like the actual vehicles being discussed?
The article that doesn't even bother putting a 2000 Camry side-by-side with a 2025 Camry to make it blatantly obvious that it's not just SUVs?
That article?
Someone doesn't understand that any article that's drawing conclusions based on a workflow that involves putting a Chevy Suburban (functionally a chevy pickup from the B pillar forward) and a Honda HRV into the same category is sus at best and anyone uncritically accepting said conclusions is also sus at best.
If one wanted to be honest they'd look at GVW or some other metric that tracks size far more closely than a fairly arbitrary categorization that is highly gamed for regulatory reasons.
We're all just so sick of these shallow analysis. Shitting numbers and graphs onto them doesn't make them not shallow. Like what even is the point of a raw "deaths by state" map?[1]?
[1] https://xkcd.com/1138/
Most people prefer not to drive on roads like that.
Deleted Comment
https://maps.app.goo.gl/asfGrRLkLmtpqnps5
Some Americans can be hostile to increasing city density, arguing it will increase car traffic. Yet the whole point of dense cities is to help people avoid driving as you live next to everything.
Meanwhile development out in the hinterlands continues unabated, and the only way to get to the city if you live there is with a car.
When you ask the same Americans why they like visiting a resort or European city, they will talk about being able to walk around without a car to get everything they need.
To be fair, you're looking for different things at a resort than you are at home. At a resort, you're not looking to do weekly food shopping, or buy supplies to do work around the house, or etc, etc. That's not to say things can't be organized to make doing so more reasonable, but living in an area where you drive to get everything and wanting to _visit_ (but not live in) an area where you can walk to everything (because you don't need major things) is not unreasonable.
They thought I was crazy for walking basically. After reassuring them I knew who and where I was, they let me walk off.
Much of America seems very car-centric (to a European like myself).
There’s a great audio version (I think from the BBC) too.
Nothing screams "safety" like an SUV coming at you from behind and left while accelerating to highway speeds.
Perhaps something similar where you live?
I don't know what metrics they are using to assess walking or cycling infrastructure, but it seems like it's just raw miles of pavement/tarmac. This is a useless metric. You can have 10 miles of pristine cycle path but if it goes nowhere it's not useful and nobody will use it.
The metrics need to be based on graph completeness. Important places are the nodes. You get to draw an edge if there's a reasonable route that is less than, say, 150% of the crow flies distance (or some more clever formula taking into account gradients etc., ie. it's allowed to be longer if it means not including a 25% gradient). Then your score is simply number of edges divided by number of edges in the complete graph (or 2E/(N^2*N) where E is number of edges and N number of places).
given how many people die I'm surprised government's having made safety technology mandatory. things like toyota safety sense are pretty effective - you can check on youtube. people will place random dummys in front of the car and it stops pretty accurately.
We need crosswalks enforced by spikes that pop up from the ground or something similarly draconian to get people to wake up.
The US mostly (but not completely) solved the school bus problem (people passing a bus dropping off children) by having exceptionally hard penalties and enforcing them significantly for the first few months.
A similar nation-wide campaign is needed around auto safety.
They also changed bus routing best practice to alter the sorts of stops that were causing the bulk of the passing. Like for example right side stops on roads divided by any sort of median are avoided where possible these days.
I don't think the data really supports this, because pedestrian deaths have been rising continuously since 2008 instead of abruptly after 2019; there is at least a bunch of other factors at play.
Most suprising to me was the sharp rise in the "pedestrians on drugs" quota.
Personally, I think that "more distracted pedestrians" (from smartphones) is also an interesting theory which could possibly explain the huge increase in Sedan-lethality.
I'd be cautious of reading _too_ much into that, because in that time period the US has largely legalised a popular drug. You'd expect this rate to rise just because a cop asking "were you using cannabis" in the US is now a very different threat level than it was 20 years ago.
People jaywalk because the lights are timed more for the convenience of the drivers. People dart out between parked cars because the nearest crosswalk is a long way away. People cross the interstate because otherwise their 5 minute walk becomes an hour. Drivers shouldn't be going 55 in spots where someone can be obscured by a row of parked cars. etc.
> I see jwalking pretty much every day.
Jaywalking was a created crime by the early car companies to try to take away blame from distracted drivers. https://www.grunge.com/721704/the-truth-about-how-jaywalking... says it better than I.
> One dude I saw just a few days ago was crossing an interstate (see that about 2-3 times a month in the same place).
That IS a problem. However, what is the locality doing to fixing an obvious problem of 'nowhere to safely cross a high speed road'? Aside "fuckit, cross halfway when it looks safe" is basically the only sane response. WALKING up or down an interstate or major highway to get to a light or some crossing way would take 1+ hours to do.
> Then to add to that I see every single day people walking doing silly things and walking into the roads where they should not be.
Are they actually obstructing, or just crossing and you don't like that?
> I see people walking when the signal says to stay put.
So in my liberal-ish city in a republican state, we have basically terrible cargo-cult traffic control. They do shit like "dont turn on pedestrian lights when nobody presses the button", no right-turn on reds even if theres no ped crossing, arbitrary bad speed control, stuff like that.
On the city square, its routine to see no cars cause the lights are anti-timed to impede cars. BUT the light will be green allowing all those cars (NONE!) to continue. So yeah, we look the 1 way - its a 1 way road - and we will cross when we're not supposed to.
Again, this is what happens when you mix blaming pedestrians, poor traffic handling, and cargo cult liberal ideas all together. Makes a terrible situation for everyone.
> I see people darting out from between parked cars.
Again, goes back to car companies criminalizing "jaywalking", in order to steer the blame to humans rather than humans driving a 1 ton slab of metal and plastic.
> But a car doing 55 does not care.
Ah hah! And there's the gotcha. You're not talking about downtown and slower streets, like city residential or the city square. You're talking about Stroads, this bastardized terrible mix between a street (slow, humans everywhere) and a road (high speed, no humans, limited entry/exit). Not Just Bikes talks extensively about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
Yes, Stroads kill. And Stroads are EVERYWHERE in the USA. This US-centric anti-pattern is best seen with a state highway going 55MPH, maybe dropping to 40-45MPH with a town built AROUND this bisecting nigh-uncrossable stroad. They are some of the most anti-human infrastructure we have seen.
> I make sure I cross at the places designated to do so and also make sure there are no cars coming at that moment because some fool decided that was the perfect time to play with their phone.
Thats the problem with stroads and the highways that bifurcate towns and cities. There's FEW places to cross, and the lights themselves are almost never set up to actually allow pedestrian traffic. And you're lucky to even get a sidewalk. And if you do, your door prize is face full of vehicles fumes and super loud vehicles.
The USA has sold off and demolished pedestrian infrastructure for implicitly requiring everyone have a motor vehicle, unless you're lucky enough to live in a rare city with great public infra. (And no, bus lines that share the road with regular vehicles will take you 2 hours to get where your car can take you 20 minutes.)
Window tint is a pet peeve of mine - as a long-time small car driver I'm used to being around taller vehicles that I can't necessarily see through or around. But the situation has gotten worse and worse.
The law hasn't changed AFAIK - there's a longstanding regulation that cars are generally not allowed to have dark tint from the factory but trucks, SUVs and vans can have dark tint from the second row back.
So you used to see older "standard" pickup trucks, the ones with a single row of seats, and there'd be no tint - you could see through the truck. Now the typical pickup has 2 rows, and dark tint in the back.
A lot of cars have become SUVs as well - now your Subaru Outback or even Crosstrek are technically categorized as SUVs and come with dark rear tint in most configurations.
As a result, when I sit at a traffic light, I can see much less of what is happening beyond the neighboring vehicles than in years past.
Sure, everywhere with roads has some large, opaque vehicles like delivery vans, etc. But the percentage of my field of view that is blocked by neighboring vehicles certainly seems higher than ever.
The spike started in 2010, which is when 4G was rolling out, Instagram launched, Facebook was already big, and social media in your pocket was becoming an addictive reality. Before this, there wasn’t a lot to do on a smartphone while driving.
Still the "on drug or drunk" for the pedestrians is wild.
It's insane that society has come to accept that some parts of the public space are deadly, and it's your fault if you're not cautious and get killed on them. Just to have more cars.
Now kids can't go to school by themselves