David, here is a comment on your "Traffic Safety" story, especially your words on "blame the pedestrian." Blaming pedestrians to shift responsibility away from other factors is wrong, but an important point should not be missed. The issue is not "regulating" pedestrians but educating them. In 50 years of driving -- with no moving violations from the cops -- I have had to brake or steer suddenly very hard a dozen times because of pedestrian behavior entering my car's path of motion. In a few of these near misses it would have been my fault. In most of those few I would have gotten off, like when a ped is running fast on red across my path of motion on green. In overseas countries with left hand driving I've almost died as a pedestrian not looking in the correct direction, and the driver had to brake hard. Which gets me to my main point:
Pedestrian safety requires dual responsibility. This is not about overemphasizing Blame the Victim instead of the Drivers. Of course society should expend ongoing resources on all the steps you mention in the bullets and more to try to keep drivers from hitting pedestrians. But lets not forget it's the ped who pays the most for driver errors, infrastructure errors, and anything else policy and public spending impacts that tries to lower the chances of a pedestrian being hit, when all of society's good works are not sufficient to keep a car from hitting a person. And too often the ped was not paying enough attention to avoid a bad result.
My own perspective was shaped early in my life as a second grader who wanted to run quickly across the street at a guarded crossing, trusting the crossing guard who stopped the traffic, which she did every time I had crossed every school day in the months before what happened to me on my way home for the beginning of Christmas holidays. Four lane highway, unsignalized crossing with a marked crosswalk, used by school kids walking between a residential subdivision and an elementary school: as I ran out, two lanes to my left were stopped, third lane coming from my right was stopped, fourth lane was blocked from my view if I was even looking. An 80+ senior in a 1948 Plymouth had seen a traffic slow down but saw an open lane and decided to proceed. Two wheels over me at quite low speed. Broken leg and internal organ damage. I recovered after some months in the hospital, with two surgeries, and little permanent damage.
Was this the driver's fault? Absolutely. My parents sued him and it was the beginning of my high quality academic path in the best available schools starting in 3rd grade with tuition paid from the elderly driver's estate. I feel sorry for the adult crossing guard. I'm sure her psyche was damaged. Probably blamed herself. I'm sure she had waved her hand that it was safe to proceed. I ran out ahead of the other kids, just wanting to get home quickly to begin the holiday period.
But I regard myself as guilty of trusting other than my own eyes that the street was safe to cross. I should have been looking, plain and simple. The point is, the ped is the one who has the most to lose, and for a bigger probability of a safe life MUST take ultimate responsibility to be careful in street space not to get hurt, and in fact must be ready to jump out of the way even walking beside a road. Walk facing traffic! Wearing bright colors and carrying a light at night Improves the odds. Taking zero chance of getting distracted by pulling the cellphone away from your head and pivoting to look in all directions? Yes. This experience influenced how I trained my young daughter about ped safety, and how I tell her she should be training her two young sons, my grandsons. Good pedestrian training can make a person safer "jaywalking' mid block with a clear view in all direction than at a signalized road intersection where you are likely to be assuming the signals will protect you.
John Niles, Seattle
P.S. I've subsequently learned from you in separate correspondence about my experience described here that I was victimized by a "four lane death road" as described at https://streets.mn/2014/10/28/four-lane-death-roads-should-be-illegal/ , arguably a road design error -- better to convert to three lanes, two for travel, one for left turns. But I stand on my point that potential run-over victims (that's all of us) need to understand that our attention to imminent danger in or near vehicle lanes of any configuration is an important last line of personal defense and lowered risk of death or injury.
Well said David. I was just reading a statistical analysis of US ped fatalities and there was no causation with larger and heavier vehicles (a common issue). It would be good to unpack if that is indeed a problem, so if it is statistical noise, we can campaign for other things which are much more able to be controlled at a local level. When I was responsible for road safety in the City of Sydney I did a study that showed 72 per cent of people crossed against signals, but as noted, these people were more likely to undertake a personal risk assessment before crossing. What it did lead me to understand is that signals made to optimise traffic are all based on a one peak sample, but the traffic is highly variable, and thus a lot of time is wasted by compliant people (mostly with kids!). We trialled a couple of signals to rest on the pedestrian green and only be called up by an approaching vehicle, and these worked very well, but were considered heretical by the road planners. We also solved an intersection which had very high crash rates with pedestrians not by fencing it (road planner solution) but by signficantly shortening the cycle so phases were very short. This meant pedestrians got to cross within 20 seconds and thus were less likely to take a risk where (in this specific situation) it was very hard to judge travel speeds due to sight lines and inclines. Amazingly, this also meant that the traffic could clear ahead of the signals and so intersection blocking was resolved and more traffic was able to move through the intersection. We also lowered speed limits despite very great resistance. And I committed a crime by making up my own speed signs and hanging them over the statutory ones, which everyone complied with and less accidents followed. The road authorities wanted 40km/h where doors literally opened directly into the laneway rat-run. Sign-posting it at 10km/h both deterred traffic but also meant people just took over the street! There are a multitude of place specific solutions which are very easy to do, but the TfNSW road folks have a KPI to keep the greatest volume of traffic moving at the road design speed, no matter changes in use or community desire. If speed management in built up areas was devolved to Councils there would be slower residential areas, without the multi-million dollar expense of pointless road treatments, and much more in road planting which blocks sight lines and is proven to slow traffic more than speed humps and chicanes. The local politicians could own the problem as well. Sigh. Commonsense is anything but.
Thank you for providing this welcome bit of catharsis. I thought my home country of Canada was hostile to pedestrians until I moved to Australia (Brisbane) almost a year ago. Every street and intersection here seems to be optimized for motorists at the expense of everyone else. The streets around our local school, to which our kids (and vanishingly few others) walk, provides a twice-daily, fume-and-danger-laden demonstration of the absurdity of extreme auto-dependence. Not to mention the cognitive dissonance of parents modelling this same dependency to their kids. It would be nice to see a greater effort from our public institutions – schools, local councils, state and federal governments – to nudge us off this dead-end path. I won't hold my breath (except, maybe, on those walks to school).
David, here is a comment on your "Traffic Safety" story, especially your words on "blame the pedestrian." Blaming pedestrians to shift responsibility away from other factors is wrong, but an important point should not be missed. The issue is not "regulating" pedestrians but educating them. In 50 years of driving -- with no moving violations from the cops -- I have had to brake or steer suddenly very hard a dozen times because of pedestrian behavior entering my car's path of motion. In a few of these near misses it would have been my fault. In most of those few I would have gotten off, like when a ped is running fast on red across my path of motion on green. In overseas countries with left hand driving I've almost died as a pedestrian not looking in the correct direction, and the driver had to brake hard. Which gets me to my main point:
Pedestrian safety requires dual responsibility. This is not about overemphasizing Blame the Victim instead of the Drivers. Of course society should expend ongoing resources on all the steps you mention in the bullets and more to try to keep drivers from hitting pedestrians. But lets not forget it's the ped who pays the most for driver errors, infrastructure errors, and anything else policy and public spending impacts that tries to lower the chances of a pedestrian being hit, when all of society's good works are not sufficient to keep a car from hitting a person. And too often the ped was not paying enough attention to avoid a bad result.
My own perspective was shaped early in my life as a second grader who wanted to run quickly across the street at a guarded crossing, trusting the crossing guard who stopped the traffic, which she did every time I had crossed every school day in the months before what happened to me on my way home for the beginning of Christmas holidays. Four lane highway, unsignalized crossing with a marked crosswalk, used by school kids walking between a residential subdivision and an elementary school: as I ran out, two lanes to my left were stopped, third lane coming from my right was stopped, fourth lane was blocked from my view if I was even looking. An 80+ senior in a 1948 Plymouth had seen a traffic slow down but saw an open lane and decided to proceed. Two wheels over me at quite low speed. Broken leg and internal organ damage. I recovered after some months in the hospital, with two surgeries, and little permanent damage.
Was this the driver's fault? Absolutely. My parents sued him and it was the beginning of my high quality academic path in the best available schools starting in 3rd grade with tuition paid from the elderly driver's estate. I feel sorry for the adult crossing guard. I'm sure her psyche was damaged. Probably blamed herself. I'm sure she had waved her hand that it was safe to proceed. I ran out ahead of the other kids, just wanting to get home quickly to begin the holiday period.
But I regard myself as guilty of trusting other than my own eyes that the street was safe to cross. I should have been looking, plain and simple. The point is, the ped is the one who has the most to lose, and for a bigger probability of a safe life MUST take ultimate responsibility to be careful in street space not to get hurt, and in fact must be ready to jump out of the way even walking beside a road. Walk facing traffic! Wearing bright colors and carrying a light at night Improves the odds. Taking zero chance of getting distracted by pulling the cellphone away from your head and pivoting to look in all directions? Yes. This experience influenced how I trained my young daughter about ped safety, and how I tell her she should be training her two young sons, my grandsons. Good pedestrian training can make a person safer "jaywalking' mid block with a clear view in all direction than at a signalized road intersection where you are likely to be assuming the signals will protect you.
John Niles, Seattle
P.S. I've subsequently learned from you in separate correspondence about my experience described here that I was victimized by a "four lane death road" as described at https://streets.mn/2014/10/28/four-lane-death-roads-should-be-illegal/ , arguably a road design error -- better to convert to three lanes, two for travel, one for left turns. But I stand on my point that potential run-over victims (that's all of us) need to understand that our attention to imminent danger in or near vehicle lanes of any configuration is an important last line of personal defense and lowered risk of death or injury.
Well said David. I was just reading a statistical analysis of US ped fatalities and there was no causation with larger and heavier vehicles (a common issue). It would be good to unpack if that is indeed a problem, so if it is statistical noise, we can campaign for other things which are much more able to be controlled at a local level. When I was responsible for road safety in the City of Sydney I did a study that showed 72 per cent of people crossed against signals, but as noted, these people were more likely to undertake a personal risk assessment before crossing. What it did lead me to understand is that signals made to optimise traffic are all based on a one peak sample, but the traffic is highly variable, and thus a lot of time is wasted by compliant people (mostly with kids!). We trialled a couple of signals to rest on the pedestrian green and only be called up by an approaching vehicle, and these worked very well, but were considered heretical by the road planners. We also solved an intersection which had very high crash rates with pedestrians not by fencing it (road planner solution) but by signficantly shortening the cycle so phases were very short. This meant pedestrians got to cross within 20 seconds and thus were less likely to take a risk where (in this specific situation) it was very hard to judge travel speeds due to sight lines and inclines. Amazingly, this also meant that the traffic could clear ahead of the signals and so intersection blocking was resolved and more traffic was able to move through the intersection. We also lowered speed limits despite very great resistance. And I committed a crime by making up my own speed signs and hanging them over the statutory ones, which everyone complied with and less accidents followed. The road authorities wanted 40km/h where doors literally opened directly into the laneway rat-run. Sign-posting it at 10km/h both deterred traffic but also meant people just took over the street! There are a multitude of place specific solutions which are very easy to do, but the TfNSW road folks have a KPI to keep the greatest volume of traffic moving at the road design speed, no matter changes in use or community desire. If speed management in built up areas was devolved to Councils there would be slower residential areas, without the multi-million dollar expense of pointless road treatments, and much more in road planting which blocks sight lines and is proven to slow traffic more than speed humps and chicanes. The local politicians could own the problem as well. Sigh. Commonsense is anything but.
Thank you for providing this welcome bit of catharsis. I thought my home country of Canada was hostile to pedestrians until I moved to Australia (Brisbane) almost a year ago. Every street and intersection here seems to be optimized for motorists at the expense of everyone else. The streets around our local school, to which our kids (and vanishingly few others) walk, provides a twice-daily, fume-and-danger-laden demonstration of the absurdity of extreme auto-dependence. Not to mention the cognitive dissonance of parents modelling this same dependency to their kids. It would be nice to see a greater effort from our public institutions – schools, local councils, state and federal governments – to nudge us off this dead-end path. I won't hold my breath (except, maybe, on those walks to school).